Barbie Ocean Discovery

"...I've been playing for hours and Barbie still won't just run out of air....."

This game is your tipical Barbie game except with a twist. Get this: She goes into the Ocean and swims around! Yeah, really it's true. Aside from the it's just another collection of not-so-hot mini-games.

Game Play 3
There are no enemies. There are no obsticals. What then is there to do? Swim. And play mini-games. That's all. There's three areas and each area has 3 zones. Each zone has a mini game shaped like a balloon for you to play.
Add that up and you've got 9 differant mini-games to play. You have to beat
each one at least once to continue to the next area. You can replay the games and they get a little harder each time you beat them. You can get 3 differant charms form each game if you re-play them 3 times. Sounds exciting right? The charms don't do anything. You can look at them and that's all.

Some of the games are fun such as the ''pearl'' game where you catch falling pearls. Other games are to hard like the ''Bubble'' game. You have to throw colored bubbles at moving hoops of the same color and get 5 in a row. If
you get another color of bubble in a hoop it pops the bubbles you've already hoop'd and you have to start again. Okay, maybe it's not that hard but compared to the other games it's a nightmare!

The are 2 ''maze'' games that are kinda fun. One where you must move baby turtles through a 1 screen maze to get to their mother and another where you play as Dolphin and go through a large multi-screen maze.
There's also a memory game where you flip over shells to match fishes that is kinda fun. The most annoying game was one where you play musical notes by clicking on gems in the order they flash. It was anoying because of the
controls. I would always slip to the next gem and click by mistake and loose.

Graphics 3
Is Barbie suposed to be pink? Well in this game she is. I'm sure the game designer's thinking ''It's her diving suit so shut up'' but who whears a diving suit on their face? Barbie does, that's who. Over all the graphics
arer all right but nothing good looking. I think it's a little to pastel colored for my taste.

Sound 2
The effects and music are okay but nothing note worthy.

Story 1
No story. Barbie goes in to the Ocean to look for stuff. If you play till the end you'll get a little bit of story but I'm not gonna spoil that for you.

Re-Play Value 1
This game barely has play value. It'll last a couple hours at most.

Final Recomendation
This game is less annoying then other Barbie games, but compared to all games it is not realy worth playing. If you have a young child who wants to play a cute game, then get on the internet and order one of the Japanese
''Hello Kitty'' games. They rock and they're about 10X more fun and mentaly stimulating then any Barbie game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/12/03