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| The Professor faces quite a conundrum... | With pulleys and all manner of strangeness... |
You see, the Professor built robots to do his bidding and his daily chores, then mistakenly set the dial from "friendly" to "rage" one night. It's a mistake anyone can make, though it does raise the question of just why he designed rage as a feature. Perhaps this doddery old man is not as sweet as he appears after all.
Anyway, the robots become predictably enraged and toss him out of his lab, scattering his equipment and things everywhere in the process. It's your job to guide the professor back to his lab so he can turn the dial on the rage bot remote back to friendly.
So begins an exciting platform game. The major twist in the game play is that the Professor cannot jump. Thus he must push barrels and crates and magnets and things, and ride around on pulleys in order to climb up ladders, open gates, and escape the ragebots, who are still apparently not satisfied with having tossed him out of his laboratory and are chasing him around in hopes of hoisting him up by the seat of his pants for what looks like one hell of a bot wedgie.
The professor does have a few weapons in his arsenal however, a whistle to attract the bots attention, should they be useful in holding down a switch or balancing a pulley, an E.M.P, which won't stop the evil squid like machinations of the matrix machines, but will deactivate the magnets in the level, and a frost gun, which simply freezes everything, especially wedgie intent robots.
It's all very nice and simple on the surface, but it very quickly turns into quite the brain teaser, even on some of the tutorial levels. You really do have to think laterally, and remember the properties of each item as well as your own abilities in order to complete the levels. Lucky for you, R restarts the level if you screw it up, which you're highly likely to do.
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| The frozen cow is no help at all... | Perhaps his pictures will be a clue... |
There are four types of game to play, the kids levels, the regular levels, the advanced levels and the alphabet levels. The kids levels are perfectly designed for small children, with the level design looking like a teddy bear, or a kitty, or a train. Each level also comes with an explanation as to why Professor Fizzwizzle needs to complete the level, sometimes it's just to give his over sized Teddy a hug, other times it's to explore a pyramid. Either way it's very cute and a lot of fun, the kids levels also have unlockable photos of the professor having fun with his robots, which is a great reward for having completed a few levels.
The Alphabet levels are very similar, with each level corresponding to a letter of the alphabet, and coming designed looking like an object with a name that starts with said letter. For example, the first level is A for Apple. The level is designed to look like an apple, and there is a little rhyme that is fun to read and talks about apples and other things beginning with A.
These levels are suitable for young children, though I have to admit they do hold a certain charm for more adult type beings as well.
We then move on to the regular levels, which I have to say are pretty challenging in themselves. These have a built in tutorial mode for the first few levels, which introduces you to the various objects and shows you how to manipulate them before letting you loose on some to solve yourself. If you get good at those and want a real challenge, moving onto the advanced levels will have you on the brink of tearing your hair out. Whereas the kids levels were definitely aimed at children, the advanced levels would have some advanced logisticians furrowing their brows in puzzlement.
Fortunately for all of these levels a 'show solution' is available, which means that if you're stumped with a particular level and just want to move on, you can. Thank God for the show solution feature, seriously. It saves so many frustrations that in other games can cause you to stop playing altogether. You can either watch the Professor run through the solution completely, or stop him after he's completed a particularly tricky portion of the game. If you have absolutely no self discipline you can skip right through to the ending, which is rather naughty, but hey, give it a few days and you'll forget it anyway.
Professor Fizzwizzle has a nice simple graphic style, one that is not overly flashy or advanced, but one that is perfectly suited to the style of game. There are some nice sound effects that accompany the game play also, with various sounds to be heard based on what surface the good Professor is walking on, and other effects similar in nature.
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| Icy dinosaurs clarify nothing at all... | He's even more lost than before! |
Games like this are notorious for having very little replay value, but Professor Fizzwizzle saves the day and the game from being uninstalled once all the levels have been played by including a level creation feature which enables you to make your own levels to play. It's not an ideal solution, as you probably want someone else to make the levels in order for it to be a challenge, but this could be a nice feature for those who want to make some levels for their kids, or vice versa.
Top Game Moment:
TOP GAME MOMENT
Unlocking the dark secrets of Professor Fizzwizzle’s life via the photo gallery. No wonder those bots rebelled.
