Format: Advance
Genre: Action
Developer: Virtucraft
Publisher: BAM! Entertainment

Oooo What does this button do? Oh right! It starts the review! A cartoon-cartoon classic, Dexter's Laboratory, is a show about a tiny square russian(or german?) ginger that creates marvels of scientific wonder while his airhead blonde sister destroys everything in his life through sheer ignorance. The plot of this game is atypical to the show in that Dee Dee has caused some sort of fantastical calamity in the lab and it's up to dexter to solve the problem using his tools, his intellect, and determination. This time around, she's cloned herself into over a hundred tiny versions and is wreaking havoc across the lab, and beyond! Dexter makes his way through his ruined and for some reason, traitorous laboratory to catch the tiny dee dee's and put them back together into one giant pain in the butt. That's the plot anyways, gameplay wise, it plays similar to an isometric early platformer/collectathon game with puzzles to solve in order to advance in each sector and level. The action is contained in each level, so you can't carry over solutions past the doors, which makes things easier in a sense to keep track of. There are 124 Dee's throughout the game, about 4 per level, which makes this a pretty big game overall. There are also 43 fixable science machines as well that require specific combinations of tools to fix them. You don't start with these tools but rather, find them along the way. Each area has a specific theme, as well as their own problems and dangers. One thing I found pretty nice about this game was the refreshing change in tone whenever the areas changed. Falling off the edge also doesn't result in an instant-death like most games, it just damages your health bar. Much like metal gear, you're often searching for colored key cards in order to advance. One of my favorite features is, ironically the fact that going through a door regenerates the whole level (minus dee's and machines). What this means is that all the pickups, INCLUDING 1-UPS, respawn. As a children's game, it's clear this was made to be easy. The select button brings up the cheat-sheet map to make the game even easier. Once you find a dee you have to catch her with your metal claw and drag her to the vent-shaft in each level to suck her back up into the clone-a-matic. Dexter himself has undergone martial arts training to fight against his own creations and can both punch and jump-kick... or just use a gun when he finds one. There's a lot of variety in the design of this game, both in level, and in enemies to keep things spicy at all times. The music and sound are okay, and the voice clips are on point. It's a great game to just pick up and mess around with for a while.

All in All, this scored a nice 9.0 for itself. The back and forth can get a bit tedious at times. The music isn't A tier either. Sometimes the game gives you the gun AFTER hordes of enemies. Hitboxes can sometimes be off. Can get stuck-killed.