Not terrific, but terribly unappreciated
Graphics: Not too bad, you can see what is going on-screen, and any characters not recognisable from the film are recognisable from the game, like the security robots. The main characters look pretty bad, but because they are so small (and the eyes on the characters are small anyway) the more detailed points of them are hard to see, like the eyes, mouths etc. Otherwise the characters are recogniseable, and often have more then 3 frames of animation. For example the robots you have to help often have the typical standing around animation taking up 3 frames usually, but also have a "Hellooooo" kind of animation where they wave their long hands about, which gives the game a sense of style as such.
Gameplay: Mostly 3D/2D platformer last century, which makes sense as this game was ported from last century. Most people call this game a rip-off of Metroid, but they are mostly wrong. The only way to describe this game is a love-child between Ratchet and Clank and Metroid, being different enough to both. The most obvious point of this game being Ratchet and Clank-like is Rodney Copperbottom (who everyone will know is the film and game's protragonist) has a spanner as his main weapon, and he collects scrap, to use with his long (short) range weapon the scrap launcher, and he also has a little robot partner. The game is mostly made up of having to collect stuff not for yourself, like in Metroid, but for numerous NPCs, for rewards of invention parts and pictures to go in the gallery. The game has some innovative minigames such as the transit system, which has you in a metal ball in a Super Monkey Ball party race style game, that mini-game is easy but has some impressive 3D graphics, you can see the robots inside their pods, which is a nice point. The DS version also has the ability to "Invent" inventions, which has you using the stylus to rotate and fit the pieces of the weapons you find.
Sound: I can see why people find the music in this game dull, but it is actually quite good, if you like relaxing techno music, you could use this game say...while trying to draw a picture with the in-game gallery as reference. The music also, to a point, matches the scenes of the game, such as a kind of eventual victory piece when trying to locate Bigweld, and a kind of dark sewer style for when Rodney is disposed of in the trash, like in the film. The music is quite repetetive, but not as badly as some old retro music.
Presentation: The game is very losely based off the film itself, with certain infamous scenes, such as Rodney's accidental step in on Ratchet's meeting. The game is set about to look like the film, which it does rather, with some textures being taken from the film scenes. The menus are done in a kiddies cyber style, which fits the game well. The backgrounds are dull, but also show the style of the film.
The most important thing, in my opinion, is the gallery. You can, if you pointlessly like, go to the house of the "Rusties," Rodney Copperbottom's multicoloured buddies, to look at the gallery there, which gives you a very soft and duuull slow piece of music to "enjoy" while enjoying the artwork, but the game also allows you to view the pictures in the pause menu, to any music you like, which is a very nice touch. The gallery is full of concept art, character pages and also screenshots from the actual film, and there are a nice total of 50 pictures to collect and use how you want (I use them for drawing reference.)