Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck

Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck is about Chuck Rock Jr saving his father Chuck Rock from evil factory owner Brick Jagger (grown). Games with baby characters are usually annoying and this is no exception.

The graphics are very bright and colourful; it has a wonderful comic book and Saturday morning cartoon feel. Unfortunately, it suffers from bad design choices many 90s British platformers suffer from: the bad guys blend into the background and you often see them too late. On a level called Rose Grove there are green mosquitoes on a green background and there's loads of them. The scrolling is also a bit too slow in places. Then you have the worst tropes of platform games: a sewer level (we all love those), the annoying levels were the screen scroll vertically - this one has a tree were you have to escape the lava, bosses that take 20 hits.

As well as the nice graphics, credit also goes to Martin Iveson (AKA Atjazz) who composed an excellent score for this game. It's sort of jazzy, sort of tropical sounding. The music for the first level is up there with anything Sega has done in my opinion. It's far better than a mediocre game deserved.

I'm a fan of the first game and this is a good game, but it's not a must-play. It is very frustrating and has too many levels. The game is tough and it's tough from the start. It might be a little bit unfair to compare it to the Sonic games, but it's nowhere near in the same league. I even prefer Cool Spot and the first Chuck Rock. The graphics and sound elevate slightly out of the league of mediocrity, but that's it. I rate it 7/10 for the excellent music and animation; also nostalgia played a part in that decision.