The game actually features both Come On Baby and Come On Baby 2, the former being a little bit like “Summer Olympics” and the latter being slightly akin to “Winter Olympics”. The game-engine is the same in both games, so it's just the mini-games that change; perhaps Come On Baby A and B would have been more appropriate. The characters are babies in all shapes and colours, although they’ve been pumped up with super-milk(Tm), which lets them do pretty much anything as long as it's very fast. Your choice of uber-baby supposedly makes a difference, with each having its own attributes. In reality, it has little effect on the gameplay, but careful selection will give you the edge in terms of the serious mental trauma that you can inflict on your opponent during a baby’s victory celebration animation. One baby drops his pants and takes a leak and another turns round, pulls up her outfit and shows off her nappie. There’s another one dressed as a panda bear. The rest are all similarly at-one with the fairies. In-game, the babies are all pre-rendered and placed into the fantastically colourful 3D environments as sprites. It gives a very distinctive feel, but isn’t really a success and ends up just looking odd, especially seeing as the other creatures in the game are portrayed as more standard-issue 3D models.
As each game starts in any of the de rigueur modes, “Adventure”, “Arcade” or “Vs”, a guide screen tells you exactly which buttons to use, just as it would in the arcades, so the game is very easy to follow. What makes it even easier to follow is that with the exception of the occasional bemani style game, shoot the snowboarding polar bear game or soccer event, the games all play out by hammering only two buttons, sometimes tapping an extra button to initiate the end move. The Adventure mode is simply the Arcade mode with a branching path and some unlockable babies. The developers came up trumps on the imagination front, with games including swimming up through water to the surface, with a metal ball attached to the babies’ feet, skydiving using their arms to flap fake wings instead of the tried-and-tested parachute method, sprinting and leaping away from the jaws of a vicious looking bear, skipping with an electrified rope, penguin flinging and many more in the same vein.
However, the excellent variety in the game scenarios is battered senseless by the sheer lack of thought put into the control schemes. Hammering the same two buttons for most of the game is not conducive to extended play, although it does mean that newcomers are almost instantly on an even footing with seasoned pros. This would make it a good quick-fix party game, but unfortunately Come On Baby only supports two players at any time. The choice to include both the original and the sequel together in the PS2 port helps with the game variety, but not with the game control scheme variety.
This game is worth hunting down if you are looking for something not just a little bit different but very different – it excels at being outrageous and subversive. However, once you get past the vibrant exterior, the gameplay is decidedly sub-par and won’t hold your attention for too long. Which is a shame, because with a bit of extra thought, Come On Baby could have been excellent fun as well as individual.
Score: 5/10
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