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> Results: Strawberry Shortcake: Summertime Adventure
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Thanks to the re-emergence of many popular cartoons from the 80s, young and old alike are familiar with Strawberry Shortcake and her pals in Strawberryland. This game possesses all the components for a variety packed, fun treat. Unfortunately, the actual game play is anything but sweet. Non-intuitive game goals, poor character animation, unintelligible power ups, confusing scoring, an impractical save mechanism, and non-growing berries contribute to this games demise.
It's time for the Strawberryland Bakeoff and Strawberry Shortcake is off on an adventure to locate items for herself and her friends as they prepare mouthwatering entries for the big contest. The overall goal of the game is to win a blue ribbon in the bakeoff. This game is divided into two modes of play; Adventure Mode and Garden Mode. Throughout the course of the game, Strawberry is either venturing throughout Stawberryland to collect items for her friend's bakeoff entries, or growing berries in her garden.  Adventure Play includes several distinct areas to explore including an apple orchard, mallow marsh, lollipop lane, blueberry patch, chocolate briar, graham gully, and a gumdrop mountain. Each area is replete with collection items including strawberries, blueberries, cocoa, sugar, and mallow tips. Delivering requested ingredients to friends or collecting strawberries located throughout her travels earns Strawberry growth enhancers for her garden or contributes to her overall numeric score. Strawberry gains points for items collected. Lost points occur when she collects yellow apples, skateboards into unavoidable gumdrops, touches a briar, is hit by squirrel hurled nuts, struck by falling, jumping, or rolling candies, rained on, etc, etcﾅI think you get the picture. The erratic scoring mechanism exhausted me. Let me also mention that the score went down just as often as it went up. While the graphics in this game are relatively crisp and undoubtedly very cute, there's only one word that describes the character animationﾅ.painful. Merely watching Strawberry's legs flop all over the place while jumping is tiring; what's WORSE is observing her collapse, crash test dummy-like, when falling or running into obstacles. Saving the game requires a password, which is generated upon demand. An example of a password is as follows: OO1K8b, sugar puff picture, n. Many passwords are case sensitive with a mixture of letters and pictures. Entering the password requires scrolling through all uppercase letters, all lowercase letters, and miniscule pictures. Actually, the word "scrolling" indicates continuous movement. Input of this game's password requires that the player push the directional pad every time he/she wants to progress to another letter. Many of the children that this game targets will be unable to handle the complexity of entering a password to resume the game (not to mention KEEPING the password somehow, somewhere so it can be recalled at a later time) Growing berries. Majesco's short for this game says, "Plant Strawberry, Blueberry and Gumberry seeds in your attempt to grow the best berry in Strawberryland and receive first place in the Strawberryland Bakeoff ." Note the word "attempt". Unless your hero moniker is "Super Berry", don't plan on growing anything in your garden. Erratic navigation, lack of directions, confusing icons, and limited growth enhancers turn growing berries into a parent's worst nightmare. I finally managed to grow ONE measly berry. The other three hundred (that's what it seemed like anyway) were rated 0, as in ZERO, and "bitter". 
Summertime Adventure contains many familiar characters including Orange Blossom, Angel Cake, Puck, Ginger Snap, Custard, and Pupcake. The scenery is absolutely delectable and any setting made of chocolate, sugar, and lollipops is sure to visually delight youngsters. Purchasing this game may initially be a success with your youngster due to the cute factor, but will only remain a favorite if your child is young enough to be content observing Strawberry Shortcake as she moves around. Summertime Adventure will not be able to be completed by the vast majority of players due to its flawed game design, and virtually all children will be deflated by the Garden Mode.
Certain game play is so flawed and difficult that it makes the game downright tedious. It is virtually impossible for Strawberry to skateboard around the obstacles in Gumdrop Alley, she loses more items in some sections than she gathers, and as previously mentionedﾅdon't even think about growing berries in the garden. Finally, progression in the game becomes impossible without growing berries. The "to do" and inventory lists, and the Strawberryland map, could offer an introduction to real life planning and organizational tools. The game's gardening and baking theme may, theoretically, provide an opportunity for youngsters to understand the components necessary for these activities. Inaccurate physical depictions in the game are bound to confuse child players. Strawberry can use a wooden barrel as a springboard for super high jumping, but cannot use a rubbery gumdrop for bouncing. As a result, much of the initial game is spent trying to use items in a way that one could expect due to real life physics, but to no avail. Scoring is frustrating and confusing for kids and adults alike, and serves very little purpose to the overall goal of the game. Reading is required for this game, but even the most proficient readers will be left confused as the vast majority of game play aspects remain undisclosed and unexplained to the bitter end. In closing, there is nothing "objectionable" in this game with regard to offensive material or actions. However, the game itself remains unplayable due to all of the factors mentioned in this article. This game could only be appreciated by someone who was so into Strawberry Shortcake as a figure that actual game play quality and completion cease to matter. Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Strawberry Shortcake: Summertime Adventure |
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