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Hugo: The Evil Mirror Preview

Hugo makes his way across the Atlantic to a new action-puzzle title for the GBA, and we've plowed through it to see what exactly it's about.

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If you haven't heard of cartoon character Hugo the TV Troll, don't feel bad--the kids' hero is big in his native Denmark but lesser known in America. That hasn't stopped Namco from snapping up the rights to two of Hugo's new Game Boy Advance action games, kart racer Hugo Bukkazoom! and level-based action game Hugo: The Evil Mirror. We recently got our hands on the latter to see exactly what makes it tick, and its unique gameplay had us playing for longer than we'd expected.

The Evil Mirror's gameplay falls squarely between the action and puzzle categories, and the particulars of the game's design are pretty unusual. Your basic goal in each stage is to clear the screen of enemies and pick up all the loot they drop so you can earn points. Each level is made up of multiple tiers, some of which have enemy dispensers on them that intermittently spit out foes to make your life difficult. Thankfully, Hugo has an ice beam that fires outward in a stream sort of like a fire hose, and after a few seconds of exposure to this beam, you'll turn an enemy into a solid block of ice. Wait too long to dispose of the block, however, and the enemy will thaw out, madder than ever.

Once you've got an enemy encased in ice, there are a lot of things you can do. The preferred method of disposal is by shattering, and you can break the ice by dropping it from a great height or jumping high enough above it so you can lower your fist and smash the block. Breaking just one block won't give you much in the way of points, though. So if you want to get a high score you'll have to combine two or more blocks to increase the size of the block as well as the resulting payoff. We managed to combine seven or eight blocks at once to create a truly staggering piece of ice. Be warned, though: the bigger the ice, the longer it takes to move it around.

You can't afford to be sloppy in completing a level if you want things to go smoothly. For one thing, each stage has a pretty brief time limit, and if time runs out, an ugly flying monster will appear and start gobbling up all the remaining enemies on the screen. This might sound like a boon until you realize that you aren't getting any points for all those eaten monsters. Worse, the monster gets bigger as it eats and will come after you once it has consumed all the enemies in the level. You can take it out and get a few points, but you'll definitely earn more by killing all the enemies yourself instead.

There are some other large monsters you'll have to deal with on occasion, but these only come around if you get careless about smashing your large ice blocks. If you drop a block from a height too low to break it, it'll instead turn into an ice monster, the size of which depends on how many blocks were combined. Two blocks turn into an odd sort of flying ice-jellyfish, for instance, while larger blocks create larger and more powerful monsters, all the way up to a big ice-crab thing that shoots spikes, or a giant ice dragon that (inexplicably) spits fireballs at you. These monsters usually yield pretty good treasure and are worth a lot of points, but they can also put a serious hurt on your health if you're not careful.

There are a number of power-ups that you'll get randomly as you take out enemies, and each of your attributes will increase by three levels as you get more of these dropped items. One power-up increases the power of your ice beam, allowing you to freeze enemies faster; another gives you armor that makes you take less damage; still another comes in the form of new shoes and makes you run faster. In addition, you'll occasionally get a one-off item like a bomb, which destroys all the enemies onscreen at once, an hour glass that removes the time limit for that stage, and a flower, which temporarily makes flowers rain down from the sky that can be collected for big points.

You'll break more of these ice blocks than you can count by the time you finish the game.
You'll break more of these ice blocks than you can count by the time you finish the game.

The game has a whimsical cartoonlike look to it, with some decent-sized sprites and amusingly designed enemies. There are three major areas in the game that will pit you against beavers, squirrels, Vikings, and more. The different areas have a decent amount of variety to them, from the giant trees of the squirrel area to the great frozen north where you'll fight the Vikings.

Hugo: The Evil Mirror is a neat little game that should be entertaining for quick bursts while you're on the go. You can save between every level, so it's easy to play for a few minutes and then put it down on short notice. There are about 60 levels in the game with multiple difficulty levels, so it'll take several hours to get through. We would've liked to have seen some kind of multiplayer mode that would've given the game a lot more staying power, but as is, Hugo should still provide some fun action gameplay that will appeal to kids in the same demographic as the television show. Hugo: The Evil Mirror is slated for release in mid-April.

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