An improved port of what was already a fantastic materpiece.
The story goes that General Viggo has kidnapped all of the Fur Fighter's families to keep them busy trying to rescue their relatives whilst he plans on world domination. So the story is by no means amazing, but the game play is great.
The game play is a puzzle, action third person shooter with platform elements. You explore through the wide world of Fur Fighters looking for the abducted babies. There are six worlds overall which each consist of three levels (4 in Beaver Power.) These levels can take anywhere from 20 minutes to just under an hour to complete. Each world is uniquely themed. There is a snowy city, space centre, rainy jungle and even a modern dinosaur world.
You have six playable characters each with their own unique skills. Each character can only rescue a baby of their own species and certain parts of the levels will require a certain character's skills to advance through so you will need to change characters several times in the levels. We have Roofus the dog, he can burrow through earth mounds to get to different sections of the level. Juliette the cat is the fastest runner and can climb up surfaces covered in cat scratches. Bungalow the kangaroo can jump higher than the other characters to get to places where no one else can. Tweek the dragon is cute; he's a baby dragon who can glide to places other character can not. Rico the penguin is the only fur fighter who can swim under water. And lastly my favourite character Chang the fire fox, can squeeze through narrow tunnels and pipes to get to places other characters can't. You change characters by running into green spheres called telepoints. Each telepoint will enable you to change to a specific character.
You will need to rescue a certain amount of babies in each world before you can challenge the boss and move on to the next world. To rescue babies will require you to solve puzzels, do some plat form sections or find some objects. Most of the babies aren't hard to get and neither are the puzzles. A lot of the time you will need to be very observant. It's very easy to miss that shootable water tank ontop of the building in Lower East Quack which will enable you to save a baby. There are some mini games in the levels. These include landing a transporter plane, racing the evil bears to the rocket launch pad ect. But babies aren't all you need to advance through the game. You will also need to collect gold tokens to enter levels. Though since these are so easy to get, there is no reason why you should ever be short on these. They are literally lying all over the place in the game.
In your path there will be evil teddy bears. To take them out the Fur Fighters have a large arsenal of weapons of which there are seven each with an upgrade. Overall there are sixteen guns. This includes a rocket launcher, plasma beam gun, thermal gun which shoots out fire balls, a standard shot gun ect. Though at the start of the game you will only have a pistol and your close range attack. You can find new guns in the levels or when your enemies drop them. New to this PS2 port were an electric Tazer gun and a small flame thrower.
The bosses aren't hard themselves. But figuring out how to actually damage them can be hard. The Anatat Tatanatat boss I figured out how to hit by complete accident. Overall the game can be quite challenging, but is extremely satisfying.
There is also a two player mode called Fluff Match. This is essentially a death match. Up to four people can play. Pick from the twelve (there is also an unlockable one) levels available and pick a character and see who can land the set amount of kills first. This can be a real blast to play; almost a guaranteed laugh.
The graphics are quite cartoony in style - the characters even have outlines. The colours are very solid and the actual design of the characters and objects looks very cartoony. Some of the textures are very good and the water effects are nice. The game runs smoothly and overall is a good piece of eye candy.
Musically the game offers nice tunes which are satisfying to listen to. A nice touch they added is that most of the tunes actually change slightly depending on which character you are playing as. For example when you are playing as Bungalow to tune will use Australian instruments and when you are playing as Roofus (who is meant to be Scottish) bagpipes will start playing.
As for controls the actual set up sounds weird. X,O,ロ and /_ (or the right thumb stick) move the character around in a straight direction. The left control stick is used for aiming and turning. The L and R 1 buttons are the jump and shoot buttons and the D-pad cycles through your weapon inventory. While this may sound weird, it actual works quite well and once you get used to the set up the game controls very well. Control is neither too tight, not too loose. It controls almost perfectly.
About port VS original. I prefer and lean more towards the DreamCast version because that's the version I grew up with, but I acknowledge the fact that this is the better version. While I preferred the old less catroony outline-less graphics the game runs a lot smoother. There is an extra level in Beaver Power - though in return the final level was made noticeably shorter. There are also six new multi-player levels plus an unlockable one bringing the total up the thirteen. Also there is a really bad glitch in the DreamCast version. On a level called the Bad Place once you open the door to Nowhere a bad glitch starts, which will make you have to finish the level without exiting once that door has been opened. If you open the door, quit the level and come back later, once you walk on a certain piece of ground your character will start to control themselves and run backwards into a bottomless pit. Meaning you can't finish the level unless you set up a new file. This glitch was completely removed in this PS2 version.
So all in all. Fur Fighters part of my golden three (which means my best games of all time - This, Sonic Adventure 1 and Final Fantasy X) I highly recommend this to anyone. Even after completing the game it's a lot of fun to go back and rescue any babies you missed. It offers quite a challenge the first time round. The whole game is also a lot of fun to explore and mess around in. The multi-player mode is also an almost guaranteed laugh. Definitely get the game if you can.