I had high hopes for Zapper. I was a frogger fan, and zapper promised to raise the frogger fun to a new level. Unfortunately, that wasn't quite true.

Available for most platforms, Zapper is a cricket that can only hop in four directions, just like frogger. You practice your timing to hop around enemies, work through mazes and grab special items.

It's sort of cute at first. The graphics are nice, and the cut scenes are funny. And yes, it's frogger like, with the timing of your hops and the simple gameplay. While frogger just wanted to "get to the other side", Zapper is out to save his baby brother, who was stolen by Maggie, the Magpie Queen.

But I'm sorry to say that it gets wearying pretty quickly. Just like frogger, when you get hit you die - but were frogger was a single board to restart, zapper has long, drawn out mazes. You can checkpoint along the way, but it can still be frustrating. It comes down to memorizing the paths of the monsters and executing the matching sequence.

I happen to be playing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets right now and the part of that game I *HATE* is the 'dodge around in the exact right corners to avoid the hall monitors' part. In essence, that is what the entire game of Zapper is about.

And while frogger was about a frog getting to his destination, and the 'blind world' not even noticing him and squashing him in its own race to get somewhere, Zapper loses some of that as well. Frogger was about the struggle you put out to get through a world that goes on with or without you. The logs weren't hostile, the cars weren't aiming for you. They were just doing what they were doing and you had to understand that and work with them. Dodging traffic is something we can all understand and relate to. But the travails of Zapper just didn't strike me in the same fashion.

Perhaps good for kids, or for people who do enjoy avoidance-games.

Buy Zapper from Amazon.com