would make his fragile

little eyes bleed? (I blame all his headbanging.) But for whatever reason, Moshi Monsters: Katsuma

Unleashed ended up

on my desk, and... man, it's in an AWESOME box. I mean, just look at this box! It even

jumps out at you! And there are...

um... these objects, which are apparently a cute witch thing and a misshapen donut with

googly eyes. What do those

things have to do with a 3DS platformer? Not a damn thing, it'd seem. I think that's too

bad. More games need

misshapen donuts with googly eyes.

So in the unfortunately misshapen-donut-with-googly-eyes-free gameplay of Moshi Monsters; Katsuma Unleashed,

you've

got... well, Katsuma, platforming around the kind of secret-laden, multi-path stages that

have long been a staple of the

Sonic the Hedgehog series. Just, y'know, not nearly blue-hedgehog fast. Katsuma there has

a spinning claw attack and a

number of other powers acquired after saving your fellow Moshi Monsters from the bosses

stationed at the end of each

of six worlds. What powers you ask? No, I'm not gonna go into that Wonder Boy schtick

again, since even Wonder Boy

wasn't able to dislodge and throw his own eyeballs. That's some upper-tier stuff right

there.

As is apparently common for these Moshi Monsters titles, there's plenty of cash to collect,

in the form of rox, but

they just look like diamonds of various colors to me. These can be spent to challenge special

stages for speed and...

well, more cash. If you collect lots of cash in each stage, you might win even more cash

from the strange "HOW MUCH

CASH DID YOU COLLECT" gauge. By amassing fat stacks, you can unlock... um, things... to

use on the web-based Moshi

Monsters kids social network gaming service platform. These and other strange creatures

- which might include our

previously-mentioned misshapen donut with googly eyes - can be found hidden throughout

the stages or unlocked via

Streetpass, which is a pretty cool implementation.

But unless you're a kid who's into this whole franchise... there's really nothing here that

jumps out at you. It's a

competent platformer with some cool interaction with its web-based service, but if you're

not invested in that

particular aspect (or let's be serious, the kid you're buying this for isn't invested

in that particular aspect), it's

just a bog-standard game with cute monsters speaking gibberish Maybe that's just what

you're looking for after a long

day of headbanging, making countless references to Brave, and bragging about all the interesting

eateries you

frequent. Maybe that's why Derek usually plays these titles.