That's pretty much true of the game's entire presentation. It's serviceable, but bland. On the one hand, the environment and character graphics are sharp, the whole game is extremely colorful, and the New Age forest soundtrack puts every speaker in the sound field to use. That's especially true of the Xbox version, which supports Dolby Digital 5.1 and seems to just have richer music overall, no matter the speaker setup. On the other hand, there isn't much in the way of detail or panache. The soundtrack has to be good, because the sound effects are a collection of generic yelps and high-pitched noises that take away more than they add. As for the graphics, the same solid grass, dirt, and desert tiles are recycled constantly for the floors, and the enemies--which are primarily spiders, worms, and other creepy crawlies--only move back and forth and don't react when they come into contact with Frogger. Ironically, the game's cutscenes are sharp, lively, and a great joy to watch, although they are definitely geared toward younger children. The story concerns an ancient evil that has returned to Firefly Swamp and has caused all of the insects and animals to run amok. Frogger, for some reason we're never given, takes it upon himself to track down the ancient enemy and put an end to his shenanigans. The voice acting is superb, but the dialogue is fairly simple, and the childlike voices may not appeal to older players. That's doubly ironic, since you need an adult's attention span, and then some, to get through the game's levels.
Among the included minigames is a remake of the classic Frogger arcade game.
In addition to the main story mode, Frogger: Ancient Shadow includes supplementary challenge and multiplayer modes. The challenge mode is a time attack setup, where you have to try to beat previously defeated stages as quickly as possible. Multiplayer mode contains eight separate games, including jump rope, dodge ball, and a remake of the classic Frogger arcade game. As many as four players can participate in the multiplayer games, or you can choose to go solo against CPU-controlled bots. Unlike the story mode, the multiplayer games are quite fun and don't suffer as much from the crummy controls and camera. That's mainly because each player is on a level playing field with regard to those aspects, although it certainly doesn't hurt that the levels are smaller and the rounds are relatively quick.
Ultimately, no one is going to buy this game based solely on the strength of its multiplayer aspects. There are numerous full-featured party games out there that offer dozens more minigames for the same price. Sadly, the multiplayer component is really the only thing Frogger: Ancient Shadow has going for it. Its single-player component doesn't bring anything new to the table, and, what's worse, none of the problems from previous games have been fixed or improved.
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