Crave has been put in the spotlight as of late. With their ability to nab successful licences, bring niche games from overseas, and support system after system. It's as if they could never make a mistake. Yet one thing always tugged on my mind - where were their games developed in-house? The answer to this is Men in Black; while it has all the elements to make a great handheld game, it falls short of even being decent.

When I first turned on the game. I was quite impressed. Men in Black opens in the same manner as the cartoon show, albeit sized down to fit the tiny cart of course. What's especially impressive are the graphics itself. By GameBoy Color standards, MIB makes a plausible use of the systems color palette and most boasts some exceptional animation to boot. From the offset, the eye candy coupled with side scrolling elements makes MIB appear to be one of the better GBC games out there. Unfortunately, things begin to go horribly wrong after the first 20 minutes of playing.

As already stated, the game animates well - too well come to think of it. After getting the feel for things, you'll notice that the turning and jumping animations are so fluid that they hurt the control. For example, jumping can take almost 5 frames to come out, which means the jump happens about a half second after you press the button. The same thing can be said about turning; sometimes it's necessary to "about-face" to thwart off incoming dangers. However the turning animation is painfully slow, resulting in many unjustified deaths. If the animation were trimmed down a bit, MIB would have half the control problems it has now. As for the other half, I'm sad to say the awkward handling is directly the fault of the odd control scheme.

While there are minimal control conflicts (i.e. inability to crouch), in contrast to other platform titles, MIB remains challenging. What becomes a pain in Men in Black is the lack of jump shooting and its one innovative feature. The one control scheme that sets MIB apart from other handheld scrollers winds up being the biggest hassle. Normally you can't shoot up in the game, so what Crave decided to do was add a spread shot that showers the sky. What is so faulty with this is you have to turn, and then shoot during the initial frames of the turning animation. What results is an even lengthier turn accompanied by a spray of bullets upward. So when an enemy is overhead, not only do you have to get the funky timing of pulling off the shot, but you have to shoot before the enemy comes in the line of fire. If the developers opted for jump shooting over this, the game would play out a lot more natural. Although I'm sure Crave was just aiming to inject some originality into the genre, it doesn't pay off well.

The other gameplay aspects in MIB fair pretty well, so it's sad that the control hurts so bad. The levels are rather easy going in design, ranging from cakewalk to a slight workout. Given good control, I'd bet the whole game could be finished in one sitting if you had the shooting skill to do so. Plus the enemies, while not all that interesting, offer up good opposition. I was a bit disappointed in the sparseness of power-ups though. There's only one upgrade to the standard gun and much needed life is spread thin. Seeing as how the cartoon and movie play heavily on unique, high tech weapons, it would have been a perk to see more than just two different guns. It wouldn't have hurt to throw in some extra life power-ups either. =\

Some of the more forgettable areas of MIB lay in audio department. As if an unspoken rule to put drab sounds down in all GBC games, MIB follows the tradition. It's not as if the music was horrible, just nothing to get worked up over. Come to think of it, that sums up the sounds for 99% of all Game Boy games. The same can be said for sound effects - nothing poor, but nothing great.

In all, Men in Black sets out to be different from the cookie cutter shooters/scrollers available. Ironically, had the control been a bit more conventional it would definitely be more playable than it is now. As it is, the game's overuse of animation and quirky controls hamper MIB's chance of being a truly fun experience.

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