Customer Reviews

Princess on Ice

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is so fun! I love it and even adults will like it! u get to choose what music u want to skate along with and it gets more challenging every time! Customize Alyssa's, Gabrielle's, Kelly's or Madison's outfit! Choose what jump, spin or step u wnat to include in ur routine! I think its the best skating game u could get!! AWESOME!!

I'm a figure skater and I already owned two skating games (Imagine Figure Skater and Imagine Ice Champions) when I got this game for Christmas last year. I was really excited! I THOUGHT it might be similar to the other two games and maybe more realistic. WRONG! When the game starts off, the player must choose one of four characters: Kelly, Alyssa, Madison, or Gabrielle. Each of them has different personalities and their own strengths and weaknesses, which determines how quickly they learn certain skills. You can also choose your level of difficulty: easy, medium, or hard. (I've played the game through twice in easy and twice in medium.) After that, the player starts progressing through competitions and the goal is to become the "Princess on Ice." I would have preferred a more realistic approach were players attempt to eventually qualify for National or World events.

Another problem with the competition is that the rink is a circle! Real ice rinks are not circles, more like rectangles with rounded edges. The judging in the game is not realistic. There is a bar shown on the top screen and the bar starts half way filled up. If the player does something well, the meter goes up. If the player does something badly, the meter goes down. If the meter is at or above a certain point by the end of the performance, the player can advance to the next competition. If not, they have to redo the performance (after the audience boos). In reality, a skater gets technical and artistic scores for each the short and the long programs (in the game there is just one program), and there are no redos. The game could have done scoring better by using this judging system in the game. It's also kind of hard getting the meter up to passing on the first try, but after the player figures out how to preform the skills, it's pretty easy.

I also do not like the way skills are performed. For basic footwork, the player taps snowflakes with numbers on the screen in the right order. Towards the end of the game it gets hard because the snowflakes are all over the screen and it's hard to get them all perfectly on time (which is necessary to get the meter up). To jump, the player needs to tap shapes at the right time when they overlap. In skating, it's pretty obvious that's not how jumps work! What the game should have done to make it more realistic is have the player trace the pattern the jump makes on the ice and then rotate the character around with the stylus (even though that's not very realistic either, but it is a better idea than what the game has). For the spins the player needs to spin a circle around! The game could have it so that the player would have to drag the character into the correct position and then spin them around (even though that's not very realistic either). For footwork I think they made it a little bit too much fun to be realistic :). The player needs to tap shapes that appear on the screen, it's also unrealistic.

The game is also missing some jumps! They have the single salchow, toe loop, and axel. What happened to the loop, flip, and lutz? Then they have the triple salchow, triple toe loop, and triple axel, they were not only missing the triple loop, triple flip, and triple lutz, but they were missing ALL THE DOUBLES!! A skater cannot go from the singles straight to the triples without falling after rotating out of control and probably breaking something (well, they probably wouldn't get the rotation in the first place). ANYWAY, the jumps also don't look right. The singles look the same as the triples! And if the player wants the skater to do a salchow they do a toe loop! The character also wants to always do combination jumps, never just one jump. The skater also always does combo spins too, for example for a sit spin the character does a sit spin for a little bit and then goes up into a Biellmann! The character doesn't do any single position spins!

Another problem is the choreography of the program that the skater has. The player can choose one jump, one spin, and one step sequence! Other than that the skater just skates around the ice and the program is REALLY boring to do, since you only tap snowflakes, and the replay is also really boring to watch. In real life, there are specific jump and spin requirements that skaters have to do in each program For example, for Novice level (which might be close to what the character is towards the end of the end of the game) there's a maximum of six jumps and three spins. If someone just did one jump and one spin, they would lose miserably, but the character in the game doesn't. For making the program in this game, they should have done something like in the game "Imagine Ice Champions," where the player chooses a certain numbers of jumps and spins and steps and puts them in any order they want. Finally, probably the most disappointing feature in this game is the ending. Even if your last programs are successful, the character doesn't become the Princess on Ice! At the end, your character will be shown with three of her friends who were introduced earlier in the game and they will say that even though none of them got to be the Princess on Ice they learned about being friends and competing against each other. BORING! Toward the end, the game gets really hard and for the difficulty I almost expected a hero parade and instead I got a lesson in sportsmanship.

I would not recommend this game to anyone, all they would get is frustration from trying to figure out how to do everything, boredom (there is not much of a plot line), and a preachy lesson in sportsmanship. SO if you are expecting a hero parade after the difficulty and a very happy ending I would skip this game. If you really want a figure skating game I strongly recommend Imagine Figure Skater, the way that you preform everything isn't very realistic either but it's much more realistic than this game and the graphics, story line, and ease of play are so much better than in this game.

Purchased for my 7 year old granddaughter who lived it. Shipping was great and easy transaction. Thanks.