Fun, Easy, Great For Kids To Play With The Family, Or Alone

User Rating: 8.5 | Kero Kero King Super DX PS2
It's not exactly apparent from the title, but Ribbit King is, in fact, a golf game. Sort of. Actually, it's a golf game where the balls have been replaced with frogs, spawning the new fun-to-say activity of "frolf." It's an odd concept, followed through with an odd, sugary execution, all of it easily identifiable as a Japanese subspecies of cute. The action is significantly more chaotic than your usual game of golf, which can be a good thing, and the game has a pretty distinct charm to it. But it's also not particularly difficult, and the graphics neither look very good nor run very smoothly. After the novelty of watching purposely weird characters launch frogs through Mouse Trap-style obstacle courses wears off, which, admittedly, might take a little while, you're left with a simple, fun game.

What part of replacing golf balls with frogs don't you get?
Though frolf is largely patterned after golf, it takes some pretty major liberties with the scoring system, even reversing some of the rules, and it streamlines the whole sport a good deal, toning down the importance of different clubs and gutting the concept of putting entirely. Using a small catapult contraption, you launch your frog toward the hole, which in frolf is a small pool of water with a gigantic white diamond hovering over it. You're given a projected arc of your frog for aiming shots, which you can lengthen and shorten at will, and the actual launching of the frog is governed by a two-click sliding power meter--one click to start the meter going and one click to determine the power of your shot. The main difference between a frog and a regular golf ball, it would seem, is that after it lands, a frog will sometimes hop a couple of times before coming to a complete stop. It's an incredibly simple system, and it doesn't really offer much depth.