There are two large peices of hubub surrounding this game. First of all, it's one of only a couple with an actual title screen beyond the one on which you select the number of players. Then, apparently, there was an Active-sponsored contest revolving around this game (complete its five stages and send in a photo for a chance to reap in winnings totaling $104,000, that's 52 * 1000 * 2 for the mathmematically retarded). I have a feeling the contest never took place for a number of reasons. First off, Ooze seems to stop working before you can finish the third level according to my sources. There's also a lack of interest (obvious jokes arise here about Action 52 being so shitty it'd take at least triple that to be anything close to playing through five stages of this). Then there's the fact reliability isn't the first word that comes to mind when discussing Active Enterprises, a fact anybody who has glaced at tsr's Active feature can attest. Although my copy of Action 52 makes no mention of the contest, believeable sources tell me it did in fact exist.

With all this commotion abounding about Ooze, one might expect comparable treatment to come from the manual. This is not the case. Ooze is given the shortest manual description of any Action 52 game: Avoid the green ooze. I guess it's okay to step into the various bottomless pits that abound and there's no need to avoid the blue ooze. Anywho, the game is the first of several platformers you'll be seeing with Action 52. There are platforms galore here, but don't even thinking about stepping on them - most are unreachable and occupied by cute little green shits out to get you. The jumping scheme is kind of like the opposite of that you've seen in a Belmont do: whereas in various Castlevanias, jumping was all about momentum and you couldn't change the direction of your leaps mid-air, your character in Ooze won't get off the ground unless he's at a complete stop and all movement must be done in the air. I bet the programmers of this game must have thought this a nice little innovation because it's used in virtually all of Action 52's platformers.