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Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons
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Graphics & Sound:
You've probably all passed by the store, the Build-A-Bear store that is, at some point. But you might not have ventured inside. Whether you did or not, you can now bring the joy of Build-A-Bear home with the new videogame Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons.
The graphics are very simple, but quite pleasant. Each island has a different season associated with it, so of course they all looked individual. You could tell which island you were on at a glance. The only thing I was disappointed with was the lack of character choices. There were 8 choices: a turtle, 3 bears, a monkey, a cat, a dog, and a bunny. While that is a decent amount, it would have been really nice to be able to change their fur color, at a minimum. There also isn't much of a choice in clothing when you first start out. Luckily you'll find lots of it easily so that's not an issue for long.
The choice for character sounds was slightly lacking. There were only 9 sounds choices, none of which remotely sounded like a bear. But since I didn't even notice the sounds that I chose during the games, I guess it doesn't really matter. Most of the sounds that you hear are the background music, which is very calming and relaxing, and the sound effects from the games, like the sound of wind. |
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Gameplay:
Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons is a series of mini-games that can be played alone or with a friend. You'll have to unlock them before you can play them multiplayer, though. To unlock the games, you simply have to play them in Adventure Mode. Adventure Mode is where you go to play through the story. You'll start off with only one of the islands that you can visit. The puzzle pieces to the map for the rest of the islands have been lost, so you'll have to find them all before you can go to the next island. You need to look everywhere and play all the games to find the puzzle pieces, unlock new outfits, and earn medals to buy those outfits with. You can also find things hidden on the ground in treasure chests. If you look around the areas, you'll see a paw print on the ground on top of something like a pile of leaves or snow. Press (A) to dig there and find the treasure hidden underneath. If you ever get lost on the islands, there are maps that are easy to find. Simply click (A) when you are next to the map and it will show you where everything is and where you've already beaten the games.
If you want to play the mini-games that you have currently unlocked with a friend or by yourself, choose to go to the Playground. There you can select up to four players total to compete. After that, you can choose which games you want to play or you can choose to have the computer select a set of random games for you. Just keep in mind that if you select 20 random games, and you haven't unlocked 20 different games yet, then you will be playing some of the mini-games multiple times. At the end of each mini-game, there is a winner. They get a certain amount of points. You can also get bonus points during the games. At the end of however many games you chose, a winner will be announced based on the total number of points collected throughout all the mini-games.
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Difficulty:
Playing through the Adventure in Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons is pretty easy. The most difficult part of it is actually getting first place in all of the games. Some of them are very easy, but some take a little bit of time to figure the tricks out. I guess it all depends on what you're best at, though. The games where you had to point and shoot at things were extraordinarily easy for me, but difficult for the kids I was playing with. They were better at bouncing on the trampoline than me for sure, though. The pogo stick though, I own that game. For some reason, I just couldn't get System of a Down's song "Bounce" out of my head when I was playing. Anyway, how quickly you get through the Adventure and unlock all of the mini-games just depends on whether or not you get stuck on a particular game. The one that got me stuck for a little bit was the carousel horses. It did seem that after I had lost several times, it got a little easier to win. That could just be my imagination or I could have just gotten a little better at it. My times were continually improving. If you get stuck, my advice is keep trying, because none of the games are impossible at all. They are definitely meant for kids to be able to play easily.
If you need a little more of a challenge, you can always play against friends. That way you'll have to beat their scores instead of the computer's scores. I can tell you that the computer isn't anywhere near as good as we were. The kids practically doubled the computer's score after just a few minutes of playing. This is good because if they had continually been beaten by the computer, they wouldn't have wanted to keep playing so much! |
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Game Mechanics:
Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons is relatively easy to play. All of the games only require the Wii-mote. This makes it easy since there are no wires to deal with. At the beginning of each game, they go into detail and tell you exactly what you need to do for that mini-game, so there is never any confusion as to what you need to be doing. Since each game can be very different, it is important that you keep up with what you need to do and when. It's never fun to be holding the Wii-Mote the wrong way and not be able to figure out why you're not doing well.
Moving around the screen is very easy. Pointing the Wii-mote at the screen, you just touch the D-pad in the direction that you want to go. Sometimes I couldn't get quite as close to the place I wanted to go as I would have liked, but when you're close enough, you'll see an (A) on the screen prompting you to press the (A) button to either play the game or talk to someone or dig for treasure. If you want to quit, you press the (+) button and choose quite. The game autosaves after you win anything, so there's no need to worry about losing data.
Overall, Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons is a cute little game to play. It is very simplistic, but quite a lot of fun. It definitely kept the kids in my house entertained during Thanksgiving. If you're looking for a simple, family-friendly game, A Friend Fur All Seasons is definitely the way to go!
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
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