"Not the Original"

I grew up playing the original Oregon Trail in school, and had a lot of fun with it. It was one of the first video games that I got my parents to buy when we got a computer. The other day I was walking though Target, and I saw Oregon Trail in the discount bin for $10. Hey for 10 buck, I will walk down memory lane a little bit.

While the Original Oregon Trail was simple and fun, its sequel fell prey to the same problems as many sequels. They added a lot of new features, but they lost a lot of its charm.

Setup:

This is a little bit older of a game, so the minimum requirements are really not much of an issue. The problem is with the Maximum requirements. This is a game that was created for Windows 9x machines (95, 98, and Me), and I run XP on my computer. The install went though fine, but when ever I tried to run the game, it would lock up. The problem was easily corrected by opening up Task Manger (Then the game would load up fine), but hate having to do that every time I want to play the game.

Another thing I hate is when a game downloads programs that I don't need or want. While it is nice that I can get Quicktime 2.something from this disk if I need it, I don't want to download it. At least with Quicktime I could stop the install. When I first exited out of the program, I found that a really old AOL free trial was now on my computer. Joy.

Graphic/Sound:

Nothing great here, but I was not expecting much. All the people are live action, and the mouths look really bad when they talk. The voice acting is passable most of the time, but the accents are really bad (although kind of funny). At first the music is not too bad, and then you realize there are only about 6 songs and they are made up a 10 second tracks loop infinatly. It really gets on your nerves quick.

One thing that was notably missing from the graphics was river crossings. In the old game, it was fun and suspenseful to watch your wagon go over the river. Now if you succeed you just continue on your way, and if you fail they just show some still image. Thats just boring.

Interface/Menus

The menus in this game really make things harder then they need to be. There is not really a quick and easy way of see exactly how you are doing. You can check on the status of your party and supplies, but it is very clunky. Buying things is even worse. If you have the settings to show "All Items" you have to flip though page after page of items instead of just scrolling down the list. This makes setting out more of chore then an adventure.

Plus there are tons of new items that don't seem to serve much purpose. Yes it is kind of neat to have tons of different food choices, but I have not found that it makes much difference. Plus why in the world would you ever bring a Grandfather clock along with you? Pointless addition.

Gameplay:

Not really much going on here. You just decide pace, rations, and when to rest. One good thing is that there are multiple difficulty levels. The bad thing is that on the lowest one, you don't do anything. Normally you get to choose you routes, but on the Green Horn setting, you are just along for the ride.

Hunting:

Ah hunting. The reason must of us play Oregon Trail. I always loved going out with that stick guy and shooting stuff. Now hunting is done with a mouse click. There are Three different guns, but I don't really see the difference. The pistol may be a little more accurate, but is a lot less powerful then the rifle. There is also a shot gun that works better with birds, but birds are not worth wasting the shot on.

There seems to be some trick to hunting that I have not figured out yet. I click on the animal and only about a third of the time do I hit them. Maybe you have to lead a little, but it is just not as fun and the original.

Replay:

This game does have some pretty good replay. You can always try different settings or difficulties. Once you here the conversations though, they are worthless. The game takes a little too long though. Yes there are more stops, but they add not interest. You just keep clicking "continue" after you have been there once.

Deal Breaker:

All of those things are not all that bad, but this is what makes that game suck for me. I was hunting, fired one shot, and hit the bear I was aiming for. On my way back to the wagon, I got this message. "You got hit by a stray bullet and die". I was in perfect health, and had already spent a hour or so playing. My whole family was alive, yet my game was over. When I can do everything right and still lose is when I stop playing a game.

Over all the game is ok, but does not compare to the original (which I still play). Gameplay flaws made a potentially good game a waste of time.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/01/05