Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat...
© 2000 Humongous Entertainment
While wolfing down cookies in order to collect box tops for an action figure, Pajama Sam inadvertently finds himself plunked on Mop Top Island— the center of a terrible healthy food versus junk food conflict. Pajama Sam makes the mistake of telling some inhabitants (Candies, Cookies and other Sweets) that he'd better not eat anymore because his appetite for supper will be ruined. The sweet foods throw him into jail with a broccoli peacemaking activist, whose efforts to get to a diplomatic peacemaking meeting were thwarted. After a heroic escape, Sam is given the important mission of rescuing four more lost peacemakers. In true Pajama Sam form, this latest adventure is challenging but extremely engaging. Our testers struggled to figure out, for instance, how much sand to add to the bottom of a hot air balloon that was stuck on a mountain top, and the clues given were much too difficult. In another scene, it took kids nearly an hour of searching to find the plunger necessary to convince plumbers to loan Sam a wrench, and they never did discover that a pumpkin is a gourd, another tidbit necessary to complete the game. Is it too hard? Maybe. Because there is no help system, our three-, four- and five-year-old testers could never have completed the adventure without the help of older siblings and parents. In fact, if you consider what's required in terms of logic and memory, the program is really most appropriate for kids aged six to ten. Even with this significant flaw, however, when we asked our test families whether or not they'd buy the program, they unanimously answered "yes." This is due to the fact that the graphics, story line and character development are all exceptional, giving the game unusual depth and playability. Note that there is a PlayStation version available of this game.
$24.99, Win, Mac OS (CD-ROM)
Teaches: logic, memory, health and nutrition, science