Review by Lia & her Pappy Randy Sluganski February 24, 2009
Lia (pronounced Lee-ah),
my just turned 2-years-old granddaughter, has been playing at my computer
keyboard since she was six months old. Actually, she wasn’t
playing so much as she was banging on it, so a few months back I purchased
a Sesame Street First Steps game that required her
to press keys which in turn caused Elmo or Big Bird to sing a song.
A simple cause-and-effect concept that she seemed to grasp.
So
when Kutoka asked if we would review their newest Didi & Ditto
game, I asked Lia if she would be interested to which she shook her
head yes and replied “uh” (She says “uh” a
lot).
Now, for those of you not
in the know, Didi & Ditto are twin brother and sister. Oh yeah,
they’re also beavers. And they’re busy preparing a reception
for a visit from Mother Nature, but Zolt, a sneaky wolf, is trying
to be a party-pooper by hiding all of the food and breaking the town’s
musical instruments.
The first thing you must
do is decide whether you want to play as Ditto, the red female beaver,
or Didi, the blue male beaver. I wanted to play as Didi, but Lia was
insistent and kept pointing at Ditto. Lia won the argument. She wins
all of our arguments. How does a 2-year old continually best me?
Now
this is where pappy made a fundamental mistake and chose to play the
game in adventure mode. While the adventure mode is fun, it is also
beyond the comprehension of a 2-year-old and it wasn’t long
until we started over, this time choosing to play just the activities.
It should be noted that there are three difficulty levels to choose
from before play begins and we, of course, chose to begin with level
one so as not to make me look too foolish.
While there is a forest
full of colorful and whimsical animal characters to interact with,
the biggest challenge I found was teaching Lia to use the mouse in
a constructive manner. This does require some patience, but it is
eventually rewarding to realize that she is beginning to grasp the
relationship between her control of the mouse and how it affects events
on the screen. To be honest, it took a few sessions over a couple
of weeks, but was well worth the effort. She also recognizes her name
on the save game and knows to click on it when we revisit the game
and I’m sure it won’t be long now until we’re able
to enjoy the story aspect of the game.
The
activities are varied enough to hold both of our interests and there
are occasionally some surprise animations that Lia seems to take a
great joy in finding and her laughter at these makes me laugh and
really, what more could you ask for?
We’ve not finished
the game yet and probably won’t for some time as pappy has a
short attention span and often wanders away to watch Wow,
Wow Wubbzy or chase our cats Chaplin and Squeakers around the
house, but it’s nice to know that whenever we are ready, Didi
& Ditto will be waiting to play with us again.
