Adventures with Barbie Ocean Discovery
Reviewed by Anise Hollingshead
Published by Mattel Media

Age Group: Age 4 to 8 Type: Puzzles/Memory Price: $ 34.95

PC version requires:
486-66, 8 M RAM 20 M drive space, CD-ROMx 2 - MMX enabled but not required.

Mac version requires:
Not available.

Description:

Adventures with Barbie Ocean Discovery is the first in Mattel Media's adventure series. Barbie is a marine biologist who is looking for hidden treasure to help save the marine habitat. To find the treasure, Barbie swims through the coral reef in her search. She must find clues along the way to help her in her task.

This is actually a good idea for a game. Barbie swims beautifully, and the graphics are breathtaking. The only problem is, the game is too short, and realistically will not be replayed. The activities that the player encounters in the search are too few and pretty much standard fare: a puzzle, matching sound sequences, etc. The only game that is different is a game where you have to catch 5 bubbles of the same color. But, this is made difficult by the fact if you catch a different color, you have to start all over again catching bubbles. The adventure itself is enjoyable and challenging, with changing and every wonderful scenery; it's just too short. This is a problem that all adventure games face, with children, the solution is usually to insert many fun games and/or randomize the objects in the game. Humongous Entertainment does a good job solving the problem, maybe next time Mattel will have solved it also.

Features:

• Beautiful graphics
• Adventure to solve
• Barbie!

Technical Aspects:

The game installed easily, and ran well with my P100, 32 Ram. There was no choppiness or hesitation in the play. We did have some confusion with the directional cursors, though, in a couple of places where there was a way in, but no cursor to show you there was a way. Each time, we just happened to blunder in by accident.

Report and Conclusions:

This game was fun, just not long enough. I do have a question for Mattel Media , though, why does Barbie breath water? She has an airtank, but no mask. Just wondering! Maybe the next installment in the Barbie adventure series will have more thought taken with its longevity and replayability.

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