Clearly designed with kids in mind, Bugdom 2 seems to have missed its mark.

Sure enough, it's cute as all heck, playing as a cuddly grasshopper in a ball cap roaming through a comparatively gargantuan suburban environments, indoors and out, where garden snakes are one-gulp goliaths and garden gnomes are towering giants (alive and nasty, in this case). You smash butterflies which burst into a puff of flowers and drop collectable items, like health. You talk to encouraging squirrels and helpful snails (each with a whole two lines of dialogue, repeated ad nausea) that help you on your way with great enthusiasm. However, playing the bauble gathering, mouse-rescuing adventure from three variants on a fixed 3rd-person perspective (where you follow your character around from behind), the game suffers from the genre's classic flaw in that you can rarely see--much less evade--any enemy sneaking up behind you or from the periphery. Turn around and you face the unseen in the face, except it's still behind the camera.

Basic keyboard controls for both character and camera make matter's worse, being neither exacting nor responsive. It'll help kids with their hand/eye coordination, perhaps, but then again, so would a typewriter and a blank piece of foolscap--without the aggravation. Fortunately, Bugdom 2 also contains an optional "Kiddie Mode" that removes all enemies and hazards and leaves you with a good game with Spartan yet clean and colorful graphics that's just about exploration through the tulips; where saving mice, solving simple puzzles and talking to squirrels is just plain charming and reward enough for, say, the preschoolers in the house.