On the surface, Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue is flashy in all the right ways. It's slathered in the light pink that hits the optical nerve of young girls everywhere to indicate a wallet should be opened for purchase. Sanrio characters from all over make appearances to lend a hand to your cause. Hello Kitty herself has an entire arsenal of dresses to earn, a pair of rollerblades, and a handful of pink blunt objects that spin a glowing trail.

Past the girly surface, Hello Kitty is at heart a competent action platformer that just doesn't know whether it wants to be ridiculously easy, or painfully hard. At times, you'll find yourself wondering where the challenge is. Sometimes, as in the case of a boulder-chase scene, even the most experienced gamer will find frustration in beating a sequence without exploiting a glitch or two.

Level designs themselves are visually fitting, but usually uninspired in every other way. Some stages will consist of just a few sparse areas with a box here and there. Boss levels, however, fare a bit better. When a boss segment comes along, it's a dedicated stage that usually takes the form of an arena. If you're at all familiar with games, you'll know by now that patterns will be dodged, the usual fighting styles will be thrown aside, and the difficulty will ramp up a bit. In this, Hello Kitty somewhat succeeds, with interesting ideas for boss battles that don't quite take enough thought to finish.

Thankfully, controlling Hello Kitty is easy. At first, I thought that rollerblades would create a stray in movements, but it's kept to a minimum. Although this kind of kills the point of the rollerblades, I'm glad the game didn't wind up being a fight against a skating kitten. There's a couple of combos for combat, a fireball attack, and dodges in her arsenal, which make fighting the mass of enemies a little easier to swallow.

All in all, Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue is not a bad game, but it's hard to say it's a good. While the basic gameplay concepts are put to good use, poor design muddies what potential there was. If you're a die-hard Sanrio fan, though, this is definitely worth a playthrough.