Dr. Muto is an insane scientist, who accidentally destroys his own planet. Could happen to anyone, I suppose. In order to create a new place to live, he needs to gather different materials from various worlds. By "materials", I mean "living organisms", and by "gather", I mean "morph and mutate". Willingly blinding myself to the numerous cultural exploitation and ethical issues this brought up, I jumped (no pun intended) into the game feet first. Here's what I found.

There's a lot more action to this title than you'd first expect. Dr. Muto runs, jumps and blasts through four different worlds, using his Splizz Gun to change himself into different creatures. In order to gain the knowledge necessary, your sentient computer AL will give you pointers in where you need to go, and more importantly, what you need to collect. And collect you will. Thank Jupiter that you have AL to help you keep track of things, because there is a lot of collecting to do in Dr. Muto. You must collect Terra pieces, DNA pieces, and Isotopes in order to create the Genitor 9000. Despite its somewhat suggestive moniker, the Genitor 9000 is actually designed to reverse the Big Bang process and rebuild the mad doctor's home planet. There are 17 pieces scattered over the fourworlds - but that's not all you have to collect. Nope, you need to find isotopes in order to create different formulas, which in turn will allow the morphing process to begin. You'll also need isotopes to build gadgets such as rocket launchers, invisibility and invulnerability fields, super baller guns, and more. The whole process is quite complex and requires that you keep an eye not only on what you've collected, but also what is needed to complete certain mission objectives that are given to you.

The levels of Dr. Muto are well laid out, and that's good, because you'll be traversing the same terrain over and over again trying to find every last isotope and scrap part available. It's this aspect of the game that has driven me nuts, because you're never entirely certain if what you need can even be found on the level that you're currently on. If you thought the Hidden Packages mission in the Grand Theft Auto series was time-consuming, you haven't seen anything yet...and Dr. Muto suffers because of this. Even an indicator that explicitly told you on which specific level to find what you needed would cut down on the frustration. As it stands, only a certain kind of person will stick with it long enough to find everything. An insane person, perhaps, which would tie in nicely with the protagonist of this game. The graphics and sound of Dr. Muto are rather colourful and expressive, and the morphing between characters is hilarious.

I really wanted to give Dr. Muto a higher score than I did. You can see what the designers were trying to accomplish here, by giving a platformer more "oomph" than the average title. By not providing more details on where to find the items needed to progress fully, however, it just becomes an exercise in frustration and drags down what could have been an above-average title. As it stands, Dr. Muto's design flaws hurt it and make the collecting aspect not only tedious, but irritating...and for any game, that's the kiss of death. If a sequel does come along, this definitely needs to be addressed.