I'd love to be able to write a review of this game, but I can't. I never got out of the tutorial section. You, dear reader, may say that's not enough to really know if the game is good or not. By that logic, if I offered you a bowl of Iron Chef Sakai's infamous Trout Ice Cream, you'd have to actually eat some of it instead of evaluating it solely on the featured ingredient.

It's not even that Death Jr. is a bad game; it's a cute, funny and visually appealing game with some fundamentally idiotic gameplay issues. These aren't major secrets that can be learned only by smacking a 100-level Secret Master of Game Design with a week-old pizza and going through his pockets; these are minor, petty things. If you can watch an episode of "30 Minute Meals" and learn that Rachel Ray is A) perky and B) likes saying "Yummo!" your powers of perception are sufficient to find these flaws.

To begin with, there is no way to skip the tutorial screens, and there are many pages of them. If you're going to make the handbook redundant, for Gaia's sake just leave it out and save a couple of trees. Not only do you need to page through the tutorial documentation over and over, many of the pages make sure you have plenty of time to absorb the contents presented before you can proceed.

Given that the game seems to take every opportunity to show off the tutorial screens, it would seem logical that said tutorial screens would be accurate with regards to the gameplay in question. Sadly, that is not in the order of things.

One of the actions critical to successful play involves switching from using the Death Jr. character to using a ghostly young lady named Pandora. Pandora can only be in use for a limited time, around 30 seconds per switch. One of her key actions is to collect multicolored soul balls from soul jars dropped by defeated enemies. She shoots these soul balls at various targets in order to trigger special events or to move Death Jr. across barriers he can't cross on his own.

The tutorial on this process indicates that the player needs to grab the soul ball with the stylus and drag it to Pandora. This does not work. If you try to gather souls this way and then move Pandora to the spot where she has to shoot her first target, her timer will usually run out, and you'll be back with Death Jr. Sometimes, the game waits to execute the last movement command you gave Pandora, resulting in Death Jr. leaping off a cliff and dying.

Welcome to the beginning of the tutorial, again. I took a minute to stretch, grab a beverage speed loader, and wonder how Rachel Ray was going to manage to feed herself for a whole day on $40 and perkiness.

I was stabbing Pandora over and over with my stylus while screaming obscenities about her parentage and personal hygiene when I made a discovery: You're supposed to double-tap the soul balls with the stylus, not tap-and-drag.

I apologized to my DS and asked Rachel to forgive me for blaspheming against her invincible perkiness, then started wading through the tutorial screens again. If Rachel can live on $40 a day and have enough left over for a strong drink, by gosh I could get through this tutorial!

I grabbed my soul balls, got Pandora into position, nailed the target to summon Death Jr. to my side, and headed straight for the sparkling patch of floor that would let me save the game. I saved twice, just to be sure, then forged ahead. Sure enough, Rachel was downing a big-ol' mojito. The only thing more charming than perky is perky and drunk.

Woops. Distracted by Rachel's perkiness, I had let a monster sneak up on Death Jr. and was now dead. No problem, I thought, for did I not just save?

No, I was back at the beginning of the freaking soul ball tutorial. I shut the game off, restarted the DS and loaded the saved game again. I was at the beginning of the soul ball tutorial.

What's the point of having a save-game spot if you go back to the beginning of the section no matter where you save? I contemplated the game chip for a few minutes while I savored my beverage and let it recharge my blood caffeine level. Finally, I asked myself, "What would Rachel Ray do?"

I stopped myself before I could run the game cartridge through a garlic press and sprinkle it into a sautй pan with a little EVOO and some medium-diced red onions. Tempting as it might sound, that's just not going to turn out "yummo" no matter how much butter and bacon you add.

There might be a great game in there, full of innovative ideas, involving puzzles and satisfying challenges waiting to be overcome ... and this might be a bowl of strawberry ice cream I'm holding.