Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Imagination Invaders for Nintendo DS Reviews & Ratings by IGN

The thing about a show like Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is that its potential is endless. So it would seem like the video game could be about practically anything and as long as it had that Fosters charm, it would be okay. Amazingly, Sensory Sweep has managed to capture that Foster's charm and somehow still make a game that is completely worthless with Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Imagination Invaders.



The game starts off right. The premise builds on the plot of a previous episode where Mac, Bloo, and friends pretend to be superheroes and fight off evil aliens known as The Space Nut Boogies. One of the kid's imagination gets a little overactive, and suddenly the aliens are real and in the house. Bloo, Mac, Coco, Eduardo, and Goo have to fight the Space Nut Boogies in the same way they did while playing pretend: by imagining themselves to be superheroes and using their powers.



Sounds cool, right? We thought so, too, especially considering the decent writing, and even a little bit of voicework. This had Foster's written all over it.



Somehow this clever premise, that not only offers a lot of fan service by referencing a popular episode, but also features a good chunk of the cast, gets messed up. Maybe it's at the part where the developers leave out a real game and instead put in one giant household chore instead.



Nearly the entire game is a series of fetch quests. The word "quest" is way too generous though. There is nothing questing about looking for socks. Players control Bloo, and run him all over the Foster home, looking for whatever people ask of him. To do this they go into every single room, walk up to every piece of furniture, and tap the A button. Imagine living in a house with hundreds of cabinets and having someone tell you to open them all, because there are some carrots, or maybe a hat in some of them.



It's so boring, and it doesn't help that Bloo constantly complains about his tasks. It's a bad sign when neither the player, or the main character is having a good time with the game.



As the game progresses the other character get added on to the player's team as support. Some of the rooms have character tiles, and by standing on them Bloo can summon the help of one of his friends. It's a neat little idea, and a good way to incorporate the heroic alter egos of the characters, but ultimately you're asking Mac to freeze time so Bloo can open a washing machine.



After Bloo completes the tasks he moves on to a boss battle, which involves using the teammate tiles to hit a bad guy. It's very basic, and usually beaten in about a minute. In fact, the entire game is less than two hours long. There's just absolutely no challenge since the only obstacles are some easily distracted bad guys. We kept waiting for the real game to start, since the whole thing feels like one giant drawn out tutorial.



There are a few minigames that break up the constant fetching. However, the minigames last, on average, 10 seconds. This is not an exaggeration. They are literally 10 seconds long, and then it's back to work.



It's not the game is bad in every area. The graphics are fine, and the 3D environments are huge and really capture the layout of the huge house. The writing is decent, the mix between 3D and cartoon stills work fine. It's just that then the game starts, and ends, and nothing seems to have happened.

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