The story is workable and a little unique. You start out on a plane that crashes in the jungle. With you on the plane is another adventurer, Harry's daughter, and a few assorted other characters. Everyone manages to parachute off the plane before it crashes except for you, but you survive, and set out to find the missing people. In the process, you discover your arch nemesis is there as well, looking for some sort of treasure or something. You also come across a talking Jaguar, a native princess who is really from the past, and get turned into a penguin, scorpion, and monkey. Not the most sophisticated of plots, but comical and a good vehicle for the game nonetheless.

Along the way, you get some nice toys to help you in your adventure, including a slingshot, a canteen (to hold the magical life giving water found there), a torch, and even dynamite. Nothing says fun like tossing dynamite around in the jungle. It took some time to get used to how to get around my inventory, but once I did, I found all these items to useful. In fact, you will need to find all the items in the game in order to complete it, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled.

The controls are simple enough to learn. I do not have the luxury of a game pad on my computer, so I used the keyboard, but it was still very easy to use. You use the arrow keys to move, and the num pad for everything else such as jumping, attacking, or using an item. These were some of the better controls using the keyboard that I've run into, so that was nice. It's always bugsged me to play a game that is very playable with a game pad, yet near impossible to play with a keyboard, unless you were blessed with an extra hand or two.

I hadn't played a Pitfall game since the days of the old 2600, so today's graphics as an improvement is academic. In all honesty however, the graphics I found to be quite good. The game is done in a very cartoon-ish style, with characters having exaggerated features such as extra large hands and heads. It looks great, with seamless backgrounds, good animation and bright colors. The idea here wasn't photo-realism, but a fun adventure, and that was achieved in spades. From the lush greens of the jungle, to the white snowy mountains, to the volcanoes and firebombed villages, the look of this game is excellent.

The voice talent again, was very good. Not necessarily ground breaking, but very solid. Again, cartoony in nature, so things are over exaggerated and done over the top, but for this game, that works. The background sounds and sounds effects are also very solid, adding to the depth of the game. The music was also very fun. I personally liked the music in the native villages, just always made me smile and dance (not a pretty sight, me dancing, but I couldn't help it.)

One thing I found a little annoying however, were the cut scenes. They all felt rushed, with lines of dialogue overlapping and the animation didn't seem to keep up very well. Usually, I was able to discern what the scene was without too much trouble, but it was still annoying to have the scenes look and sound off.

I really only have one complaint with this game: the camera. Pitfall is essentially a platformer. Much of the game play is jumping from point A to point B, or swinging on vines in order to solve puzzles or get across an area of the game. So, to say that the camera made this difficult would be an understatement. The camera follows you around, but, when you change direction, the camera does not stay at your back (i.e. a "chase" camera) but instead, the camera will stay relatively fixed, and your controls will re-orient themselves. This can be a pain in the tukus when you are trying to climb a giant tree, jumping from one spot to another going around the tree like stairs. If you don't stop at each point and move the camera back to its position behind you, most likely you won't make the next jump accurately. This caused me much frustration, and I nearly gave up on the game at one point. I was able to overcome it however, and really, except for that one flaw, this game is great. It's just that the one flaw is glaring, and can take away from the fun of the game, replacing it with a desire to throw the game out the window at times.

If it weren't for the downfall of the camera, there wouldn't be much wrong with this game. And in reality, there isn't much wrong with it, but what is wrong, is major and being that this game is a platformer, should not be an issue. Simply making the camera a "chase" camera would have solved this problem. I do still recommend it. Who knows, maybe you won't have the issues with the camera I did.