Disney's Kim Possible - What's the Switch

The title comes from the Disney Channel TV movie of the same name, and that is the right place to start, because this game is a tie-in in the old sixth-generation sense. It takes a television property with a ready audience, borrows its plot, and builds a licensed action game around it. The premise is the one the film is known for: a scheme involving a mix-up of identities, with Kim and her sidekick Ron Stoppable caught in the middle of it.

I am confident about the broad shape of the thing, less so about the finer details, so I will stay with that. It is an action-adventure aimed at younger players, built from fighting, simple platforming and the gadgets the show made familiar. Kim's kicks and Ron's clumsy charm are the point, and the game leans on the cartoon's tone more than on any attempt at mechanical depth.

That approach was typical of the PS2 era's licensed economy. Publishers needed something on shelves while a show or film was current, and the budget rarely allowed for much polish. Games like this tended to be short, forgiving and tuned for children, and they often did one thing well: they sounded and looked enough like the source to satisfy a fan. The cel-shaded look suited cartoons far better than it suited most realistic games of the time, and that helped cover the hardware's limits.

Played now, it is a modest curiosity rather than a hidden gem. Repetition and thin combat are the usual costs of this kind of tie-in, and nothing suggests this one escaped them entirely. What it offers is a small time capsule of mid-2000s kids' television, made at the point when a teenage spy show could expect a console game to follow it out the door.