Where it’s easy to lose focus is adapting to the control scheme. On one hand there’s nothing at all controversial here, just the standard up/ down/ left/ right and buttons to jump or trigger special abilities. The catch is that moving around feels slow and reaction times are muddy. Comparing
JUJU to a more mature Action/Platformer like
Dust: An Elysian Tale would leave
JUJU in the dust, but the focus here isn’t on lightning-quick action or smart enemies. Enemies on the whole are pretty simple (read "dumb") and move in assigned patterns. Your job is just to avoid or jump on them, and you’ll end up with a host of helpful abilities, if not a helpful friend. Not that we can completely forgive what amounts to poor controls, but once you start exploring
JUJU and get used to the controls, you’ll mostly forget them. At least they’re consistently muddy, as opposed to unpredictably glitchy.
We love our Xbox 360 and we love platforming games, especially those made with a family audience in mind. There are a few titles out there like Rayman that have set a high bar for quality, but not enough to make it easy for parents looking for a well-designed game for kids on this console. JUJU has its faults, but they’re limited to one specific area, and are easily outweighed by the fun kids will have saving the world in the form of a cute, magical panda.