Barney's Hide and Seek

"Honestly, this game is not that bad"

Being entirely honest, I played this game with the intent of just bashing it entirely. However, after having played the game I feel this would be very unfair. I suspect most of the bad reviews of this game are because it is made for four to six year olds, not for people in their teens and twenties.

Barney's Hide & Seek stars the controversial children show star, Barney the big purple dinosaur. The concept of the game is straight forward, four children and Baby Bop will hide in the various levels. In addition, five items of theirs will be hidden as well. As the protagonist of the game, it is Barney’s job to find as many of these as possible in each of the levels. Being entirely honest, some of the toys are hidden quite well, though the kids are easy to find. At the end of each level Barney will announce how many objects of the ten you found and applaud your hard work.

The levels are what you would expect for this age range: farms, music land and forests. Most of the levels have a lot of things to do besides finding objects. For instances, there are occasionally trash cans with nearby trash. Even better, if you walk beyond this part of the screen and return to it, the trash will have returned! This can be done again and again and the trash will still be there, proving the valuable lesson that people are good at littering! There are also plenty of animals to hug and doors to open.

The controls of this game simplistic, as one might expect. The D-Pad will move Barney left and right. Every other button on the controller does the exact same thing. This thing varies depending on Barney's location, but it can be anything from blowing kisses to grabbing onto balloons to float upward or to reveal a hidden friend when he is close enough.

Unlike almost any other game, you do not have all that much control over Barney. If you do nothing when the level begins, he will roam around on his own and examine things telling you what they are. He will not find anything, but he will tell you where it is. So if you do not feel like playing you can just watch him find nothing and go on to the next level.

Also, being a rather non-violent game, Barney can not jump down from high cliffs; instead he must wait for something to carry him down. While this is time consuming, it does maintain a child friendly environment by not exposing them to the violence of falling and drowning. This lack of control does get annoying as all you can basically do is walk forward and backward while pressing the all purpose kiss buttons.

The sounds for this game are a bunch of tunes you probably learned in the first grade including: Yankee Doodle, Skip to my lieu, Twinkle Twinkle little star and Row Row Row your boat. They do not sound too bad, though they are just simplistic midis. The one point of the game which I must heavily criticize is the vocals of Barney. It sounds like the actor, probably is, but he says so few things over all and says them all over and over and over as you walk by everything. ''We can hug the ____'' ''We found a _____''. Since Barney does not ever hush up, you will hear these so many times you will want to pull your ears off.

The graphics are again very simple, but not altogether bad. Barney looks like the big fat dinosaur from television. Most of the objects the player is supposed to find stand out well enough, as do the other interactive objects. The biggest problem is the two backgrounds. One of which is close to Barney, the other way off in the distances. Not that they are drawn badly, they just seem to scroll wrong is all.

The replay value of the game is rather limited. The levels are all quite short and the placement of hiding objects become rather uninspired. In addition to limited replay value, the game is not all that long to begin with. If one runs through all of the levels collecting nothing, they will see the end credits in no time at all.

Numbers, give me numbers!

Music: 8/10
Sound: 2/10
Graphics: 7/10
Control: 4/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Replay Value: 1/10
Challenge: 5/10

Numerical Overall Average: 4.6/10 [5]

While the score may seem rather low, keep in mind I am twenty one years old and this game was severely below my level of challenge and entertainment. Scores would likely rise far higher as you reach the lower and lower ages, but they can not write reviews, so :P.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/13/04