Frogger Jump

Frogger Jump is the latest in a long line of unlicensed, dodgy clones of old skool arcade games that have popped up on the Java platform. And, as usual, it's mired in odd design choices, rubbish collision detection, and blocky graphics.

Still, look beyond the frustration and phone-crushingly bad ideas and you'll find a game that will keep you entertained for a few short minutes. It's just a shame that after those minutes are up you'll never want to play it again.

The game is Frogger, as you might expect. It's your job to guide five frogs, one at a time, across two lanes of moving things. Sometimes those things are logs, sometimes they're cars, and other times they're elephants.

There are five little froggy nests at the top of the screen, and once each of them has a happy frog nestled within, you move on to the next level. You guide your frogs with the usual combination of the 2,4,6, and 8 buttons, jumping them through and around whatever traffic you're faced with.

You get three chances a go, and once they're used up it's Game Over. You'll put your initials on the scoreboard and then jump back in at the start of proceedings to try and get the stupid frogs across the stupid road all over again.

Then after a bit you'll stop, because you'll get sick of the fact that a button you pushed after one frog died caused the next frog in line to leap into the side of a truck and die too.

Or you'll tire of the way that, straight from the word 'go', the stream of traffic you're trying to leap through can be utterly impassable.

Or maybe you'll baulk at the designer's decision that leaving a frog still in the middle reservation of the two traffic streams for too long will send them back to the start of the level with no warning. Hell, you might just get bored of the graphics, because they're awful.

However it ends, the brief time you spent playing Frogger Jump will have probably wrung out every drop of fun you were going to get from the game anyway. If you're desperate for some painfully hard arcade action, it's worth a punt. Otherwise, avoid.