GamersInfo.net

It seems that lately a children's movie can't be made without a game coming out on at least one platform, be it PC, handheld or console, made based on it. Sadly most of these games are mediocre at best, relying too heavily on the storyline of the movie and offering little in the way of gameplay. I am incredibly grateful to Sega and Walden Media for completely turning this trend around and producing Charlotte's Web for the PC. Not only is the game itself fun, there's an element of being educational to it as well. And it is varied enough in gameplay to hold the interest of kids for long periods of time. A true hit in our house, that's for sure.

The game itself follows the basic storyline of the movie. You start out caring for Wilbur the pig, the runt of the litter. Wilbur needs you to feed him, decorate his pen, and generally get him cleaned up. As you do these things, Wilbur's happiness bar goes up. When he is happy enough, he's ready to leave his pen and go make friends. This is where the real fun starts. You have mini-missions to complete, such as helping Golly and Gussy find their goose eggs. You reach these goals by successfully playing mini-games. And each game you play also rewards you with a puzzle piece for your collection, so there are two reasons for playing these short games. The games themselves are a lot of fun. I will say that some of them are more challenging for my kindergarten than others, with at least one beyond what he can do on his own. For my third grader, though, the games are all pretty well just right. I'll explain each game briefly and why they work, or don't work, for the two different age groups.

Pig Out's description reads "Wilbur has gotten loose and Lurvy the farm hand is trying to catch him! Jump and guide Wilbur around obstacles to keep him from slowing down and grab all the snacks you can find to beat the round!" In this game you use the mouse to guide Wilbur back and forth, either collecting food, or dodging obstacles. Wilbur can also jump when you click on the mouse, letting you lead Lurvy right in to one of the obstacles that you dodged. This is a great game for both my kindergдrtner and my third-grader. The number of snacks Wilbur needs to collect is low enough compared to the number available over all that my younger child is always successful, and my older can go for bonuses in the time given. Lots of fun playing this game, but it isn't really educational in any way.

Bale Out, on the other hand, is a game of thinking ahead and problem solving. In this game Wilbur is stuck in the middle of the farmyard that is set up in maze form. He has to move hay bales around to reach the target and escape from the yard before his moves run out. This game is the one that my kindergдrtner really can't play by himself because it just takes more planning ahead than he can do at this point. First you have to plan out how Wilbur is going to push the bale along a straight up/down/left/right line in order to get from where it starts to where it needs to be. And as the levels progress, mud pits and other problems appear on the screen which make you have to consider how to work around them. Sometimes you have to put a bale on a trigger point before you can move a different bale to the target location. Other times you have to use a bale to keep Wilbur from slipping in the mud right passed where he needs to be. It takes planning and forethought, in other words. And, of course, it all has to be done in a set number of moves. To give you an idea of the difficulty level of some of the later puzzles, I have made mistakes that I had to start over. When I do finish a puzzle, though, I usually have about a third of the available moves left over, so running out of moves isn't as much of a problem as blocking yourself in is.

Word Web and Number Web are very similar games. In both you have letters (or numbers) falling from the top of the screen on leaves into the pile. You have to connect three or more with a web, forming a word if it's letters, or a sequence if it's numbers. This causes those leaves to disappear and the others to fall into place. This is another game that my kindergдrtner can't play alone, but he's very good at playing with some help. I can tell him which number to start with, for example, and he'll continue the sequence from there. Or I can tell him I see a word, such as “pig” and he'll look for the “p” with an “i” and “g” next to it to form the word. The only problem is that this game is somewhat timed due to the other falling leaves, but they fall slowly enough that we can keep up. And it's great for my third grader to have to look for such sequences. It really helps her to start looking for patterns and details when she's very used to looking at things as a whole.

Rat Pall Mall is like mini-golf with an egg and rat's tail. It's a rather cool game that is easy to play, hard to master. You line up Templeton the Rat in such a way that he hits an egg, aiming for a series of red lights to turn them green, and then into the hole to complete the round. The egg can only take 6 hits before crumbling, and running it in to rocks and such will cause it to break faster. You can, however, bank the egg off the walls to make a corner shot, without causing it to break up more. Both of my kids can play this game, though it took some time for my younger one to figure out that he couldn't just have Templeton swing really hard at the egg. Of course, Wilbur's response to the smashed egg always brought giggles anyway, so he didn't mind having to play the level again.

There are another 8 mini games and activities beyond these that really create a variety of things to do in the game. Charlotte's Search is about letter recognition and spelling words. And then there are all the County Fair games. These are just plain fun, the sorts of games you'd expect to play at a County Fair, like Bumper Cars, Duck Duck, and Hammer Slammer. If you start to get bored with all these, though my kids haven't after hours of play, you can go on to play Trivia and test your knowledge of Charlotte's Web the story, or put together one of the puzzles you've been collecting pieces for. Or if all that's too much like work, you can just play with the Stickerbook and create scenes using pre-designed backgrounds and a wide variety of tools.

I also have to say that the graphics for this game are just great. The cut scene graphics aren't totally “cleaned up” for the PC, but they are much better than what I'm used to seeing in many games. They seem to be a mixture of scenes right out of the movie and ones created just for the game, so I can't classify them all as great, but they are all decent or better. And the graphic during gameplay are clean and clutter free, and just right for a kid's game. Best of all the music is varied enough that it doesn't get annoying within the first 10 minutes of having to listen to it. And the music can be adjusted separately from the voice over levels. Why more developers can't take a hint and do this, I'll never know. But I digress. The voice-overs seem to come right from the movie, at least as we remember the voices sounding in the movie. Dominic Scott Key does the voices in the game, and does an outstanding job of capturing Wilbur's voice without it being “whiny” or high pitched. High marks go to both the audio and video departments as well as the gameplay department, in other words.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm going to say very clearly that if you have a young gamer between the ages of 4 and 8, you really should have Charlotte's Web for the PC. This game is easily one of the most played PC games installed on the “kid's computer”. I can use time playing Charlotte's Web as a motivator for everything from getting homework done, to having a clean room. To me, that's reason enough to buy this game.