Customer Reviews

Dora the Explorer: Backpack Adventure

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Dora the Explorer: Backpack Adventure is the first CD-ROM starring Dora and her friends. For the parents that have bought Nick Jr. software before, such as the Blue's Clues series, I must warn you, you will be a tad dissapointed. First, however, the pros. Infrogames (that's right, Humongous is gone, Infogames has taken over) has copied 95% of Dora's world into this game. All her friends are there, and are voiced by the TV actors. The music is from the show as well, and Dora asks for your child's help a lot. This game is based on Backpack Adventure, which means you are helping Dora return her books to the library. Now, sadly, we come to the other 5%. First off, if you're looking for free exploration and clickable surprises, you will only find them in 2 screens of this game. The rest of it is game-structured. You finish a game, you're done at that location. Second, the Map screen. When you look at the Map, instead of seeing three locations, you see 7. Still, the Map tells you you only need to go to three of those locations, yet you go to all 7. This could be confusing for a child who has seen the show. Also, if your child likes the songs, he or she is in for a surprise. Only one song is played fully, and two (I'm the Map and Grumpy old Troll) are recited. The other two, Vamanos and Backpack, are shortened. Aside from that, this is a good game for any Dora fan.

I would have to agree with the other reviewers of this game. This game looks and sounds like it is 3 to 4 years old, Infogames must have been put on a quick deadline to get it done. Graphics are very poor, details are lacking, and there is very little a child can explore on their own. There is little incentive to play it again after completing it one time at each skill level. My daughter loves Dora, but has not wanted to play this game since the day we brought it home. My advice would be to wait until it appears in the bargain bin at the store.

The children's show Dora the Explorer is ready made for computer games but unfortunately Infogrames has done a terrible job putting this together.

1.The game is full of glitches, I have run it on a MAC and a PC and have had problems with it on both platforms.

2. The game is VERY limited, my son loves Dora but was bored with this after a few plays.

3. My advice is save your money and buy some Dora books
instead.

It's too bad that this title is nowhere near as good as the Nick Jr. TV show. It starts out nicely, but is short on content and gameplay and is very repetitive. The movies become dull, and children cannot click through them which caused alot of frustration.

I have b/g twins - almost 4 - and this has become their favorite game! Yes, I got bored with it very quickly - but they LOVE it - and they now get on the computer themselves, and pop it in. They love typing their names in and "owning" the whole game (without my help). I'm sure they'll tire of it soon, but we got it during the summer, and it's November and they still "play Dora" almost every day! Kids LIKE repition!

Our 3 year old wouldn't leave the store without this, so we gave in since it looked like a good educational, and fun program. Unfortunately, once you have played the game once (which takes all of 20 minutes)you have pretty much exhausted it for entertainment value. Oh sure, you can change the level to increase the difficulty but it really doesn't alter the game play, it just adds a few more items to each "puzzle". Although from the packaging we had high hopes for this game, we ended up being extremely disappointed.

Dora's backpack adventure was too easy. My three and a half year old completed level 2 in about 15-20 minutes. The third level is only harder because it the activities are in Spanish. She loves Dora but was bored with it the second time around.

My daughter loves this game, but after installing the game, I realized that it had also decided to install some software from Gator.com.

If you are not aware of what gator is, it is a massive online privacy violation. It will track all of your web travels, giving gator information that you have entered into webforms. This has nothing to do with the game, and is a blatant violation of your and your childs privacy.

If I had a way to give this a lower rating I would. My daughter played for about 5 minutes before she ran into a hang that needed the computer rebooted, and we couldn't play anymore. Go somewhere else to find your childs games

My twins have mixed feelings about this game. They're 4 and while both enjoy it, they quickly tire of it. Since children have short attention spans that may play into it. It's also possible that the challenges aren't enough to keep them interested. I vote for the later as I've seen them walk away from it many times. It's the romance of interacting with Dora they enjoy more than the game itself. It's the familarity of the characters more than the challenges.

The sticker portion of the game is the most fun for my 4 year olds. They love to pull down the various characters and put them in odd places for a laugh. Your children will probably quickly be bored by level 1 so the challenges do increase a bit (particularly during the balloon portionof the game). I do dislike the fact that there's no CD-ROM case included as it's already been scratched a bit. There is an instruction booklet with an 800 # should you have issues or problems.

That's not to suggest it's all bad. There are a couple of adventures here that I've observed involve them more than others. There are problems with the software, however, and it should be noted. First, it's difficult to end the program once you get into it. You can't just exit. I realize this is to prevent children from accidently leaving the program but when I have to close it out to go on line or run another program it's annoying. I have to parade back to the beginning of the game. If you hit escape you don't leave and if you right click nothing happens. There's no icon for quitting the game or saving it where you are (although it apparently does save whatever previous game you were in although since I don't play it I can't confirm that).

Although it's not perfect, Dora's Backpack Adventure does offer some distraction and learning opportunities for children. It's age range is appropriate though you should be prepared that they may be bored. They will more than likely come back to it either for the novelty of Dora's world or to try challenges they understand and can solve.

In Dora's Backpack Adventure you guide Dora, with her trusty companion Boots of course, not to mention the necessary Backpack through a set of standard obstacles to the library. The format follows the TV episode, not suprising perhaps since that is modelled on computer games!

There are three levels to play at; as far as I could tell each one introduces a little more Spanish into it. There is also a sticker book to do which provides endless entertainment in itself.

My daughter, who is three, loves it. She no longer watches Dora much but the enjoyment she gets mastering the mouse and being in control of her destiny is great. We only bring it out every now and then which keeps the replayability up.

A number of reviews complain it is too short and/or basic. Well it certainly isn't going to be much good past three but if you do all of the parts of the game, including the optional exploring, it can while a way an hour or more if your child has a good attention span. The reviews where it says two year olds found it too simple lead me to believe the two year old was not controlling the game themselves since it requires a reasonable dexterity.

All in all we find Dora enjoyable. We haven't noticed any performance issues but we do have a pretty powerful laptop. The game having to be in the CD drive doesn't bother me in the slightest.

In summary if your child is into Dora and hasn't advanced to harder computer games, this is great!