Andy's Picks for Computer games for Children I asked my cousin Andy to name some computer games for small kids and he had this very helpful set of reviews:
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When we were looking for games, Kyle picked up a map editor for Quake. He asked me about the game and I told him "It helps you design levels for a game called Quake". He looked at the pictures and said "I think I'd like to play Quake daddy." My reply was "I have no doubt you would kyle.. No doubt at all." Actually, we picked up a "3 pack" of blues clues games. I put 3 pack in quotes because I think that's just a marketing gimmick. I bet all 3 CDs could fit onto one CD. However, the blues clues games seem to be consistently good. Easy to use, fun, and interact with the kids a bit better than some. Note that these are the news ones without Steve. I haven't tried these. For example, in some games, when the kids make a mistake, they just have one phrase like "You suck, try again.". In blue clues, they vary the incorrect statement which is nice. By the way, above I said they were easy to use. That doesn't mean lame and boring. I mean the interface is well designed. For example, Kyle has figured out how to use most of the commands in Age of Empires. There are some "kids" games in which I have trouble figuring out what keys to push let alone trying to teach Kyle.
I also would like to recommend the "I Spy" games. They are like the I Spy books where you have to find shapes and object hidden in different scenes. The best one is the I Spy Spooky mansion game. http://www.scholastic.com/ispy/cdroms/spookymansion.htm Kyle also liked the pirate treasure one. http://www.scholastic.com/ispy/cdroms/download_treasure.htm The games sound boring. Just point and click on things. but, I have to say, they're addictive. The scenes are neat and it's fun to see how they do plays on words sometimes. (like find "2 feet"... One foot print and one 12 inch ruler). Sometimes they can be tricky like using 12 inches to refer to a foot, but most of the time Kyle could understand the clues. Also, I *think* at least one of the I SPY games asked for the kids age which causes the clues to be more age appropriate. The Spooky Mansion game has a plot too. You get stuck in a "spooky mansion" and have to find puzzle pieces to read the map on how to construct the "Get out ghost." You get puzzle pieces by solving some of the I SPY games. After finding various pieces, you can go and make different ghosts in this lab. They aren't scary ghosts. If your kids like spirited away, they've seen scarier things than this game. The ghost and spookiness in the game are more cute than scary.
Here are also some games that have sucked.
Unfortunately most Lego games have sucked in a big way. This is a real shame. In fact one he has sucks in so many ways it amazing. The best thing about it is the opening video. Then, it fails in so many ways. The only thing "Lego" about the game is the characters are animals made out of Legos. Hell, in this definition, Doom would have been a Lego game if the monsters were built out of Legos... Here's an example of why it's bad. One segment which is supposed to help them learn how to count. It consists of a barn theme with Lego chickens wandering around. Your goal is to grab the chickens and put them on numbered posts. First off, they don't look like chickens. Secondly it sort of looks like you're either impaling the chickens or giving them some sort of anal probe when you jam them on the posts. Also, if you don't get them centered on the post perfectly, they fall off. Does that mean the kid grabbed the wrong chicken? Who knows? All the feedback they get is a cluck-cluck. Finally, when you place the last chicken on the post, they all hop off. You have no idea if you did it right or not. They're nothing to show the kids they won. There's also sort of pattern matching game with shows numbers in some abstract painting and the kids have to rearrange it to get the right number. It's an insane game. The game feels as if Lego hired some child psychologist to design a game and they based it on some thesis project instead of thinking about the actual game play or why it's called "Lego" anything. The game sucks.
We get a lot of games from the library. That's sometimes a hoot. They sometimes are late 80's games that sometimes require all detective work to get to actually run. Often they throw cryptic error messages that resolve out to the fact that the game can't handle more than 256 colors and just freaks instead of popping up a dialog that says "Please set your card to 256 colors."
There's also this game called Starship Titanic which I picked up for $2.99. The guy who wrote Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was involved with it. It is a complete mess. It's a puzzle game where you have to solve a mystery involving this wacky starship. Kyle likes to play it because visually it looks neat and there are robot. The game play is horrible though. First off, the robot's speech doesn't always match up with their mouth movements. Like a bad Japanese movie. Plus, you have to think like Douglas Adams just figure anything out. There's this one type of robot that sits in the corner of various rooms. You select a designation and he will suck up an object and it will arrive at the designation you selected. There's a problem though. The system is jammed up. So how to you unjam it? Well you attack a parrot, get a feather and tickle the nose of the master suck-o-bot of course....... The games starts out with you having to type in responses to about 50 questions about the kind of room you want. They questions are multiple choice and you have to type in words like "despotic", "bugle" "ensuite" etc. If you mistype, you have to retype. This often is hard with a 4 year old on you lap. And guess what. The answers you give don't mean a thing. The reception-bot laughs at your answers and says "Well you certainly won't like the room we gave you then...." Oh har har har.. very funny. Thanks for wasting my time. It's a game sort of like Myst and Riven but really annoying.
Kyle likes to play Myst and Riven with me. But, they take a while and they are over his head right now. I picked up an unopened copy of Myst at a garage sale for $1. :-)
He also likes the MAME games I've downloaded. MAME in case you don't know is an emulator for arcade games. He likes to play all the early 80s games we used to play. "
I would like to have him as a game reviewer in our local paper.
10:28:43 AM 
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