A fun platforming game.
Drill Dozer is a fun little game because it requires you to use the drill mechanic in clever little ways, like as a means of suspension or as something for climbing a cliff. When you use it in combat you may find yourself wondering if it's better used as a battering ram against a group of enemies or if you'd be better off using it to bounce off of one foe to the next. You won't be terribly confused by anything in this game though, most of the puzzles can be figured out fairly quickly. On top of that the Dozer has a very long life meter which only gets longer as you find upgrades to it. This means that the game can feel rather easy at times.
Boss fights usually revolve around finding a weakness in an enemy and exploiting it. Since most of the enemies in this game repeat a similar pattern each time they attack, you'll have plenty of time to observe their motions. Therefore it's up to you to figure out an enemy's weak point and inflict as much damage to it as possible. Sometimes the game even points these things out to you, so you can think more about how you’re going to do something instead of what it is that you have to do.
The game's biggest problems lie in how it relies on the shoulder buttons for controlling it's most important weapon. Using them like this is fun but for whatever reason the shoulder buttons on Nintendo portables tend to wear out rather quickly, at least in my experience. This can make using the drill rather difficult as it randomly stalls on you at crucial moments because the system won't work properly. Another problem is in how the levels don't seem to get terribly creative in their design until you reach the hidden stages that eventually become available. They don't really take the game's different mechanics to truly wacky heights until you get to these stages, before then it can sometimes seem as though the game's levels go "head in one direction, solve a few puzzles, stop for a fight, repeat" until you hit a boss. And lastly, this game is rather short even when you take those secret levels into account.
The game is presented in a very lovely fashion. The world and the characters it inhabits all have a light, cartoony feel to them. You can easily imagine all of these individuals inhabiting their own television show or a comic book. The music never gets obnoxious or too repetitive, like in any good platforming title. It's a shame that this game isn't selling as well as it could, it would be nice if these characters came back a second time and weren't relegated to cameos and offhanded references in other Nintendo games for the next decade. Make sure to get this game while you can.
