VeggieTales: The Mystery of Veggie Island

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $4.88

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine	Zonealarm Internet Security Suite [Old Version]	Pimpjuice Premium Energy Drink, Extra Strength Formula, 8-Ounce Cans (Pack of 24)

Customer Reviews:

Fun Just For Kids [Posted on 2002-12-07]
At first I thought wow! This sounds great! Being able to play a Veggie Tale computer game without eating up Internet hours would be a dream come true! But this is one of those products that teeter between a final rating of four stars or five stars and here's why.

It deserves a five star rating for the fact of it's all around quality and excellent visuals. Exhibiting detailed images that are outstanding and cute set-ups with good animation. Right from the start it will have you believing that you're about to watch another Veggie Tales video. Only here it's totally interactive and the player has to help Junior Asparagus earn his Cub-Sprout Badges and find Mr. Nezzer's lost treasure. Plus find the silly songs by clicking on certain objects throughout the game, sometimes even twice to find an extra hidden surprise of silliness. And if you read the Cub-Sprout handbook you'll find more tidbits of humor. The nifty activities and puzzles deal with memory and mostly eye to mouse (or on screen cursor) coordination. The Mysteries of Veggie Island keeps up with the Veggie reputation for positive, educational values in entertainment. Making it a wonderful game for your young 'Cub-Sprouts' to become familiar with the use of computers. And to top off the reason for a five star merit badge, is Big Idea's addition of a 'virtual egg timer' giving parents the option of directly monitoring the amount of time spent in game play.

Now for other side, what prevents a five star rating and warrants a four star instead. It's definitely a game tailored for the younger audience and is only mildly entertaining for grown-ups to some degree. The ten Silly Campfire Songs with Larry are adaptations of popular/familiar songs and might seem like something not to be missed, but don't get too excited. They're nothing like Larry's songs from the videos. Yes, they are funny but also extremely short and max out at around 30 seconds each. Plus it doesn't help when you can play the game over again, EXACTLY the same way as before. The games and puzzles have the right complexity and length for kids, but it's just all too easy for us 'big kids'.

For something new, The Mysteries of Veggie Island is an excellent choice for children, and for new beginnings from Big Idea, it shows great promise of what could come.

Way too short [Posted on 2002-12-31]
I agree with everything the other reviewers have said about this game's good points, but it has one HUGE issue... this game is REALLY short. My 4-year-old son finished it in less than an hour on Christmas Day. That's it? He enjoyed it enough to play it over again several times, but I felt cheated. The pictures you see on the box are pretty much the entire game. I think there are less than 20 areas, some of which only take a couple of minutes to get through. As good as the game is, it hardly seems worth the money. I suggest going to the Big Idea website for some FREE Veggie Tales games instead. My son still spends more time on that website than on this game.

EXCELLENT Game [Posted on 2003-11-18]
My 5 year old son loved this games so much he couldn't stop playing it. It only took him 2 days to finish it though so it is short. But it hasn't stopped him from playing it again and again. The adventure is great as I've played it with him. You have to put some thought into finding things and where to go next. Excellent graphics as well.

Good for what it is. [Posted on 2003-12-30]
VeggieTales: The Mystery of Veggie Island is a good but not great game. I wish the ratings alowed for 3.5 stars, but it's closer to a three than a four. The pros include (1) the characters themselves from the shows and movies, (2) a good exploration/adventure story based game where you hunt for clues to solve a mystery, and (3) kids unlock bonus Silly Songs by beating different levels.

The bad is this: once your child beats this game (1-2 hours of play - tops), there is zero replay value. Unlike Freddie Fish and other childrens' puzzle/mystery titles which vary the clue location and order of play, this game plays the exact same way each and every time. I really like the Veggie Tales concept, and my kids enjoyed the 90 minutes it took them to beat this game, but they've never touched it since they tried to play it again and realized it's the exact same game with all of the clues in the exact same place. It becomes a mystery game with no mystery.

XP or 2000 watch out [Posted on 2006-03-13]
I have had great difficulty getting this game to run well on win2k or xp...tried on several computers. Often get crashing on the intro scenes. Of course it was fine on 98, but after I upgraded things became difficult.

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