Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue [Xbox]

A girl and her horse, is there anything sweeter than that? Publisher Vivendi Universal didn't think so and got developer Blitz Games to make Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue. Obviously not going for a hardcore market or even a male market, or really anyone except for preteen girls, BHA:WHR is heading straight for the pink aisle.

A bunch of horses get scared off by a lightning storm and head for the hills, leaving Barbie in charge of bringing them back. What follows is a lot of slow walking and horse riding in order to find the lost horses. If anything, this game will teach girls that video games look and play terrible and that life is about getting presents and petting horses.

Gameplay Barbie rides the horse most of the time, but when anything besides basic transportation needs to be taken care of, off the horse she goes. Sometimes this will be because Barbie needs to climb over an obstacle in order to clear the way, other times it's to rescuer one of the foals. To catch a foal, Barbie pets their head and leads them to a nearby hitching post so she can tie them up and call in to the stables on her cell phone. The most interesting thing that happens in the whole game is the lassoing of the big horses that don't want to go back.

Other than the horses, coins are scattered throughout the map for Barbie to collect. These coins can be used to buy more outfits for Barbie to try on. Getting all of them requires scouring the whole trail for every coin.

The majority of the game is simple and approachable for kids to play and a good introduction to video game logic, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The control is awkward and slow and forces Barbie to slowly move around or slowly back her horse up to try again. Since getting all of the coins requires a lot of backtracking and careful navigation, this drags the game out much longer than it needs to.

Climbing up on a box or a ledge requires Barbie to be almost exactly in the middle of the object. I was trying to climb up onto a higher level and had to come back to the ledge a couple times before I was allowed up. Similar difficulties were in other objects that needed to be interacted with or climbed on.

There are a few other features, but they never amount to much. Barbie can wash her horse to make it happier or dress up in different outfits, but the actual game never goes anywhere. This is all a slight step up from playing with dolls. Now the dolls are on TV and can talk.

Graphics BHA:WHR has every possible graphical problem that exists. The characters are low in polygons and look freakish. Barbie here is an anorexic who looks to be in severe danger of being shattered to pieces by riding her horse.

The environments fare just as poorly. Poorly done textures are wrapped on low polygon environments and they still cause the framerate to drop down to a few frames a second at times. The coins in the game aren't even polygons themselves, but sprites. They're blocky refugees from an old Nintendo game that got slapped into this one. Despite the graphics being simple, it still takes a long time to load any different scene, forcing girls to look at status bars for a good chunk of time.

Even worse, the camera is difficult to control and often sweeps around for no reason. Since this game is designed for girls who have very little gaming experience, this is a huge problem. Instead of creating a beautiful and flowing environment, Barbie fans are stuck with seeing their hero looking terrible in a blocky environment. If they can control the camera, that is.

Sound The soundtrack has a few tracks from a generic new age CD. Lots of bird chirps, water rustles, and other happy, happy sounds. The voices are decently done and it's amazing to see just how cheerful every girl or woman in this game is. This will help show girls that the world is a happy place with girls who have glued-on grins and their biggest worry is how to get a better outfit.

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