Parents' Guide to Mevo and the Grooveriders

If Super Mario married a guitar god from Rock Band, their offspring might resemble something like MEVO AND THE GROOVERIDERS, a quirky side-scrolling rhythm puzzler for the PC. The game is entertaining and challenging, and what it lacks in the originality department it makes up for in sheer fun. Music is good and silence is bad -- this is what you need to know going into this game -- as our hapless alien critter must reunite his band, the Grooveriders, and bring funk back to save the universe.

Players must control Mevo through increasingly psychedelic worlds, by running, jumping, swimming and flying from the left side of the screen to the right. Much like console games like the Rock Band and Guitar Hero series, the core game-play element here is to tap the correct button on your keyboard at the right time. While navigating through these five worlds -- Ocean, Jungle, Desert, Space and Wormhole -- players will be instructed to tap the left or right Shift button (or Spacebar and Enter) just as Mevo comes across it. Sometimes you'll need to tap and hold the button for a predetermined amount of time (such as down the curved stem of a giant flower in the second world) or both keys at the same time or alternate between them quickly ("freestyle").