Description:
While the plot behind Bear's Sense of Adventure features the magical, folksy characters associated with a Jim Henson project, this translation to software is bumpy at best. Bear himself is visually fantastic, interacting with the cartoon house, his fur alive on the screen. However, the introductions are difficult to skip--it requires hitting the escape key multiple times to get into the game area--making it likely that kids will grow bored with this game after multiple uses. The layout of the game is confusing, too. Bear spends a lot of time talking about the objects you can click on, causing them to do only a cursory dance across the screen. When you click on an object to decorate the house, it's logical to want to place it on a wall, but that didn't happen in our use. Instead, we wound up heading into other rooms and clicking on things like potholders by mistake. This frustration makes the game seem disjointed and prone to long periods of song and dance--or even just lecturing--in a game that should allow kids much more direct interaction. Bear fans will love seeing him talk directly to them as they click items throughout the house, but others might only see it simply as a great TV episode placed on the digital screen. --Jennifer Buckendorff
| 
