A mix of horrible design, horrible gameplay, and HORRIBLE presentation make this one of the worst games ever made, EVER!
Congratulations to THQ, creators of several other Nickolodeon licensed games for making one of the most god-awful games in existence. I swear that this game was made by monkeys, because who else would have had the bright idea to make the health, ammo, and even boost bars ALL THE SAME BAR!? Apparrently, the same brilliant developers who decided that a terminator reference in a kid's game was actually funny. This game has serious problems with every aspect of its design, from the busted platforming, to the laughable shooting, to the rediculously low difficulty level.
The platforming consists of jumping from one platform to the next, sounds simple enough, right? Only they dumbed it down severely, going as far as to put almost no gravity so you feel like you're floating. The game actually includes arrows to tell you which way to go, as if you could actually get lost on such a clear path. If that wasn't enough, you can almost make every jump on your first try, since all the platforms are at that ideal spacing where you always make it. When you do miss a jump, it's because your character chose not to jump when you told him to.
The game also has some sections where jimmy pulls out a water balloon launcher to shoot some robots (because everyone knows that when an evil genius makes robots, he doesn't bother to make them water-proof). These parts are awful because of the nonexistent AI and zero recoil on your gun. The robots are idiots, they just wander around waiting for you to shoot them. Occasionally, one will start to attack in a terribly slow animation where all it does is move closer. Even if it does hit you, it just takes 5 hit points out, and forgets you immediately afterwards. There's only one boss fight, and it's pretty much the same thing, except you need to find the parts to build a new weapon while he's chasing you.
Speaking of which, the game allows you to collect items around the level to build new gadgets to help you in your quest. You know, like in the show? Only problem is, if you miss something important in one level, you won't have the option of going back to get it, it's gone. It makes no sense that some items are everywhere, but others only give you one chance to pick them up. The placement is whacked, it makes sense that you'll find baking soda in a kitchen, but it's anybody's guess how a salad bowl got inside a seaside warehouse. Even when you DO get the parts to make something, Jimmy just yells BRAIN BLAST, and you need to find a powerup to turn it on. Again, the placement sucks. How did a radar powerup get on top of a fireworks stand?
And that's not all, either. The game is also VERY easy, I am not exagerating when I say it's one of the easiest games in existence. You can beat the game in a meager few hours. THQ knew about this and decided to make the game start from the beginning when you beat it, so the only real ending is when you smash the disk against the wall in frustration! Why would anyone want to replay such a bad game from the beginning? Even with the short length, the game feels very mundane to play, like you're ready to fall asleep while playing. But I guess that's a given when the game is such a chore to play to begin with.
But, as bad as the gameplay and design are, the worst travesty is the presentation. This game was released in 2003, and yet, I own 1996 games that look better than this. The polycount is horrible, all the characters look like disfigured boxes. The textuing is even worse, everything looks horribly flat. Speaking of flat, apparently the developers were too lazy to even make models for many of the objects, instead using 2D sprites that mysteriously rotate when you move around them. The animation is embarassing, with lip-syncing that doesn't even exist. Instead, they made this cheap, looping animation for when the characters talk. On top of that, the ubiqitous jumping animation looks more like Jimmy's doing a cannonball than actually jumping.
Then there's the sound, an entirely different beast altogether. The music is just a looping, 2 second tune the repeats ad nausium. Voice acting is done by the original actors, yes, but they give such half-hearted performance that it begs the question whether an intern could do better. There is only one sound effect for everything in the game, and not even a very good one. For example, if you bump your head against the ceiling during a jump then you hear the sound of a hammer beating against an anvil.
And the cherry on top is a script that is so bad that it will make you cringe during EVERY cutscene. The humor appeals to the the lowest common denominator in so many regards, such as a scene where you just rescued libby from an evil computer program, but she's too concerned with your crush on cindy to care. Or when after you capture a mad scientist in, get this, a soda factory, you go outside to see dinosaur skeletons going ape on the city, and the only way to stop them it to put the water balloon launcher on your rocket ship and get them all wet.
There are simply no redeeming factors to this game, it's just terrible. I don't care who you are, just avoid this game. If you see a free copy in a window, keep on walking. Because games like this should have never seen the light of day, much less cost money.