Kim Possible: Global Gemini is the second Kim Possible game to come out for the Nintendo DS, and as far as our family is concerned, they just keep getting better.

We played Kimmunicator and liked it well enough, but Global Gemini gives you the chance to play as Ron, as well as Kim, doubling the gadgets available, and thus doubling the fun. This action game makes great use of the Nintendo DS features, and we have had a hard time putting it down long enough to write a review of it. Best of all, it is a game both my son and daughter like as much as I.

Kim Possible is a teenaged cheerleader who happens to double as a superhero when she's not in school. Well, now that I think of it, she sometimes misses school to be a superhero. But since being a superhero in a world in which super villains don't take time off for education, we can excuse her sometimes.

Her sidekicks through her adventures on the show are Ron Stoppable and his naked molerat Rufus. In the game, Ron has his own abilities, and you have to play him during some of the levels, but it all makes sense as you play through the story line.

As the story goes, Dr. Director, aka Gemini, has escaped from jail. He's on a mission to rebuild his evil empire by brainwashing the staff of Global Justice at stations around the world. The game takes Kim and Ron around the world as they chase after Gemini, always seeming to be one step behind and having to clean up his mess rather than catch him. We haven't finished the whole game yet, so we don't know for sure that we will catch him, but I can only assume somewhere along the way, the good guys win and catch up with Gemini. In the mean time, it is going to take everything you've got just to get through each of the levels.

The game starts out with a great tutorial that walks you through how to use the different gadgets with which Kim starts out, and it gives you a chance to practice your moves before things get serious. When Ron steps in and you're playing as him, there is a tutorial specific to Ron, because the moves and gadgets he has are very different.

For example, Kim is a pretty straightforward girl in a fight. She punches and kicks whenever possible, taking the enemy head on. Ron, on the other hand, tends to duck and try to not get hit while hitting the bad guy in the back of the leg to knock him down. At first, I didn't know that Ron would do much better in a fight if he ducked first and was real low to the ground before doing a swinging kick, but once I figured that out, combats with him were much easier.

The controls for the game are easy to get used to, and the game makes good use of the DS stylus without you having to juggle between the button controls and the stylus. You use the stylus to set up special gadgets, which are linked to specific buttons on the DS. The control pad is used for movement, and the A/B/X/Y buttons are used for such actions as jumping and using gadgets.

Graphically the game is what you'd expect from a game based on a cartoon. The graphics are clean with vibrant colors that don't interfere with being able to see what you need. Best of all, the things you are seeing on the screen match up perfectly with the "hook points" for the characters.

What I mean by that is that all too often in a game like this, you'll see somewhere that you think you can jump onto, and it will seem like you made the jump visually, but the invisible "line" between chasm and landing platform isn't where it seems to be. Or the character's body model isn't lined up with where they appear visually. This can be extremely frustrating when playing an adventure game in which the point is to jump over chasms, climb across thin ledges and otherwise perform successful athletic feats with your on-screen character. You can know just by looking at the screen if a jump is going to be a single jump or double jump or whether you'll need to use the grappling hook to swing across. There were a few places in the game that we had to attempt a jump multiple times before we'd get beyond the level, such as the area where Kim had to jump over laser beams. The first beam was easy; the second beam was a double beam that took some trial and error to figure out; and the third beam was a triple one that took us many tries before we got Kim over. This, to me, is a game that's well-balanced. It isn't too easy, but it isn't so hard as to drive the player crazy.

Another thing the developers did right is to give you a way to have multiple save files. Too many games are set up so that only one person can be playing at a time. With this game, you have three slots in which to save.

Of course, I must say that one of the best parts of any Kim Possible game is that the main character is a heroine rather than a hero. My daughter loves watching Kim Possible on TV, so this is one adventure game she's willing to play as often as her brother. Kim Possible is cool - at least, she is when you're an 8-year-old girl. And to be able to get further in the game than her older brother is even cooler.