With the wand you move the sphere to the tray on the vehicle and drop it in. You then go down to the plinth and use the wand to move the sphere onto it. This opens up the first act of the first world. As you travel around the town you will find that there are vehicle parts that you can bring to Mumbo’s garage to add to your parts repertoire. You will also find other series mainstays like Humba Wumba and Bottles in the town as well. Humba will give you new blueprints for vehicles that you can then take to Mumbo’s garage and build upon if you wish. As long as you have the parts available you can choose to switch your vehicles at any time during the game.

You can choose to do a tutorial on how to use Mumbo’s garage to build new vehicles or add to blueprints that Humba gives you. There are some nice videos available that show you how to build your vehicle. The world is pretty much your oyster when it comes to building the vehicles. You can put any number of modifications onto an already existing vehicle and save it under a new name or use one of Humba’s blueprints and go off on your own with it. Different types of vehicles will allow you to do finish your objectives and having a large stash of various vehicles will come in quite handy when you need speed, flight, power, etc.

With that out of the way, you enter the first game. There is an opening video on each world that is set up kind of like a television show where all the characters are shown with what role they play. Characters like Mumbo, Humba, Bottles and Klungo make appearances and play different characters in each world. Right off the bat you will find out that the game is once again full of Jiggys. On the overhead map you will see any Jiggys challenges available to you. You simply move toward that area and take on the challenge you are faced with. Oftentimes you will find yourself in a race or be given a task that you have to use different vehicles for. There will be land, water and air challenges, so be sure you have the parts to cover all of Humba’s blueprints if you don’t want to put your own special touch on them or build your own. Each challenge has three rewards tied to it. One is winning the race that pays off with the local currency (musical notes), one is getting a Jiggy and one is called the TT (Trophy Thomas, a new character) trophy. In order to get the Jiggy or TT trophy you must complete the game within at least the orange section at the top of the HUD (for Jiggy) or green (for TT).

As you go along receiving Jiggys, other acts and/or games begin to open as you drop the Jiggys into the machine in the center of town. You will find yourself in a variety of hilarious situations as you go through the worlds. One notable world along with some returning favorites is called Logobox 720. Each Rare game is seen in disc form spinning like it was in a system at various points around the world. Along with that, throughout the game they also dig quite a bit at all the games they have made in the past and even hint at ones in the future as L.O.G. talks about a new Killer Instinct, Battletoads and Jet Force Gemini on the horizon. Of course he is kidding…or is he?

There are a few areas of complaint: the first one is if you own a standard definition television the text suffers from Dead Rising syndrome where you can barely read it because it is so small. Rare is supposedly working on a fix for this after initially saying we’d have to live with it. The camera, as in all 3D platform games, can fight you sometimes and can frustrate you quite a bit when you have a sharp turning vehicle. Although there has been mention of framerate drops in various early reviews, it was not seen at all via a play through of the game, so maybe Rare fixed it before the final retail version came out. Another problem is the plentiful load screens where you see L.O.G. fly by and show you some text.

This game is not a load on the fly type of game and although the loading is relatively quick, the amount of it may be irritating. The last thing that sounded cool on paper, but not in execution is the multiplayer options. You have various game options like racing and shooting at each other, but with only eight characters at the most it can get quite boring. You can swap your vehicle creations though, so that might be enticing to many people out there simply because there is a variety of options you can choose to use.

Although platforming may not be the key gameplay mechanic here as it was in previous games, Rare has obviously grown with the current state of gaming and brought a breath of fresh air to the genre as a whole with the whole vehicle system. As said in the initial paragraph, at $40 you really can’t go wrong picking this game up. It is especially recommended for children. This game is certainly one of those that will fall under many people’s radar, but don’t let it drop under your's because at $40 it's a steal.