Hurry! Save the Princess!

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Princess Bride. Well...I don't know about favorite of all time--in fact, I'm quite nervous to even mention how much I adored this movie (my inner machismo). Nonetheless, this is a classic tale of young romance, in which after being missing for many years, a young woman's childhood sweetheart and real knight-and-shining-armor rescues her from the arms of her future husband, the evil prince. With a side of humor and well-constructed story line, this tale won over the hearts of women (and men too) everywhere.

What's the natural progression of a great story? First, there's the written text; then the screen adaptation; and finally...a video game? Yes--that's right. Our lovable movie, The Princess Bride, is now a video game. Although I do not have children yet--I still have nieces, nephews and students that are very much into video games. Oh--and did I mention a husband who is still a child at heart? Thus, I decided to take a few hours to test the game out myself. Before making the purchase, find out the pros and cons of this video game adventure:

Pros

1. This is a great educational tool for children ages 6-10. Implicitly, children learn and extend upon knowledge skills such as counting, following directions and mixing colors.

2. Practice the art of multi-tasking. In this busy world that we live in , we are always doing more than one thing at a time. This game helps players to multi-task with various challenges.

3. Excellent backdrop of the original movie. The video game did a fairly decent job of capturing the original movie's key moments. I definitely see the logic behind creating an adventure game based on a man's mission to win back the love of his life.

4. Snazzy animation. The video game even has an intro/outro that displays clips of the movie--that way, if you didn't catch it, you'll know enough about it before you begin playing.

Cons

1. Graphics are mediocre. I guess they are okay for a PC game. The game would reach more people if they added more graphics and created this for one of the PC-Generation systems. I guess that's what beta testing is for, eh?

2. For all ages? Yeah right. I know that I am a 27 year old, Master's Degree educated individual--but it took me every bit of an hour to beat the entire game! The questions were way too easy. The creators should consider designating this game for ages 6-10 only.

There you have it. The Princess Bride video game synopsis. Would I buy this for myself? No. But, I would consider giving this game to my 7 year old niece.