Scooby-Doo! Who's Watching Who?

Rating ESRB: Everyone Genre adventure Publisher THQ External Links Official Scooby-Doo! Who's Watching Who? Website

Growing up with cable gave me an incredible advantage when it came to watching cartoons. I could enjoy all of the Nickelodeon cartoons I wanted, but the classic shows of Cartoon Network always seemed to draw me in. If it was a show about Hanna-Barbara characters racing around a track or a giant shark playing drums in a band, it was all right with me. And now, it seems that a portion of my childhood has returned. THQ's Scooby-Doo! Who's Watching Who? is a mystery solving title for the Nintendo DS that's bent on keeping those darn kids in the limelight.

The plot is modernized, yet simple: the Scooby-Doo mystery team is invited to be on a reality show about catching ghosts. The "Ghost Scene Investigators" take a quick dislike to the rag-tag group of kids (and their dog), but the Mystery Machine Gang seems to be an audience favorite. Now, the original stars of the "Ghost Scene Investigators" show are forced to compete with the Scooby-Doo team in order to be the best sleuths.

This is THQ's second title for the Scooby-Doo franchise and there are notable improvements over 2005's Scooby-Doo Unmasked, including better use of the touch screen and less glitches in the game play. The costumes and confusing elements of the first game are nowhere to be seen, and mystery solving takes a front seat in this installment. The concept is good and most of the story is consistent. Unfortunately, this great premise is not backed by factual game play. You never actually compete against the ghost scene team, but are more or less mocked through speech bubbles by the opposing mystery solvers. The game could have been much more interesting if the competitive ideas of the story were applied to the core game play.

Scooby-Doo is still the big dog in charge of finding clues. Each level has Scooby sniffing around different abandoned structures in search of the incriminating facts of the case. The best element of the mystery solving lies in taking your clues to Velma for decoding. You use a number of different touch screen tools to try to figure out why the clue is important and then to whom the clue applies. Eventually, you're able to choose a suspect based on these clues. The choices are easier if you find all of the clues spread across each level. Along with the clues, you also find parts to the ghost trap that will eventually be used to capture the masked person terrorizing your location. This is, once again, accomplished through a touch screen mini-game. There are other mini games to be found, such as a surfing game and a driving game involving the Mystery machine, to name a couple more.

These fun elements eventually take a back seat to the bulk of the game: falling off platforms. 2D Scooby-Doo just does not do well in a 3D environment where he spends most of his time jumping from place to place. This is where the game's pacing slows down considerably. Sometimes the angles for the jumps are so bad that it takes several tries just to nail down the timing. Although many save points exist to quickly warp you back after your fall, it's not much help.

Scooby-Doo! Who's Watching Who? has many positive elements, but also suffers from some tedious game play and tough spots that might turn off younger gamers. There are some great things about it that Scooby-Doo fans can appreciate, including a price of $19.95. It's good enough for a Scooby Snack, but it's still junk food.