Nat Geo Challenge! Wild Life is a game that has been recently released by D3Publisher and developer Gusto Games. As a whole the entire game is simply a quiz game geared towards a very young audience. It mixes together National Geographic video and pictures (in HD) with questions geared towards learning about different parts of the animal kingdom. Informative? Very. Good enough to sit down and pick up immediately? Definitely. Solid in gameplay? It’s got some problems.
The gameplay is broken down in several categories for the young gamers out there. You get quizzes, quests and a variety of puzzles to play. Players choose their colorful frog characters, type in their names and go at each type of play. Here’s how it all breaks down…
The quizzes are pretty simple, as they involve multiple choice, picture revealing, and a variety of video to answer questions from. The presentation of the quizzes is entertaining and welcoming, as you get a strong voice over mixed with some high definition footage and animation. The quests are nearly the same, except that they are themed to particular parts of the world. For example, you can do quests on ocean creatures or quests on dangerous animals or another two categories the game provides. Once you choose a quest it locks the other three down until you complete that quest, which is great motivation for the younger gamers to do better. Along the way you get some useful information and the opportunity to do puzzles related to that particular category. Overall, both ways to play are packed with a ton of entertainment for the kids in your household (I know mine loved this game).
Besides the quizzes and quests, you also get the opportunity to do puzzles and sliders individually. For example, if you have a child (or you) like puzzles then the game comes with the option to only do puzzles (the ones you have unlocked, of course). Again, very neat stuff that’s simple to use.
With all that said, the game does have some problems. The questions range from easy to hard (you can choose your own level) and that works out really well. The problem in half the instances is the video or pictures shown during the questions sometimes have little to do with the actual questions in the game. So, you get no real preparation for the questions before they are asked. For learning games they generally give you the information way ahead of time and then ask you questions about the information you gathered. Sometimes the information you do get simply throws you off from the question that is asked. For example, when I was learning about the catfish (river monsters) and how big they can grow the voice over told me they can grow as big as a bus. The multiple choice given for the same question has no ‘bus’ answer intact. For kids that will be confusing. For adults that will be confusing. The main problem with this is that it will frustrate the gamer to the point where they won’t want to play the game or go the extra mile to learn. Since the majority of the game is based on quizzes it’s a tough sell to say the game is competent when it comes to that type of gameplay. It simply does not do the job of asking questions and giving information well.
Now, the game is hurt severely by this, but it’s not a complete loss. There are stretches where kids will be completely enthralled with what’s going and the puzzles and other add-ons might be worth the price of admission. It all depends on what your kids like. My kids were begging me to keep playing the game, so that says a lot about the game when it comes entertaining kids. If you’re an adult though you will see the flaws of the game immediately, which is sad. The redeeming value of it all could be the cost, which is only $29.99 (that’s not bad at all). I could see this game as something interesting for that price point. It would be a great stocking stuffer for someone getting a next generation system or someone with kids needing to justify the next generation expense.
Another bonus for the game is the ability to have 2-4 players go up against each other. Any time you can include multiplayer in the mix with kids games then you’re creating a fun environment. What’s really too bad is that this game doesn’t allow the use of the Buzz! controllers in the mix. It’s not a major gripe, but those controllers are so underused and they would be perfect for a format like this, especially if you don’t have four controllers available. The Buzz! controllers are super cheap in comparison to the PS3 dual shock. Again, the multiplayer is pretty cool.
The game is fun, but again the inconsistency with the information when it applies to quizzes brings it down quite a bit. Kids will get a kick out of it and not notice it too much, but ultimately it will be difficult to ignore if you’re an adult.