Oregon Trail 5th Edition
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend This best-seller is loved by kids and teachers alike! Builds real-life decision-making and problem-solving skills. Kids get to choose his/her own wagon party, read maps, and guide their team through the wilderness! Product details and pricing info |
|---|
33 Customer Reviews Posted
- Same as the 2nd...
- This isn't the same as the original game (Oregon Trail 1). It is the same game as Oregon Trail II. That is where some people are getting confused. Many people think that Oregon Trail II was the first one, but it wasn't. Anyway, this is the exact same game as Oregon Trail II.
- 2005-06-20, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Totally different than the original...
- I'm just putting in my 2 cents to contradict the previous reviewer...this version is totally different than the earliest version he is remembering. Quite sophisticated, teaches history and some natural science in an engaging video format.
- 2005-05-11, 15 of 17 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- ...a "great learning tool"? Hah, yeah, and I'm not poor.
- I don't know about this fifth edition of The Oregon Trail, but I'm just going to assume it's the same thing as the one I played from kindergarten to sixth grade (1990-1997). If you're a parent looking for an educational game for your kid(s) or someone else's, you can do better than this. Really, in my school, and probably every other school, everyone just played this to do the hunting part. And that doesn't even take up 1/4 of the total game time. Heck, I downloaded the first Mac version just a few days ago to relive my glory. Well, I breezed through it in no less than 15 minutes. There aren't really any "educational" features on this unless you decided to look for them. And by that I mean this: when you make it to a landmark/town/fort/whatever, you can just bypass it and keep making your way to Oregon. Only if you click on the tab "Guide" will you learn a few quick facts. And by that I mean a short paragraph. That's really the only thing you'll learn, something you could easily learn from a history book or on a site.
That's not to say the game isn't fun though, I still like playing through it. Here's what goes on: you and 4 other party members (you can name all 5 characters) buy your goods and make way to Oregon in a covered wagon. If you leave too early, there might not be any grass for the oxen to eat. If you leave too late, you'll arrive in winter, and we all know how that went back in the early days of America *pilgrim corpse falls from a tree*. Though that's just what the game tells you, I always leave the earliest (in March) and nothing bad really happens. So once you leave, you get to see a little ox pulling your covered wagon along the countryside. Usually, it's just grass with the occassional cloud or something. You can hunt at any time when on this screen, which is where most of the fun is. A little aiming crusor appears and then animals run around and you get to bust caps. It's not violent or anything...kinda depressing because they plop down upon impact (no frames of them in the process of falling. One second they're standing, the next frame- they're on the ground). And it's really weird when you kill a bear or two. Because they were probably on their way to the store that had a sale on honey. Poor things. After some traveling, you'll come to forts/townss/landmarks/whatever and you can learn something or trade items with other people if you need anything. And then you'll have to cross rivers. The options here are either walking accross (which is just plain stupid since most of the time t he river's too deep and you'll lose supplies if you take this option), caulking the wagon and floating accross, or taking a ferry for five bucks. Oh, and there's the perverted option of giving an indian 3 sets of clothing to help you accross. Though I bet in the new versions they're called "Native Americans"...dispite coming to America via India/Asia via the landbridge.
Oh, and here's a funny thing: while traveling, your party members will get status conditions like broken legs, exhaustion, snake bites and more. How a snake gets into a friggin' covered wagon is beyond me, but it happens. When this happens, you should rest for a few days or change the rate of how much you eat. Or maybe even change the pace you travel at. But if you don't take care of the character's condition, they'll end up dying. And if you're going for something like that, try naming one of the party members "Disco" so you get the nice message "Disco has died".
All in all, this is a fun game. It's not really educational (I live in Oregon and this thing never taught me anything new aside from that snakes can get into covered wagons and a single bullet can take down a bear regardless of where you shoot it) and anyone can go through it in no time. If you're looking for something to learn about Oregon, I'll tell ya a few things right here:
-we don't have any sales tax when buying anything
-we all don't run around looking for Big Foot
-Short Circuit and The Goonies were filmed here
-WalMat stores are scarce, as people protest them whenever one's about to be built
-it doesn't always rain. In fact, it only really rains during the normal times of the seasons like every other place
-we have the highest murder rate in the country. It's to the point where if one's on the news, they spend 8 seconds on the story, then go into a BREAKING ANNOUNCEMENT about an abusive sloth in a zoo in the Democratic Republic of Congo or something
-I live here, thus making it the best state of all time
There you have it. The Oregon Trail = fun, but that's about it. - 2004-08-02, 35 of 83 people found this review helpful, Rated:
