It's been great to see more games for the very young (and the very young at heart) coming to the Xbox. Indoctrinating our children with a love for games and gaming should be near the top of every parent’s priority list. If the game happens to be Barbie™ Horse Adventures™: Wild Horse Rescue™, which teaches problem-solving and social interaction skills, bonus!
As one of the games designed primarily for preteen and younger girls, Barbie Horse Adventures shows that Vivendi Universal certainly knows its audience. The game is one part dress-up and two parts adventure with a solid helping of petting pretty ponies. It’s everything a young girl might hope for!
It's all about trust.
The setup is simple and direct. No extra-long movies to sit through, holding the kids still before gameplay kicks off. Barbie and friends (Christie and Teresa) roll up to Mrs. Hepburn’s mountain ranch in Barbie’s jeep. The girls are lively and happy—everything you would expect from Barbie’s crowd. But in the storm the night before, the horses panicked and bolted from safety, scattering over the hills and dales that surround the ranch. Can Barbie help? Well, can she?
Very likely, but, in good Barbie fashion, she needs just the right look. Enter the extremely detailed “dress-up” part of the game. As most girls can tell you, how you look can be just as important as getting the job done. Barbie has footwear, shirts, and pants to put together a good coordinating set. Glasses, jewelry, hats … it’s important to accessorize for a warm, sunny day of riding and good deeds. And, there are several pieces of fashion to unlock. Ready to go? Not quite. Blossom (the only horse left in the stables) can have her mane trimmed, braided, or pleated. She needs a saddle and reigns, and you can even choose her coloring.
Barbie to the rescue!
When gameplay begins, Mrs. Hepburn takes the player through a very simple tutorial (if needed) on the basics of mounting, riding, and soothing the horse. In fact, the friendship meter is front and center to show a young lady just how much her horse “trusts” her. The more trust, the better the horse performs.
The same kind of positive reinforcement is used after Barbie finds a lost foal. Comfort the animal, gain its trust, and lead it to safety. Mrs. Hepburn will come by to pick it up while you ride on to more adventures, which might include avoiding a prickly porcupine, making friends with another animal, or learning advanced moves like jumping over shrubs and ducking half-fallen trees. River valleys and snow-drifted mountains are waiting to be explored. You must find keys to unlock levels, and there are plenty of costume chests in which Barbie just might find a new outfit … or three.
Full speed ahead!
Of course, Barbie rarely goes anywhere without her friends, and Horse Adventures allows for ride-along levels as well as a complete set of minigame challenges. Split-screen viewing allows for horse racing, a coin roundup, and a lasso challenge, where the first player to gently rope in three horses wins the match. There is also Seagull Beach, with an interesting “Chase the Birds” game, in which each player tries to scare a flock of seagulls to the other player’s side of a fence.
All in all, Vivendi has done a great job—putting an emphasis on teamwork as well as personal achievement, teaching younger players good problem-solving skills, and reinforcing the value of kindness toward animals. And, if it teaches girls the value of a good video game, how can that be bad?
