Barbie island princess wii game review

Have you played Barbie as The Island Princess? Barbie as The Island Princess. Barbie as The Island Princess Review. Get stuck on an island with everyone's favorite blonde. By Meghan Sullivan Updated: 13 May am. Why is it that adults hate Barbie? Sure, she's of suspicious proportion, has a questionable IQ and is unaccountably rich despite doing nothing more than beaming out a vacuous smile, but so is Paris Hilton.

And unlike said heiress, Barbie has had a much more impressive career. She's been a doctor, a secret agent, an explorer, a super model, a rock star, a gymnast, a detective, and heir to the throne of several mythical kingdoms. In Activision's Barbie as The Island Princess , her latest regal domain lies in the South Seas on a deserted island, where she has been living since she was shipwrecked as a little girl. Doolittle who has the ability to converse with animals.

After she saves a royal explorer named Prince Antonio from being eaten by crocodiles, she decides to follow him back to civilization in order to find her family and make some new friends. The game is based on the DVD of the same name, which means that if you haven't seen the movie you're going to have a hard time understanding why Barbie is constantly competing against a flamboyant peacock or hugging what appears to be a perfect stranger while singing a lullaby.

It's not essential that you see the movie before you play the game, but it helps explain why random characters seem to pop up out of nowhere. The game is divided up into five locations from the film, each featuring a number of mini-games. In each of these challenges you must earn points in order to acquire island roses.

These roses are important because you can't travel on to the next location without them. Once you aquire enough flowers you'll be able to play new mini-games and unlock extra features, such as scenes from the movie and accessories that you can bedeck Barbie in when using the Dressing Room feature which lets you dress Barbie in different outfits and nothing else.

Barbie as The Island Princess is pretty simple, which might be why very little money was thrown the developer's way in order to make it. Everything from graphics to gameplay is of rather poor quality. Stellar effects aren't going to matter much to a five year-old, but the controls are a serious problem. The game uses the arrow keys, the space key and the return key in a clumsy variety of combinations that make no sense.

And it doesn't help that the controls are unintuitive. It's just different than what you'd expect. And what you'd expect does end up happening in games like the one seen above and to the left, which is a tracing game that tasks you to draw the outline of a shape on the touch screen using the stylus.

You'll also get a stargazing "draw the constellation" mini-game that has you playing connect-the-dots between groups of stars, a simple knock-off of Elite Beat Agents that has you tapping circles on the screen to keep the beat while Barbie dances in the royal ballroom, a pattern-memorizing version of the classic lights-and-sound game Simon and more.

All together, the full set of twelve different mini-games offers a diverse array of styles of play, and the game is fun while it lasts. The problem goes back to overall length, then. The game offers a small set of unlockable extras which extend the experience a bit, but these are mostly new dresses, shoes and accessories for Barbie's Dress Up Mode — a diversion that represents an extra couple of minutes' worth of interest at best.

The camera's viewpoint is so zoomed out there, in fact, that's it difficult to see any visible change at all when Barbie puts on a new pair of high heels or a flashy necklace. Not much of a reward if you can't see it show up as it should.

Verdict Barbie as The Island Princess is an average package overall. It succeeds in offering up twelve simple, focused mini-games that play as they should and are free of any control problems, which are otherwise common in mini-game collections like this.

And it also does a good job of presenting Barbie's world, by utilizing several video clips from her latest direct-to-DVD movie. But, in the end, the experience is over far too quickly.

It would take most players only about an hour to complete the entire game and see all there is to see, and the unlockable extras aren't implemented well enough to offer any real extension to the lasting value of the title.

If you've got a young Barbie fan in your home and want to treat her to a brief new diversion for her DS, Barbie as The Island Princess could serve that purpose.

But just be aware that it won't last her very long. Was this article informative? YES NO. In This Article. No Descriptors. Release Date. What did you think? More Reviews by Lucas M. Cobra Kai Season 4 on Netflix Review. What to Expect From Marvel in IGN Logo Recommends. Pokemon Blue Matt Kim God of War Raised By Wolves Jim Vejvoda Wolf Like Me Review 6h ago - The show about werewolves that will make you cry.