The Great Games Compendium 2 (UK Version)

Description:

Choose from one of five games available on one disc. Some of the games have a choice of difficulty setting and some contain both single and multiplayer modes. The activities are:

Feeding Frogs - help the frog catch ten flies, without being caught by the stork yourself. In order to get your dinner, you have a choice of three heights to jump, depending on what height the fly is buzzing past at. There are two difficulty settings.

Peck The Woodlouse - click on the woodlice as they crawl through holes in the tree trunk. There are three difficulty settings, I tried the second and found it extremely difficult.

Shooting Stars - catch the stars in your basket as they fall from the sky. You'll have to move left and right to be in the right place to grab them.

Get The Girl - is a snakes and ladders game, of sorts. You have to help your three sailors to climb up the tower to rescue Rapunzel. You'll be playing against either the computer or another player.

Move The Muddle - is a sliding puzzle game. The picture of a spaceship has been broken into pieces and you have to slide them around until they are in the right order again.

Features:

• Mixture of arcade and puzzles
• 5 activities
• Some games have difficulty levels, some offer multiplayer options

Technical Aspects:

I had no technical trouble at all with the game. The installation was straightforward and I found no bugs whatsoever.

The graphics were cartoony and well drawn, and the sound was fine. The games were well explained and there was always the option to hear the rules explained again if you didn't catch them the first time round.

Report and Conclusions:

It's nice to see a varied collection of five games available on one CD. And when they're well made and challenging that's even better. The five games in this collection are just that.

The best game is probably Get The Girl, it takes the longest and has a couple of surprises in there. You are also playing against someone so you aren't guaranteed a win every time. When I played against the computer though, I thought that the other team was cheating - they seemed to get more "throws of the dice" than me, but I expect that it was merely the fact I was losing that did it. Another good thing about this collection was that it was a challenge. I didn't find every game ridiculously easy, which means that as children play, they will keep on at a game until they complete it; which apart from giving the game longevity, also improves their persistence.

So, if you're after a good collection of entertaining games, keep an eye out for this package, at only £10 for five games, you can't go far wrong.