Buzz! Junior: Dino Den (PS2)

My other half decided one day last year to come home with a PlayStation2 under his arm. Why he thought to do this I'll never know but he did. My eldest kept watching him play different fighting games so I banned them when the kids were awake. He then started playing a snowboarding game. My son gave it a go one day and we found that he was actually quite good with it. Obviously not as good as me because I am Queen of the PlayStation! :)
...one day and came across a few games that said they were appropriate for 3 years and over. I normally tend to take the ages on toys with a pinch of salt as they are normally off. As you may remember from a previous review my son has some Nintendo DS games that were age correct and yet he can't play them as they are way too advanced for him! I took a closer look at this Dinosaur game and saw that it required the Buzz game remotes. We have them so there ... more

My other half decided one day last year to come home with a PlayStation2 under his arm. Why he thought to do this I'll never know but he did. My eldest kept watching him play different fighting games so I banned them when the kids were awake. He then started playing a snowboarding game. My son gave it a go one day and we found that he was actually quite good with it. Obviously not as good as me because I am Queen of the PlayStation! :)

I was walking around the town centre one day and came across a few games that said they were appropriate for 3 years and over. I normally tend to take the ages on toys with a pinch of salt as they are normally off. As you may remember from a previous review my son has some Nintendo DS games that were age correct and yet he can't play them as they are way too advanced for him! I took a closer look at this Dinosaur game and saw that it required the Buzz game remotes. We have them so there was no problem there. I decided as the game was for sale for £12 that I would take a gamble and see if he enjoyed it. After all it was labelled as Buzz Junior and worst case scenario he plays it once and never looks at it again.

He returned from school and was very excited to have a game of his own. We set it up and got the controllers out. The buzzers are colour coded and thus makes starting and playing the game rather easy. At the time he wasn't able to read so I had to read the setup screens to him and he would press the right buttons. Before playing the games you have to answer a couple questions such as which colour (blue, green, yellow and orange) dinosaur you want to be, name, easy medium or hard and then off you go. You can also pick from four different dinosaur looks for your player. The first time we played I was worried about whether or not he'd be able to figure out what to do but thankfully he caught on rather quickly. All of the menu screens have the obvious writing on them but they are also colour coded like everything else to make a childs life easier.

As with most of the Buzz games this one has become a good family game. We all enjoy playing it together and my sons friends have a good time with it.

There are different play options such as practice, single, and multiplayer. If there is only one person playing multiplayer the computer plays the other three players for you. The most players you can have are four. There are 35 different games to play and a team battle mode which we only found the other week.

You can make custom games with certain games in it. For this I had to take over as you do need to be able to read to know which games you are putting into your custom game, but it is handy having a few saved custom games. I have found on a few occasions that I can turn it on and leave the kid to it so I have peace whilst making dinner.

My only advice to you if you plan on buying this game is to encourage your child to pick the same colour dinosaur each time! My son was orange for ages and then suddenly changed to green. Halfway through the game he couldn't figure out why his player wasn't moving ... He was looking at the wrong player!

www.buzzjunior.com

Some other Buzz Junior games include:
Jungle Party
Monster Rumble
Robo Jam

Required for play:
PlayStation2

A set of four buzz controllers can vary in price from £10 - £20. We found wireless ones from Tesco for £15.

© znh3ra54 and oioiyou on Dooyoo 2009  

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