Fix'd Anyway, I'm glad to see this display of ownage arrive on the App Store. As the self proclaimed #1 Enviro-Bear player in the world (11 winters and bringer of the first golden fish screenshot) I can assure you anything from this dev is flat out amazing. Anyways, this game should tide me over until Enviro-Bear 2011 Edit Wild Bears have the same SFX as Enviro-Bear himself, fantastic nostalogic value
I see people taking issue with this statement from the review, but I don't see it as a slight against the game. Hodapp obviously really likes the game. To me, intentionally bad=intentionally awkward and difficult. But that's what makes the game enjoyable, much like EnviroBear. Imagine if EnviroBear was easy to control. It wouldn't have the lasting appeal that it does, as you'd just casually cruise through all the ponds collecting fish without much fuss. It took time to learn how to control your car and it was incredibly challenging to do so. The same thing applies to So Long Oregon. It's really hard to keep your wagon from flipping, or to make it up certain mountains. It takes a lot of practice and a certain degree of luck, and that's what has been keeping me playing the game all day long. It's hard, but rewarding when you get the hang of things. Just my two cents. Also, in case anybody hasn't figured it out yet, you can play as EnviroBear by tapping the icon in the upper right corner of the title screen. I actually think he's more fun to play with than the wagons are
Game Impressions Simply put, there is no way to improve upon this game. It's a masterpiece of game design and of modern thought.
!! I think you're right. The game doesn't end just because you find El Dorado. If you keep going forward you simply fall off the edge and die. THE GAME DOESN'T END AT EL DORADO. YOU HAVE TO RETURN HOME WITH YOUR GOLD. I'm pretty certain this is what you have to do-- when you reach El Dorado, you get 500 food also. You lose gold when your wagon flips over. Your score is counted by how much you return with. this game just got twice as awesome! in the original it just ended at El Dorado.
OK, bought this last night, and I have to say, if you're a big fan of the original Oregon Trail... just buy this game. It's like a streamlined version of the original Oregon Trail crossed with Excitebike. Plus, if you're really familiar with the original game, you'll be pretty much constantly laughing until it hurts from moment one. There's enough random/insane stuff going on to keep you coming back to it over and over. Plus, the graphics alone give it more of a "real" Oregon Trail vibe to me than the Gameloft version. One thing I really do wish is that you could still pick your occupation (maybe for different bonuses, or even just for different colored wagons... or whatever), and name your family. Naming your family is pretty much my biggest wish to be included in an update. Why... I dunno. It doesn't make any difference to anything, it was just always one of my favorite things to do in Oregon Trail. I think it's because when I was a kid it made it seem more "RPG" ish. In terms of the controls, I really don't think they're bad, but the way the layout of the levels affects your wagon is certainly annoying, and I think that's intentional (ie, getting stuck between two steep hills, and having to back up over the first hill and try to gain enough speed to jump over the valley). Plus it's occasionally pretty hilarious to just see your wagon doing multiple flips in the air when you're shooting flying badgers which inexplicably turn into roasted turkeys. I don't care, and I don't really have any great love for Enviro Bear (as a game that is), but I'm recommending this one.
As much as I can see that this game attempts to be historically accurate to the most minute of details (including the flying beavers we all recall from the historical writings of the time), is the course you take each game somewhat randomized each go (do the placement of the mountains change slightly from play to play)?
Thought you might ask this. And yeah, they appear to be. I'm not the most observant of that type of thing, so you might want to wait for someone else to pipe up to confirm, but I do remember one really annoying valley I got stuck into the first time I played that didn't seem to be there the second time.
I like the idea and I was a big supporter of Enviro-Bear. But c'mon 1.99? This is a joke title and should be at the .99 price. I think a lot of titles on the app store are underpriced so I'm not crying about it in that aspect. I just feel you're riding off the Enviro-Bear success with this title.
People are enjoying it, therefore it's not a joke title, it's a niche/cult title. A joke app would be all those x-ray machines and cellphone location gadgets.
Joke title has nothing to do about enjoying the app or not. iFart apps are joke titles and run at the 99 price. This is a joke app along with Enviro-Bear.
Speaking from a pure playability perspective, I never got into enviro-bear (though it did make me laugh). This game I actually enjoy playing. I wouldn't consider it a joke app, even though the constant Oregon Trail references make me laugh pretty frequently.
While clearly only possible from the sick mind of Mr. Enviro-Bear, I'm a bit intrigued as this game actually has a point (or at least a score). Sure it is sold as a parody of Oregon Trial, there is actually a pretty original twisted game here that combines Oregon Trail with Excite Bike/Alpine Crawler in such a novel way it makes ones brain melt just a little. I also will admit it might be something us older gamers who witnessed, if not simply Oregon Trail, those early Apple II/Commodore 64 games that this game is so clearly modeling itself as stylistically. If your gaming experience started on a Playstation or Xbox you may just not get that this is what games looked like back in the day.
There's a hell of a lot of retro nostalgia going on here, not just because it references and draws inspiration from real games, but also because those of us who played games back in the pre-NES games remember all too well just how difficult and unforgiving some of them could be, and also how badly designed/programmed they could be. Back then it didn't matter quite as much, if a game was brutally hard or plagued by glitches, we worked around it. We persevered because there wasn't much else to play, this was technology evolving right before our eyes. Some got it wrong, some got it right, but we lapped it all up without bias or prejudice because it was all we knew. A game with shaky controls, featuring a wagon performing ridiculous physics-defying stunts over mountains might seem like a total cop-out these days, but once upon a time there were actually genuine, serious games that played in surprisingly similar ways. I honestly miss those days, which is why So Long, Oregon! is going on my iPod and staying there.
It wasn't really supposed to be a review... if I was writing a review that'd be the gist of my final paragraph though.
