The Oregon Trail (WP7) : 4/5
"Little Lisa has dysentery."
That statement haunted my dreams as a young boy in elementary school while playing The Oregon Trail on one of the two Apple IIs my school could afford to buy. At the time however dysentery for a 6 year old was a fantasy word for "your gonna die'( who knew you could die from diarrhea?) . Fast forward about 20 years where Apple is still around and smart phones are king. Well dysentery is back (in a big way) and so is The Oregon Trail and this time on your favorite platform: Windows Phone 7. (Sorry Apple)
For those of you who either too young to remember or not fortunate enough to played the earlier incarnations of this classic game, here's the run down: Your a family in search of greener pastures in middle America during the 1800s and the government has given writ to anyone willing to make the venture to Oregon can have free land (up to 350 acres) as long as they decided to farm it or use it for business. Its roughly a 2100 mile trek across some tough land filled with bears, buffalo, Indians, bandits, tornadoes, snow storms, thieves and disease. Your job as the husband and father to keep your family fed and healthy along the way. Good luck, your going to need it.
Much of what made the game a instant hit all those years ago largely stays intact today. All those little things like hunting, buying supplies and fixing your wagon are all here plus some well deserved extras. Not only does it add a slew of new game options it also adds a fresh new coat of paint. Gone are the blocky green and black graphics of the limited Apple II monitor but now replaced with vibrant and wonderful hand drawn sprites. The game itself is not a graphical powerhouse and it doesn't need to be based on its laid back, non action oriented nature. But it gets the job done and you'll enjoy the back grounds as much as the characters.
Like its older brethren most of the game is mainly a point and click affair with your index finger doing the pointing and the clicking. The game is based around making decisions for your family i.e stop and rest or keep moving to keep from falling behind schedule. Most of the choices however tend to hold more weight than that. Like the choice to look for your lost Lisa and lose 4 days or leave her to the bears and keep moving. Every choice you make makes a difference in the game, maybe not immediately but sooner or later it will pay off or bite you in the ass.
When your not making life or death decisions your occupying your time either hunting, fishing, panning for gold or fixing your wagon. Hunting is handled alot like it did years ago with you standing still and clicking on the prey you are choosing to kill. Which sounds good in theory but this is where the touch screen revolution falls short. Most often than not you will miss due to inaccurate readings by your smart phone. That makes for a frustrating time trying to collect food. Fishing is done a little differently, when you come across a lake you are asked to go fishing and it entails you dropping your hook in the water. Tap your character when a fish comes by to reel it in. Pull up a boot and you lose time on your timer. Panning for gold is a fun use of the accelerometer in your phone. Shake the phone back and forth like a pan to shift out the gold. And last but not least fixing your wagon. When your wagon falls on tough times you are tasked to hammer nails into your wagon to fix it. The nails are on a track and you must tap the screen at the right time to hammer them down. Too many misses and you fail.
http://www.appstoreapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/the-o...That's the long and short of it as far as game play goes. Nothing ground breaking and nothing so bad you want to smack your Momma but fun none the less. The achievements are a mixed bag of fun to get and play the games 100 times to get. Also there is bug on the Gold Digger achievement where you can only get it on Extra Hard. And if that wasn't enough, some users have had problems unlocking Extra Hard mode at all, hence making getting that achievement very hard to get. Despite that and the touch and go controls on the touch screen (no pun intended) the game is still a blast to play. It can be bought on your WP7 for $4.99 and comes with 200 gamerscore.
4.0