Bargain Bin

Bargain/Bin is back and Brian and Phil have been out and about picking more "gems", for under a fiver, to review for your delectation.

Remember they're doing this so you don't have to take a chance with your valuables in these recession hit times.

Young children's games. They should be fun or educational and at least one of our choices missed the mark by a square mile. Still we mustn't grumble as we were happy to find at least one title that hit the mark.

Our remit is to review anything we can find for under a fiver anyway so we have to accept what we find and live with it.

Spongebob Squarepants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman

One of the nice things about writing Bargain/Bin is that no-one takes us seriously enough to mind us compromising our journalistic integrity by showing a little bias now and then. On that note I (Brian) will let it be known that I hate Spongebob Squarepants. The squeaky voices, lame jokes, that theme tune. Still, videogame adaptations are often cheaply made, with little in common to their inspirations. Oh look, it has the same theme tune...

It's a 3D platformer set in the town of the show with a bunch of inane tasks for you to attempt. It's a shame that the To Do list of your tasks is both vague and badly written, "Get onto to the Krusty Krab sign" for example. Prejudice and nitpicking aside, there is a perfectly playable game here.

Spongebob runs, jumps and collects things. He can also karate chop. This however is only in his initial costume and slowly you unlock more allowing you to undertake a variety of tasks, like catching colourful octopuses or hanging from hooks. Time has been taken to make sure Spongebob's animations are different for each costume - a satisfying and polished touch. Square pants provide protection and before long Phil was shouting, "There's Pants up there!" and gleefully double-jumping after them.

There's a nice variety in this game for young children to get their teeth into, we're not suggesting the box here, and most targets are achievable without parental assistance but still require some skill. Again boss fights and other events can be badly explained but if you take some time a helpful adult should be on hand to lead the way - something we definitely lacked.

OK it's not educational but neither was the cartoon but it's a fine game and even though Brian would prefer to have it set in Black Mesa this wouldn't make it very accessible to children.

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Barbie as The Island Princess

As a young girl Barbie is washed up on an island with a talking peacock, elephant and racoon. We're not told how she arrived there but given the happy bouncy nature of the game and graphics then it must have been a happy plane crash or boat wreck.

We entered with cast fishing, solidly trouncing the Racoon by over 400 points. So what have we learned? Talking Racoons can't fish well and girls will fish for gold, pearls and pretty things but nothing edible.

Next game, Crocodile Rescue and we learned you knock down fruit to feed the hungry crocodiles. Possibly at the moment of writing this some child in Africa, who played the game, is looking at mummy's shoes wondering why the bananas didn't help them. One of the throw away lines in the game is "Don't you eat fish?" Surely not, they're crocodiles.

No logic behind the tasks and challenge in the gameplay makes the experience pointless. New clothing options were unlocked along with new locations and new inane games which managed to get worse as we continued. In general we were beating our opponents by large scores and slow-mo bubble bouncing, drawing fake constellations in the night sky and then a fruit gathering game were not adding any entertainment.

After a while an inbred fop of a Prince appeared telling us we'd saved him. Well nothing else in the game explained what we were doing collecting island flowers. We gladly took his offer to take Barbie to civilisation but then realised that wasn't the end of the game and the talking animals were tagging along to. Still we could start a fairground attraction.

Loading times are extensive meaning that children will get bored; unforgivable considering the simplicity of the game. As fun as a bad maths textbook and educational as eating a sandwich.

Bin

Dora The Explorer: Dora saves The Mermaids

Anyone who has seen Dora before will know exactly what to expect here. An incredibly enthusiastic young girl and her wide-eyed animal friends wander the countryside solving problems with the help of their audience. Dora's transition into a PS2 platformer has changed very little, so it's business as usual for her as she sets off to find a magic crown to save some mermaids.

This is not a complicated game. The transition to 3D environments is nice and clear and easy to move around in. Little attention is needed as you can only really go the way the game wants you to. Therefore jaded journalists or little kids with the attention span of a monkey on a sugar high can never get lost.

Any puzzles and minigames are basic and effectively infallible as the quick time event button presses only actually do anything if you are pressing them at the right time to pass the test. If that sounds dull, well it was, but then this is a game aimed at pre-school kids and they will happily wander through this inoffensive environment with a smile on their face.

Characters from the cartoon abound so again there should be no disappointment that a child's favourite is missing and unlike Squarebob or the risible Barbie game there is some educational value to Dora. There's still the smattering of Spanish and some lessons about working together and cleaning your environment. For very young children there is also the magic helper feature where parents can control a red arrow to show the child what to do or Phil can show Brian how to bang the drums as he can't follow simple colour patterns.

Dora is classically tailored to its audience and well worth picking up if your child is a fan of the show.

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