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“When the evil Underminer rises to the surface with a sinister plan to rule the world, it’s up to Mr. Incredible and his super cool pal Frozone to save the day. While Mrs. Incredible, Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack take care of things topside, Mr. Incredible and Frozone race underground to put a stop to the Underminer’s dastardly plans and bury the diabolitical baddie once and for all!” I thought I was beginning to get a handle on the DS and its controls. The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer has convinced me otherwise.

Before we get into that, a quick background. The Incredibles are a family of super heroes, first seen in a Pixar/Disney movie. In the movie they had to learn to work together to foil the evil Syndrome’s plot to take over the world. In Underminer, they have to foil the evil Underminer’s plot to take over the world. And that’s pretty much all you need to know.

What’s Neat

The graphics in the game are great — you really get a strong feel for playing Mr. Incredible and Frozone. When you’re not playing multiplayer, you can quickly switch between Mr. Incredible and Frozone (although there’s never any explanation about where each one goes when the other one appears).

Yep, Frozone. In many ways, he’s more interesting to play than Mr. Incredible. The things he can do with ice will send a chill up your back. (Sorry, obligatory “cool” joke. I won’t do it again.) Mr. Incredible can pound and punch and kick to beat the band … but those are all fairly standard powers in the realm of the console game. Frozone can literally glide on air, and that’s neat.

The music and sound effects are decent, but there’s a narrow line between pulse-pounding tunes that fire your gameplay and repetitious tunes that start to really annoy you. (I suspect it depends a lot on how well the game is going for you.)

What’s Not

Remember that bit about playing Mr. Incredible and Frozone? What’s missing from this picture? Here’s a clue — they’re quick, invisible and reeaally stretchy. If I get an Incredibles product, I want to play the Incredibles, not just Mr. Incredible. Frozone is neat, but what I like most about the Incredibles are their varied abilities, the way they interact, both as a team and as a family, and the way they learned to work together. There’s not a bit of that in Underminer.

That made the game not very interesting. (Note that my usual co-authors aren’t present — they lost interest after just a few minutes.) Lots of robots and other barriers to pulverize, lots of hops, skips and jumps, but not much depth. I never had a sense that I was accomplishing anything more than a labored step to the next nearly-identical encounter or puzzle.

What made it unplayable were the controls. Getting through the game requires a lot of delicate control work. For example, there are times that you have to aim up to freeze a narrow platform (apparently, freezing them makes them less slippery), jump up to it, freeze the next one, jump up again … about four times in a row. And on the fourth platform, you have to turn around for one final freeze and jump. But I found it impossible to turn around without taking a step forward. Did I mention that the platforms are narrow? I’m a fairly calm kinda guy, and it takes a lot to tempt me to flip out, but I came close to throwing the game up against the wall after a frustrating series of repeated missteps. To add insult to injury, a platform doesn’t stay frozen for more than a few seconds — long enough to take your next action, if you already know what to do, but not long enough to still be frozen after you’ve fallen off the fourth platform and have to run the whole sequence again.

Similarly, Frozone’s ice weapon has to be aimed, but only with the direction pad. Again, it’s real hard to aim with this pad. I know it works, because I can usually get it to fire in the direction I want it to … eventually. However, it might take five or six shots to get it to go where I need it to go, and by that time, the platform I’m standing on has probably melted and I’m slipping back to the ground to start over again. And even when I’m not standing on a precarious platform, it’s frustrating to tap the same place on the D-pad several times in a row (as far as I can tell), only to see my shots alternate between hitting too high and too low.

What’s It Got for the DS?

Since this is a DS game, what about the DS controls and engine? Unfortunately, they don’t seem to add much to the game. The controls offer an alternative for most of the button controls, but not for the D-pad — you’re stuck with the D-pad for jumps, turns and aiming, which are the parts that drove me crazy. The 3D graphics are nice — exceptionally sweet at times — but that plus is offset by the way that the graphics sometimes so tightly constrain your view that you can only see what’s coming at you when it’s within a few feet of you. It’s hard to react, much less switch to a better hero, in time to overcome attacks in that context.

In a previous life, I was a fencer, competing at a fairly high level, so I know a thing or two about delicate, finger-tip controls. Obviously, it’s possible to master Underminer. Just as obviously, it’s not possible for a large percentage of the American public. My question is whether it’s possible for many people who would find this game interesting in the first place. If not, then who is Underminer designed for?