The Smurfs Review

The Smurfs is a platform game with a cartoon license. Many games with a popular license end up being pretty bad but this one is actually a solid platformer. Gameplay is simpler and a little slower than for example Super Mario World. The sprites are a little bigger, too, and thus the levels are less complex. Still, The Smurfs has a lot of variety. The levels don’t get repetitive and there are still a sufficient number of levels to have fun for hours.

Every level takes place in a distinct surrounding, for example a forest, a lake, the Smurf village or a mine. Not every level has you walking around. There is the typical level where you have to drive through a mine in a lorry on rails and there is a level where your Smurf is inside a soap-bubble that you have to navigate through a bush with thorns. After completing a few levels with a boss at the end you get a password so that you can continue from there. The difficulty is quite high compared with today’s games.

The graphical presentation is very simple. There are no special effects and the sprites are very simple drawings. Still it looks pretty good in the end and true to the cartoon. Also there is enough going on in every place of the level, it never really looks plain. The music is really nice and memorable. It creates a great atmosphere.

What makes this game worth playing still is the variety of enemies and levels. There are new things introduced all the time so it never gets boring. The developers really made sure every level is as good as it can be. There is also a successor to this game but it seems to be missing the love the first part has. I only played it for some minutes but the first level was just a confusing mess. Play the first part instead.