Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on the Nintendo DS is a movie tie-in game that follows the adventure of Flint Lockwood as his ingenious machine of turning water into food goes haywire and threatens the town of Chewandswallow. Using more of his cleaver inventions, you have to clean up the town and shut off the machine before the chaos gets out of control.

What's Hot
Cloudy is a straight forward action game with some imaginative scenery and items. You interact with the game using the stylus as you make your way through ice cream covered streets, Jello laden forests and streets with spaghetti strewn about. Each level has a goal and at certain points in the level, you'll interact with the food in unique ways thanks to the DS and the touchpad input. It helps give Cloudy a distinct feel in the sea of other action games. There is even a point where you use the microphone when you come across chewing gum to create a bubble and float across a gap. Not unheard of features but in the context of a game centered around food, it feels as fresh as a produce aisle.



What's Not
The lack of variety and slow unraveling of using your gadgets in synchronization with each other make Cloudy a game that reminds you it is a movie tie-in game. When you stack up what went right with the game versus what went wrong, it puts a dark shadow on the fun parts of the game. With so many neat ideas with food encounters, it is sad to see them bankrupt the imagination of the concept by overusing them. There is a weapons upgrade system that attempts to breathe life into the limited gadget arsenal but that falls flat since the benefits are marginal at best. The levels are shockingly linear and don't allow for much movement off the track to explore different areas or find secrets.

Final Word
Cloudy is like a piece of moldy cheese. There still might be some good parts to it if the bad parts were cut away but it is easier just to get a new piece. For every good part of Cloudy, they were either mishandled or shadowed by a bad feature. Great for the kids to play, but don't get caught up thinking this will hold your attention as well.