I know it's for little kids, but even they should find something better than this to play.
So what is Pen Pen? It's a racer game. There are a handful of characters, some of which are quite appealing, (including a purple shark, pink hippo, blue penguin and an orange octopus thing)There are four courses with four sections each and three racing types. The three race types are swimming, belly sliding and waddling. This is much less fun than it sounds. In the four sections of the four levels, there are two sliding sections and one running and swimming section. Each world is uniquely themed, though they all play more or less the same.
Belly sliding and swimming will require you to push the A button in a nice pace. Button mashing will get you no where, you have to follow the rhythm. You use the control stick to steer. While it can be occasionally entertaining to watch your character slide at high speeds down certain hills, the game play is just boring.
Now for the waddling race sections. Your character will walk painfully slow across an area. You can jump up steps and ram into your opponents. On the harder difficulty settings there will be some kind of hazard zone in the waddling areas. These include windmills blowing you backward and you have to fight the breezes and get though the gate or a rapidly spinning turn table making it difficult to get to where you are trying to go.
Now this may all sound fun... and it is for about 15 minutes. Despite how this review may sound there is very little variety in this game. Even young children will get bored pretty quickly. (I should know me and my cosines used to play this when we were younger) If you can get some friends to play this on multiplayer, you may be able to have SOME fun trying to beat each other. Pen Pen's lack of variety or challenge and just pushing the A button make it very boring.
So graphically it looks pretty nice. It has a very cartoony style with bright colourful environments. The music has a certain appeal, but nothing you'll want to go out of your way to listen to.
So Pen Pen may be aimed at children, but it's overly simple, painfully easy and just boring. When I was little I couldn't play it for more the half an hour without getting bored. If you have young kids, maybe get it cheap of e-bay or whatever, maybe they'll enjoy it. But if you are over the age of 12, you won't be satisfied long