Nintendo Okie

Howdy:

• Recognizable characters

See Ya’:

• Boring mini games
• Annoying voice work
• Way too short

Young girls all around the country know who Hello Kitty is.  She’s been around for many years and starred in many different things from TV to movies to video games.  Recently Hello Kitty with MMO and now she’s make a return to the DS in Hello Kitty Party.  The question is does this new game make learning fun or is it a waste of even your three year olds time?  

The Hello Kitty gang loves to party and in this game you’re at it again.  You’ll begin the game by sending out invitations to all of your friends through a mini game.  On the top screen one of the characters will pop up and you have to tap on that character on the bottom screen.  It’s a bit like whack a mole and you have to be very quick to tap the correct guess.  I had a problem tapping the correct animal friend because they are on the screen for a very short period of time before they disappear and when they reappear it will be in another place on the screen.  It didn’t bode well then for the rest of the game. 

From there you can click on 5 different tabs on the bottom screen that all have mini-games that are based around a particular theme.  In one area you’re designing a dress, in another you’re cooking food for the party, in another you’re going shopping or finally you’re at the party.  The games in each area are generally very simple touch the screen at the right time or on the right object to successfully complete your objective.  You have access to all of the games 22 games right from the start and you don’t have to do any of them in a particular order.  Sometimes it feels okay to do this, and in others, particulary the dress making mini-games, it felt like there should have been some order you do the games in.  There’s nothing stopping you from sewing the material together before you cut out the pattern or boiling the ingredients before you wash them.  

The mini-games, themselves, are quite simple to understand and complete.  When you’re sewing the material you’re simply swiping the stylus from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen over and over until you’ve filled a meter.  In the Button game you’re sorting buttons into bins that match the button on a conveyor belt.  When you have to wash ingredients for a recipe you simply move the stylus back and forth in a sink filled with water until the vegetables are clean.  When you need to cut material you’re simply tapping the screen following a series of pins in the proper order.  That’s the basics of every mini-game in this collection.  You’re either touching a particular area, rubbing the stylus back and forth as fast as you can, or picking a matching object. 

Visually it looks like you would expect a Hello Kitty game to look.  Everything is brightly colored, mostly pink.  All the characters look like they were pulled straight from the television show and they themselves look quite nice.  As far as audio goes, get ready to hear Hello Kitty saying the same thing a LOT and in a really high pitched voice.  It wasn’t long before I had to turn the sound down so I could quit hearing “You’re doing great” dozens of times.

I know the game is designed for pre-school aged girls, but it almost feels like the game is too simple even for them.  There are no real goals to the game.  Some of the mini-games don’t work well enough, like the Slide Puzzle game where tapping a box didn’t always register properly and I’d slide the wrong box around.  Kid’s need goals and to be praised when they do things correctly, but even younger kids need some sort of challenge.  Both my eight year old daughter, who loves characters like Hello Kitty and my six year old son, just as a test to see what he though, were bored with the game after a few minutes.  It took me a grand total of 30 minutes to complete everything the game had to offer.  While it’s got recognizable characters and a visual style kids will love, it’s wrapped around a boring game that just doesn’t work as well as it should.

Final Score: 1/5 Terrible

Review copy of the game provided by Majeso.