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For starters, we were HUGE fans of last year's Scooby Doo First Frights for Wii. I personally thought that it was one of (if not THE) best games of the year on the Wii for the under 10 crowd. One of last year's break-out hits, for sure.
So it was with great excitement that we purchased Scooby Doo and the Spooky Swamp for Wii. I must say that I am not as overwhelmingly excited about the sequel as I was with the original. The main reason is that the game developers chose to change some of the fundamental game play structure for this sequel. Some may like these changes, others may not.
Chief among them is the fact that the game play is entirely objective driven this time around. You must complete an objective (or task) to proceed forward in the game. To that end, READING SKILLS ARE A MUST. The objectives are sometimes obvious, but other times the objective must be read (or re-read) from the objectives log to be certain that you understand the task that you need to perform. So even if your child can pick up the very easy game play mechanics on their own, a lack of reading skills will leave them constantly asking "What do I do next?" Where the original game allowed a non-reader to play on their own and still advance through the game without a problem, this new game requires someone to sit with a non-reader to guide them through the objectives.
The objective-driven game play does allow for the story telling and story progression to be enhanced well above and beyond the original game's high standards. This is a definite plus!
Voice acting is solid, as was the case with the previous game. Although, Shaggy's voice acting is decidedly a notch or two below the previous game.
This game is definitely more of a challenge for the younger set this time around. It appears that the game developers were pushing the game to be more along the lines of the "Lego" games for Wii. My suggestion would be for fans of the original game to try it for themselves and decide how they feel about the original vs. the sequel, and for parents to be aware of the reading requirement before making a purchase. While it is an excellent game, I feel that the fundamental changes will prevent it from becoming a classic like the original.
My 7 year-old son quickly lost interest after about 30 minutes, where the original game was one of his favorites for Wii.
UPDATE 9/19/2010 My son has regained his interest in the game, but only when I am close by to help out on a regular basis. On his own, he quickly gets frustrated.
UPDATE 9/26/2010 Finished the game in about 8-10 hours. Only 2 episodes in this game, as opposed to 4 episodes in the last. It was great while it lasted, but seemed like it was over a bit too soon.
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I've read the other three (3) reviews that were posted at the time I created this one. I agree that it is more of a problem for a non-reading child to be able to play this game. Fortunately, my daughter and I played this one together, so it was just fine. I liked the upgrades in the game, you get to use whatever character you want most of the time (before you solve the whole thing). The story line is a bit more complex and you have suspect files, pictures to take, a magnifying glass to use, mini-games you can play, and some pretty neat tasks to complete (like using a catapult for snowballs or watermellons), making food, washing laundry, putting together scraps of paper to complete a map or note, etc. There was a lot more creative development put into this game and it targets a broader skill set and probably older audience. My five (almost six year old) absolutely needed my help to get through it.I really like that there are more things to do: collect medallions, collect costume parts, beat up a certain number of bad guys. You can see your statistics by pressing plus (+), and a variety of objectives. You can recall objectives or sometimes get clearer instructions about objectives by pressing minus (-).
I think it would have been nicer to have one more level (Episode). The First Frights (first Scooby game) had four, but this new one only has three. I think it would be better if we were able to get full coordinated costumes that actually allowed you to perform different actions. Like Scooby Ninja from the first game or playing one of the bad guys from the first game. That stuff is fun and I don't see any way to do that in the second one.
Overall, I am pleased with the purchase and glad that I was able to play it with my daughter. Although we solved both mysteries, we are not yet done. We have more trophies and Scooby Medallions to get in the first game and in the second game we have more trophies, ghost pictures, Scooby letters, and Scooby Medallions to get. Overall we are still having fun, even though the second game is light on one episode.
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We enjoyed the first game. It lacked many of the conveniences of this game but it was cute.This game has a better means of monitoring what you've collected and a lot more things to collect, rewards for collection such as costume pieces, and relatively free switching between characters except when you really need to use Shaggy and Scooby only. It also does not allow both players to be the same character which I like because my 4-year-old thought it was funny to use the same one I did in the older game and it made it very hard to play.
It is, obviously, pretty easy to play, even with the nunchuck (though ours must be old, since the machine frequently tells us to plug ours back in. I can only assume they're shorting out). You don't get different powers anymore with costume changes, which was a little disappointing since Ninja Scooby was my favorite in the previous game. The panda hat and bunny slippers make up for a lot.
The story is a bit weak, but still reasonably cute, and how strong were the stories in the original animated cartoons anyway? Tar monsters? Thawed cavemen? An over-sized Dia de los Muertes monster isn't too odd by that standard... in fact, he's flippin' awesome.
I didn't find that reading was such a great obstacle. Of course, I played it with my daughter when we first got it since we bought it to pass the time while we shared a nice head cold. But if you're paying attention, they tell you aloud what you need to do most of the time, and if she gets stuck, assuming she cares what her objective is, there's the minus button that brings up a reminder that I can read to her.
This game, unlike the first, does not force you to keep moving forward, which suits my kid just fine, since there are many items that you can interact with... things you can pick up and throw, a machine that makes soup, catapults (oh yeah), laundry machines, and respawning monsters if you want to work on your quotas to earn costume pieces. When she plays it by herself, my daughter spends most of that time making soup and carrying places in the snow chalet, narrating the entire thing in squeaky voices as though she was playing with a dollhouse. Of course, this makes it hard to play along with her...
The complaints I have are not with story, features, or extended play, which is fine. There are even game features that unlock when the mysteries are solved. Nice. We also enjoyed the zombie brides and zombie mariachis... Their muttering cracks me up. "Where is my preence?" "How did I get here?"
But the trouble is technical, and in some cases with gameplay. The chases, which are thankfully very few, are frustrating in that you can run so far forward that you can't even see the path ahead, restart as often as you fail to escape without giving you a choice about whether you want to do it again, and worst of all, sometimes are subject to a bug which will not allow you to leave! That's right, the first times we did each chase, we got so frustrated not being able to see the holes before we fell into them that we tried to drop out, which is done by means of the plus button. If it lets you even once press the button and select "drop out" it doesn't let you do it again... which is odd considering it ignores the request and leaves you in the game. After you try it once, it no longer responds to the plus button. Considering this is also how you save and quit, it's a problem.
You can get further from your partner in this one than you could in the earlier game, but there's also the curious issue, as seen in the chases, that you sometimes need to be farther apart to see what you need to see. It's hard to aim if you choose a character with ranged fighting. Usually you get a few hits in and then for some reason you have to keep moving your character in order to stay targeted. There are almost no purple hearts (heals), and those are all drops. When you die, which is often, a bunch of your scooby snacks are scattered around you while you wait for respawn. And some enemies can actually pound you so hard you can't hit back, which is just maddening.
And if your partner is fond of running in circles for no good reason at all, the screen follows the runner... But again, I play the game with a 4-year-old. This game is at least mercifully free from the irritating character respawning glitch that plagued us in the previous game, and no more monsters that leap into the air and fly away. But in this game, they have made the mistake of having foreground objects sometimes obscuring the view of the characters... in one case, while you're heading toward a rope bridge over a snowy precipice!
Another curious thing that might annoy some people... and bemuse others. The games was made in Australia, and some of the regional terms have slipped in for characters that are not in the least Australian. Shaggy, in his best hippie drawl, slogging through mud and saying, "Dude, I wish this was fairy floss!" kinda threw me. I guessed what it was, but it did have an odd sound. The only one that actually annoyed me a little, as a native of Louisiana, was the gumbo. They called it stew. A girl with a Caribbean island accept and Voodoo chic in the middle of a swamp, mixing up a big pot of something tan with tomatoes and okra floating, in it says she's making stew. Eh, well.
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