Putt Putt: Pep's Birthday Surprise

Rating:
Summary: YAY for Putt Putt!
Review: I was worried, because Humongous hasn't put out any new Putt Putt or Pajama Sam games for a while, but now there are new ones of each, and they are just as wonderful as all the others. Pep's Birthday Surprise is very sweet, and very simple, but is extremely entertaining and funny. The characters are really cute, especially the big hippy VW Bus named "Sunshine". The game changes a bit each time you play it, so it remains entertaining and challenging. Also, there are tons of different things in each room to click on, as well as some really fun mini-games. I buy these games for my nephew, but I always end up playing them myself. Definitely a bargain for some of the best children's software you're likely to find anywhere.

Rating:
Summary: Not designed properly for XP
Review: My 3 year old son loved Putt-Putt enters the race, but I'm disappointed with this game and Window's XP. I had to install the game as Administrator, but my son's account is set up as a limited user to keep him from deleting important data from the computer. The game does NOT work properly from limited accounts and I can't find a patch to fix it. So far it runs, but you can't save/load any games. A simple bug that should have been fixed in normal beta testing. Good ideas, neat pictures - bad programming.

Update: I contacted their technical support. They gave me a useless response and didn't offer to help me solve it. Fortunately some web searches helped me figure out how to fix this.

BAD Technical support for this software.

Rating:
Summary: Putt-Putt come back!
Review: My daughter (and I) have loved Putt-Putt. Particularly "goes to the zoo" and "racetrack" games. This game just does not run as well. It is slow and the speech is choppy. The voice of Putt-Putt has changed and not really for the better. I wish I would have read the reviews here before purchasing it. Everything the previous reviewers have said is true.

Rating:
Summary: Stepford Putt
Review: My four year old and I played this, and neither one of us could wait for it to end. The game takes a long time to change from scene to scene, so much so that we thought that the computer had frozen. The game is not challenging, fun, or educational but is in fact very boring and basic. Definitely not what we have come to expect from Humongous Entertainment.

Rating:
Summary: very disappointing
Review: My four year old and I played this, and neither one of us could wait for it to end. The game takes a long time to change from scene to scene, so much so that we thought that the computer had frozen. The game is not challenging, fun, or educational but is in fact very boring and basic. Definitely not what we have come to expect from Humongous Entertainment.

Rating:
Summary: Putt-Putt come back!
Review: Pep's Birthday Surprise is a definite let-down from Putt-Putt Enters the Race! The major flaw in the software is that the game is less open-ended and too full of animated scenes ... the charm of the Putt-Putt games is that kids are encouraged to use critical thinking skills and to figure out (sometimes obscure) problems. These features are curtailed in this particular game, as if the designers have lost faith in their audience's ability to problem solve and to do multi-step reasoning ... A minor but disconcerting feature is that Putt-Putt's voice has dropped in pitch, which will prove very distracting to Putt-Putt parent veterans!

Rating:
Summary: Buy Putt-Putt Enters the Race Instead!
Review: Pep's Birthday Surprise is a definite let-down from Putt-Putt Enters the Race! The major flaw in the software is that the game is less open-ended and too full of animated scenes ... the charm of the Putt-Putt games is that kids are encouraged to use critical thinking skills and to figure out (sometimes obscure) problems. These features are curtailed in this particular game, as if the designers have lost faith in their audience's ability to problem solve and to do multi-step reasoning ... A minor but disconcerting feature is that Putt-Putt's voice has dropped in pitch, which will prove very distracting to Putt-Putt parent veterans!

Rating:
Summary: Waaay too slow
Review: This game was unplayably slow on a computer that was adequate
for previous Humongous Software games.

Humongous is clearly capable of making playable games, so there
must have been something different about his one.
The alliance with Atari is new to me, as is their use of
Bink Video and Miles Sound System from RAD Game Tools.
Note that "Pajama Sam: Life is Tough When You Lose Your Stuff"
also has complaints about slowness on Amazon.

Rating:
Summary: Stepford Putt
Review: We had to install this on an XP account with privileges, and we still have no confidence it will not bomb. We gave up trying to install on Windows 2000 and 98 systems.

It takes forever to get through the scene chat. Our children are really patient; this is the first time we've felt compelled to use the Enter key to end the character chats.

The bonhomie is missing. Even down to the choice of Putt's voice. Putt used to seem about 7 years old, and now he sounds like his voice is about to change.

Putt used to be an innocent little guy, helpful and kind, but in this game, he must constantly get rid of Pep in order to discuss the party with co-conspirators. In most scenes, you must first click on Pep so that Putt-Putt can tell him to "go play with your friend", out the door, unsupervised...

Better to buy "Enters the Race" first, then try "Zoo", "Circus", "Moon", and "Parade".