licenced games, platformers especially, have far worse a rep than they deserve, while many are far lower budget and some really pasionless boring titles exist, a lot of them can be great games even devoid of their licences that i think get judged too harshly for what they're attached to and stuart little 2 is one of these, not so much maligned as just forgotten and swept aside when it really should be held up amonst the more fun 3D platformers of its era. it's cute and fun and thats really all it needs to be i think, it's not as ambitious as some other games of its era but i think it still does a lot of cool things that punch above its weight class, the game has an amazing sense of scale for one, the whole game is from a mouse's POV and all of the levels are from his level, sofas are the size of buildings and sinks are basically swimming pools and this makes the the levels seem huge and you can get some really nice views from the higher up areas in places like the kitchen or the bedrooms and it's really cool, though when you are this far away the textures can have some jaguar-esque vibes (think club drive) though i kind of like how that can look so i don't think its really a problem. the POV just makes all the levels cool too, it's so fun to explore and it just has a real sense of creativity and colour to it even in its worst levels (the garbage barge and the sewer are low points but even these levels are really fun) its still good, i just love these kinds of levels and this game has some of the best of them, though do know going in that most enemies are bugs so if you have a fear of bugs or spikders, do be aware, the spiders terrified me!

it plays super well too, it's a little basic, just a tail whip, a jump (that has kind of a weird arc to it, once you hit your double jump your momentum just stops, so hit the max distance before doing that, knowing this will make the game a lot easier) and a throw and you have some actions like climbing marked surfaces and a ledge grab but they all work and they get good use out of everything and i don't think it needs much more considering the very short length of the game, being 2 hours for a 100% run because you really only have 6 levels and a final boss, combat also just isn't a thing it does a lot so having it be basic is totally fine, you can just avoid most enemies if you really want to. the levels are fun to explore with the kit you have, lots of little areas to explore, you have 6 rings per level to find plus 80 buiscuits and some other things like a film board (to unlock clips from the movie) and some blocks which unlock a 6th and final ring, it's a collectathon which i think are the most fun type of 3D platformer and it's done well i think, levels are big but not too big and things are always easy enough to spot and get to, there were a few small areas with issues like a double line jump in the bathroom level but the difficulty level is low here, which i'm glad for. the level's are structured well too, you basically just have a collection of several rooms hat connect to each other via doorways and vents rather than one big room so you will finish each area quick and you won't miss much, though it does get predictable near the end, the last level has some neat verticality though, it feels closer to a large level while still keeping to the small segmented areas

it also has minigames, a little like spyro 3 in that way, you have some boat races, car races, some really fun plane segments and a skateboard and shooting segment that are both surprisingly hard, but all of these are actually fun to do and the plane one even looks really nice i think in that atari jaguar sense i mentioned earlier, very flat polygons make for a really cool viewpoint in the second plane level on the barge. the game does have a lot of variety for the run time, basically. it's a fun time overall, cutsey and just nice, sure its not original but i think if you're coming to play PS1 licenced platformers i dont think that'll bother you much. the music is fun as well, it's very "kids game" music but its all really catchy, i played through a chunk of this when i first started playing games as a teen because i found it in a thrift store shortly after i got my ps3 and the tutorial song has been stuck in my head ever since, some tracks are a little weird though, the park theme sounds almost deserty at times and the back-allies sounds like haunted house music, they don't really fit the game at all, like they're repurposed from another game somehow, it's weird. the story isn't much though, just some movie clips and a basic premise, go watch the movie if you really want to know and i would reccomend you to because the movie is fun! play the game the same night for a fun double feature, it'll still be shorter than a lot of other platformers

overall it was honestly even better than i remembered it, it's cute and charming and a lot better than anyone gives it credit for, it's cheap too, you can easily get a great night out of this and the movie for under 10 no problem and i think you should, it's got a lot to love if you enjoy 3D platformers at all. it'd have a sequel followup a few years later based on the third movie by many of the same people, i havent played it but i'll make sure to soon, i have to see if it stacks up as well as this did, the devs have also made a ton of other games that i actually really love, like the cat in the hat (which is a klanoa clone, weirdly), trasure planet for ps1 and the invizimals spinoff: the lost kingdom, they make great games and you should check out all of these, as far as licenced platformer devs go, magenta were one of the best.