Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue review (GameCube)

In between levels, you're taken back to Hello Kitty's house, where you can interact with the family members you've rescued, save your game, purchase unlockable content with your coins, and change into one of the many outfits you'll unlock as you complete levels. The clothes are purely cosmetic--they don't give you special attributes, but there is a good variety of them, helping to show off Hello Kitty's stylishness. One complaint we have about the interface here is that the game doesn't autosave, for some odd reason. After beating a level, you always have to talk to grandpa to get to the save screen and save manually. We can see smaller children forgetting to do this and becoming frustrated when a couple levels of work are lost.

Though light platforming and puzzle-solving elements are included, it's a little surprising that a game so clearly targeted at girls would rely so much on fighting as its primary game mechanic. Certainly the "violence" in the game, if you can even call it that, is about as intense and graphic as a Care Bears cartoon. But parents who are very sensitive to the subject may give pause before buying the game for a young child. On that note, the game's best parts are arguably the boss levels, which are pretty numerous and offer a nice, varied experience for what amounts to a pretty short game (an experienced gamer should blow through it in a couple of hours).

Roller Rescue doesn't disappoint in its presentation, either. The translation of the characters to 3D is excellent, and the gameworld effectively captures the cute, whimsical attitude you'd expect from a Sanrio video game. Strong lines and vibrant colors set off both the characters and gameworld nicely, while the music in the game is largely pleasant and soothing. There's no voice acting in the game, so characters communicate via talk bubbles. That's probably a good thing, in this case.

If you're looking for a cute video game to give to your favorite Sanrio fan, Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue is probably a good choice. It's a nice little kids' game, and its only major drawbacks are that it's rather short and that you don't get to see enough of the most popular characters.