DS Review: Animal World: Big Cats

I know that I've made similar comparisons before to the oldschool MECC educational computer games with certain DS titles, but that would be insinuating that the game is good. Who remembers the old cheap knockoff titles that were more or less nothing more than an animated textbook, and therefore not very fun? Yeah... That's pretty much what you're getting here. Which is disappointing.

90% of this game will be spent reading factual information about big cats, their habitats, and the way they live. (Just like when you were in elementary school earth science class.) There's quite a few lovely photos to accompany this information, but facts are facts....and as such, all you're doing here is memorizing facts. Every so many 'pages' that you read, you'll be challenged to a sudden pop quiz. Oh, joy! Make this even more like school! (Way to rope in some of that good ol' fashioned test anxiety.) You don't really earn much of anything for getting the answers right, except maybe a pat on the back...from yourself. There's a couple of other mini games as well, if you'd call them that...a slider puzzle, a 'guess this animal' picture from a snippet of a photograph, and a race to see which big cat is the quickest... That's about it. Literally.

The graphics in this game are also a throwback to the old days of computer gaming; the sort of stuff you'd see on the old Macintosh computers in the computer lab where you'd typically play nothing above the ranks of Kid Pix, The Treehouse, and Word Munchers. Given the times... this just adds to how low budget and cheaply made this game must be to look like that. It also reminds me a tiny bit of those old "Really Wild Animals" videos that National Geographic put out in the late 80's/early 90's. ...Except without Dudley Moore as the awesome talking globe. And less fun.

If you're getting this through a rom for your kids to play, knock yourself out, but I can't think of any legitimate reason why anyone in their right mind would pay good cash money for this title. Rating it a 2 out of 10 jaguar cubs.