Review of The Daring Game For Girls For The Nintendo Wii

Review of The Daring Game For Girls For The Nintendo Wii
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Calling All Daring Girls!

I have to be honest and admit that I admire the fact that games for girls - board or video - tend to be more clever and creative than the shoot-em-ups ad nauseum that guys get. But I don’t go around checking up on the books that feed into this narrative and which often become the basis for girl’s games (at least not now as my niece has grown up).

So, I have to do bit of checking to understand what the book, “The Daring Book for Girls” was all about. Which, if I understand it correctly, is to note that girls are not unlike boys in many ways (other than perhaps being “icky” according to my neighbor’s 6 year old boy) when it comes to wanting to do interesting things and see interesting sights. It’s just that girls get the attention paid to them to give this a chance it seems, while boys make do with blowing things up.

So now I’m ready to take a look at the Nintendo Wii video game rendition with a bit more understanding.

The Daring Girls Game Will Rock Your World (5 out of 5)

The Daring Game for Girls has you playing a girl with high spirits and a sense of adventure (good for her!). You pick one of three adventures to participate in: climbing Mount McKinley, rafting down the Amazon or going on an African Safari. Right away lets note that the spirit of adventure is high but the sense of danger is not - you don’t have to be concerned that your young one (or you if you’re the one reading this) is going to have an untoward experience. Not with a rating of “Everyone” working, for sure.

Skateboarding

Anyway, you pick your adventure and design your character from the choices presented - which provide a wide range of ethnicities and features so nobody is going to feel left out. There’s numerous mini-games tossed into each of the overall adventures; like playing baseball or spy games, building a camp fire or exploring a cave. The purpose is to acquire the 6 types of Daring Girl badges by seeing, doing, and learning (educational facts about famous woman in history and pop-quizzes are valuable and valid things to have in a game but I doubt they’d be there if the gender was male).

Picking up badges like “Girl Lore” or “World Knowledge” provide something to work for and a sense of accomplishment but the game doesn’t push doing this at you. It should be fun, after all. Other activities include tending a garden or crafting items in a workshop. And making new friends is a strong part of it all. There’s a lot for girls to do so better get to it!

What Can A Daring Girl See? (5 out of 5)

Text

The graphics excel at providing a glimpse of reality without trying to be photo-realistic.

This means that the characters have a smooth look and approximate reality without forcing it down your throat (then again, the Nintendo Wii’s lack of high-definition provides a DVD-like visual quality that blends detail into the surface).

Colors and Sounds and Adventure (5 out of 5)

Exploring

The colors are bright and solid and the animation moves at a good clip with appropriate sounds and (sometimes) catchy musical themes. Text is also nicely parsed to be eminently readable, with choices to be made that don’t require a keyboard. All of this takes advantage of the Wii’s wireless remote which is as it should be, with power bars and other visual indicators to aid in providing a clue as to how well “you” are performing a task or succeeding at a mission.

“Girls can do great things,” says the audio from the video presented on The Daring Game for Girls website.

Majesco