Customer Reviews

The Oregon Trail, 5th Edition

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(65)

 

 

I was very happy with this game- it took the bets parts of the previous Oregon Trail incarnations and wove them together for a good overall product. I can appreciate a company which recognizes both the weaknesses and the strengths of their products and uses this information to get better. In this Oregon Trail you can once again chose how many you will travel with and name them (for some crazy reason this feature was eliminated in the 4th Oregon Trail edition), but you can also CHOOSE the times you stop to collect wild fruit or fish, instead of these circumstances just happening randomly (which does not make as much sense). To me, these were the biggest changes to previous games, but they were improvements.

Aside from the above changes, the basics of the game remain the same, and it will look familiar to those who have played other editions. A few things have been updated, particularly some aspects concerning Native Americans and some geography, but the good times still keep rolling.

Both my son & I started playing Version 1 (which is great for kids), but the graphics aren't great. Version 2 gives you more options, and I get to shop and keep a budget. Shooting food & steering down the rapids is more fun also. Versions 3 & 4 were more complicated because of more choices (who will you chose to be in your wagon, fishing, trading & plant gaithering). There's 3 disks with 3 & 4 and NO LEGEND (highscore list), but you do get to chose what you want to trade. VERSION 5 IS 1 DISK, but you can FISH,HUNT,GAITHER PLANTS,SHOP,TRADE(their choice)& log your high scores. Start out as a green horn; continue as an expert trailguide. If you're a farmer you don't have much money & must budget your supplies & money, but your score is times 4.5. While a banker has money, but really has to avoid the temptation of over loading his wagon. You can have 1 to 5 people ride in the wagon with you and you can name them or the computer will. When my son was under 11, he had me start the game by buying the supplies, then he'd take over. He loved the hunting and fishing. When I played the game I'd call him over to finish it by "riding the rapids" (with his fast reflexes, better than me). If you like making choices in a game this may be the game for you. Remember when gaithering plants the bright red berries are poisonous. If you have them for supper you die, game over. It helps to save your game before that happens, so if a mistake happens, you can exit and return.

Version 4 was full of bugs and agonizingly slow but it clearly reflected an effort to expand the game and make it more interesting.

This version reverses direction. It is quite stable and should run on just about any recently purchased Windows computer.

The trade off is the game play is diminished. The other members of your party no longer have occupations or much personality. The screen no longer scrolls as you hunt. There are less choices to make and overall the game is more likely to bore the adult who tries to play it with children. The only thing not simpler is the the purchasing that still confused my 9 year old brother (who is good at math) so badly I had to make his purchases for him to keep him from quitting.

The lack of feedback at the end of the game is quite irritating. No longer can you tell what items that you were carrying were worth something once you got to to Oregon. So you can't tell what to bring next time. Was the Grandfather clock worth more in Oregon? How about the extra supplies your carried? You will never know.

Overall it is a big step down from version 4 except for being more stable.

I was very happy with this game- it took the bets parts of the previous Oregon Trail incarnations and wove them together for a good overall product. I can appreciate a company which recognizes both the weaknesses and the strengths of their products and uses this information to get better. In this Oregon Trail you can once again chose how many you will travel with and name them (for some crazy reason this feature was eliminated in the 4th Oregon Trail edition), but you can also CHOOSE the times you stop to collect wild fruit or fish, instead of these circumstances just happening randomly (which does not make as much sense). To me, these were the biggest changes to previous games, but they were improvements.

Aside from the above changes, the basics of the game remain the same, and it will look familiar to those who have played other editions. A few things have been updated, particularly some aspects concerning Native Americans and some geography, but the good times still keep rolling.

As much as you can call a CD-ROM game a classic, Oregon Trail is such. It was one of the first extended play CD games to make good use of the computer over the video game console. So far, it has been through five versions. The second was such an improvement over the first, that users may have had extremely high expectations for the next several versions of the game, but there has never been the leap in graphics or play options since the jump from one to two.

However, the smoothness of play, and the speed of the game have improved with each version. While five doesn't have the options that four had, and is in some ways a rehash of the second version, it is still the best. Four had too many bugs and glitches. If you have never played Oregon Trail, or have played only one of the first two versions, I would reccomend five over the other available versions (all are available used through Amazon.com).

If you have never played Oregon Trail, at all, you are missing out; OT is a simulation of the journey made in the 1840's by so many Americans from the Mid-West to California. Even though the game is simple, the harshness and difficulty of the journey communicate unmistakably. It is a wonderful simulation. Kids will play it over and over without realizing it's "educational," and adults won't care.

This is a great game.

I've tried this program on 5 different Windows XP computers, and it only runs on one of them. And, yes I have done all the compatibility adjustments.
This is criminal that the software company just doesn't fix this and distribute a patch for all of us that have a child that really wants to run the program.

I first bought this game because I used to play the first Oregon Trail for the Mac when I was in elementary school back in the late 80s. To be honest, they should have just stuck with the original version (without all the fancy pictures). The graphics did not match when changing from the main map to the cg scenes to the cartoon movies. It was very awkward looking. Often when cutting to a movie, the game will crash (I have Windows 2000, which the game supposedly is compatible with). The game crashes very often.

This game is difficult to use, with confusing and frustrating options (I've found 2 bugs already where you are stuck in an infinite loop). I DO NOT reccommend this game for young kids!! Not only is it awkward to play but it can become extremely tedious as well.

There were a few nice things in this version, you can fish and gather certain types of berries and herbs. However, when it comes to buying supplies, any child will be overwhelmed by its bartering system.

This game hardly has any of the old Oregon Trail charm that it used to.

amazon was the only retailer that had a listing for this program that included a mention that it would run on Vista. Even the manufacturer told me via email that they couldn't say if it ran on Vista or not. Given Amazon's good return policy, I decided to order it and give it a try. There are a number of different "versions" listed, all 5th edition but this one on Amazon said "Vista" in the write up. Sure enough, the disc came and the jewel case blurb only mentions XP. But, I went ahead and tried loading it and it loaded and now runs on my Dell Inspiron Vista operating system computer without any problems so far. Hope it works for you!

I should have paid more mind to the folks who had trouble running it. In spite of the seller's claim, this game will not run reliably on XP. This was a waste of our time and money.

I played Oregon Trail II for years. It is a basic game and fun for the whole family. When I received the 5th edition I figured three versions different would mean a number of changes. I could not load it on my Gateway computer because it kept indicating it could not create a directory. Very odd since I have loaded numerous games and never got this error before. I could not find anything on their web site to assist me in fixing the problem. We did load it on my wifes Sony computer and it ran fine. We were slightly disappointed in the new version since the only really noticeable change was the animated movies with the children travelling the trail. The few add ons of fishing and rafting are nice but I would have liked to see a little more help for new users or irregular players with figuring out the right trail to take with a detailed map. Overall it is an updated version of II suited to run on XP or W2K with a few extras. Considering most new games run around $50 we should not be to disappointed since The Learning Company tries to make games geared for the whole family for a reasonable price.