The Polar Express
Tags: Express, Polar
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on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 3:55 am and is filed under Pc Games.
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May 24th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Working in the software industry, I know how things work. QA finds problems during testing, Development claims it takes too long to fix problems, Marketing ignores everything and give Sales the “go ahead” to sell the product anyway…and this is the result. Here are the reasons I gave 1 star (would have given -1 but…)
1. Very difficult to install (you must be comfortable with computer internals). It requires configuration changes to eliminate sound and video glitches unles your PC is brand new and has the latest and greatest in terms of video and sound cards.
2. Even though there are several Chapters with 2-3 games in each, you can only select the first game of the first chapter. Due to the level of difficulty, we (my son and I) have not been able to complete the 1st game so we haven’t seen how the other ones are.
3. The (poor) booklet that comes with the S/W mentions a SAVE option, which in reality, does not exist. So, every time the little boy runs out of “lives” or if you want to quit the game, you can not save it. The S/W kicks you out and you need to start from total scratch.
4. Very poor customer support. The 800 number does not get you anywhere and the website does not have any entry for this particular S/W.
All in all, I strongly suggest that you save your money until something better comes up. I also bought my son the GameBoy version but since I haven’t given to him yet, I’m seriously thinking about returning it.
Rating: 1 / 5
May 24th, 2010 at 8:44 am
DO NOT BUY THIS CD ROM. YOU ARE WASTING YOUR MONEY. This product made by THQ, priced at $19.99, for my grandson for Christmas 2004, is still sitting on his CD shelf. I installed it on our new computer and then un-installed it. The software is very poor. I have purchased approximately 50 CD ROMs for my grandson and never had problems like I had with Polar Express.
It was very difficult to install. I called Customer Support and they told me I needed to install an additional video and sound card on my NEW top of the line Dell computer. I could tell the representative did not know what they were talking about, because this was the same thing they told me when I called Customer Support when I had problems installing the software on my old HP computer. Forget about getting help on their website. Basically, we have a pretty Polar Express box sitting on our CD shelf.
Rating: 1 / 5
May 24th, 2010 at 10:13 am
This is a very frustrating game. This reminds me of the first Harry Potter game where there is one section of the game in the beginning which is very challenging. Once you get past that first part, the rest of the game is fun. Except getting past the first part in Polar Express game is harder than playing Half Life and much less rewarding. It is really sad because the graphics in this game are very nice. The game has the potential to be absolutely fantastic. Instead, it will just drive you nuts.
Rating: 1 / 5
May 24th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
THQ did a good job in the annimation of the characters, and the plot line is good.
There are several severe drawbacks though which would prevent me from :
No cameral angles. It is straight ahead only. No panoramic views, which means keyboard only and no mouse controls.
No ability to change the controls.
No manual save, the game designates save points, and on top of it, you have to go through many scenarios before a save point arrives. You only have 5 chances of getting through them all before the game ends, before you run out of “life” or “heart,” Your “heart” level doesn’t increase between scenarios.
Objects are sometimes difficult to capture. The game requires several complex jumps in order to capture objects, but because there is no camera, it is difficult to determine how close or far you are from the object.
All in all, I feel that they rushed this to the shelves to meet the Christmas season, and even though it wasn’t expensive, I am still disappointed when games don’t perform to a satisfactory level.
Rating: 1 / 5
May 24th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
This software makes it extremely difficult to grab objects, then penalizes the frustrated child by preventing the child from saving the game (because the child can’t progress far enough to have earned the ability to save a game).
Avoid this software.
Rating: 1 / 5