Limited play makes Jake a dull boy.
In Happy feet there are three modes that you can choose to play from. Not bad when you think about it, but really, it's just the same stuff in all of them no matter what one you choose. The three modes are Story, Arcade and Multiplayer.
In story mode, you play through the minigames in chronological order from the movie. The story aspect of it is blan and boring though, it's just text that if you've seen the movie, you know whats happening; if you haven't seen the movie, it's still a waste of time. The story sometimes feels forced into the game to take up more time. From the 23 different stages, there are only 3 different types of mini-games, making this more boring.
In arcade mode you can choose any of the 23 levels that you have already played through and beaten. Though this is nice, the limited amount of mini-games make it repetetive.
In multiplayer mode you can challenge other players using the wireless features of the DS. It is a scarce game and finding other people to play against can be troubling as this game doesn't incorporate Wi-Fi. As for what you do in multiplayer, you just play those same mini-games until your eyes start to bleed.
There are 3 different types of minigames in Happy Feet, Tap Dancing, Time Trials and the famous collect em' trial.
In the Tap dancing, you will see these coloured circles appear and a white circle closing in, you need to time it so you tap it with the stylus when the circle is closing in to the smallest possible circle. The problem with this game is that you will find yourself waiting a lot. In the 3 minutes that each one is, you'll only be actually playing it for about one and a half to two minutes. The rest you'll just be waiting for another one to come up. I also found this to be the most enjoying one, but it is off beat a lot.
In the time trials you are sliding down a hill trying to go through the yellow rings to gain time to get to the bottom, if the timer runs out, you lose; sounds simple enough right? Well the stylus is only half the battle, if you move the stylus slow, you might jerk all the way over to the other side, if you move the stylus a big range, you may only just go a little over.
In the last mini-game, I like to call collect em' , you are sliding down the hill again, collecting things. The problem about this is that sometimes you can't even see what you're trying to collect.
The graphics in this game are choppy and don't seem at all similar to the movie. The best part about the graphics are the clouds in the sky, I am not kidding here. Another good thing is that the frame rate doesn't drop.
For 20 dollars, it still doesn't cut it. It's not worth the money at all, it would be better priced at 5 or 10 dollars because you only get one or two hours of play, and you're back at the game store to trade it in. To sum it up, this is not a game I'd recommend to everyone, though I would recommend it to 5-10 year olds who loved the movie.