If you are a parent looking to purchase a kid friendly game for your young toddler, then this game will definitely fit the bill.
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A game like this is rather difficult for an editor to score because of the target age group. To any gamer over the age of 8, the score of this game would be right between a 3 or 4 out of 10. But to a young gamer age 3 through 6, this game would score about an 8.5 out of 10.
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Noddy: A Day In Toy Land is a very simple and basic game. Based off the TV show, the player takes control of Noddy, a puppet looking character who always wears a sleeping cap. Most of the game takes place from a sidescrolling point of view, but a few car driving stages will bring a little more variation into this kid based title. This title is strictly targeting the younger age group. Because this game’s simplistic nature, themes, and difficulty, I cannot really see any child older than six years of age enjoying this title.
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It would be easy for me to tear this game apart, being the more mature gamer, but young children could have fun playing this game. About 80% of the levels are sidescrolling platformers. Noddy walks a little slow and his jump is quite low and stiff, but that was probably the point. Perhaps this game could have benefited from a “run” button like in the first Mario Bros. game, but that could have brought a little too much complexity into this game geared towards toddlers.
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Each stage will have players collecting coins and other key-like items. However, collecting coins do not seem to result in any type of reward. I must have collected 100’s of coins but did not notice any type of bonus. I even purposely “died” to see if I had gathered an extra life, but that was not the case. Collecting coins seems to be only cosmetic.
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Noddy has quite a health bar. He can take several hits from enemies such as pacing monkeys or dancing clowns before a retry will be instated. But there is one way to stop these dreaded rabid man eating monkeys in their paths. Yes, you guessed it. Whip muffins at them! By throwing a muffin at their face, the monkeys will stop in their tracks to eat it, allowing Noddy to walk right by. Ok, I’m done making fun. It’s a kid’s game, remember?
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Some levels do not want the player to get injured. For example, there is one stage where Noddy must travel on top of some moving mine carts. However, if Noddy walks into these mine carts head on, they will automatically teleport to the top instead of losing health by getting run over. The player has the option to play any level of the game from the first time the game is powered up. Again, this further promotes the idea of a kid friendly game.
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From time to time, the sidescrolling stages will be broken up by car driving stage, somewhat similar to Excitebike. Here, the player must reach the end without running into hazards on the road such as rocks and farm animals. The D-pad controls all this action, but any other button will cause the car to honk. While this feature, like collecting coins, does not really add any functionality to the game, it can be seen as a kid-friendly extra. But then again, why have a toddler participate in car driving stages when they are more than a decade away from driving a car of their own? And in the dog rescue level, why is the dog located on the roof of a building? How did he get up there, and should Noddy really be jumping to the top of buildings? Perhaps I am looking too far into this.
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The graphics are very basic, sporting single blocked bright colors. While this simple, but colorful theme would seem to be ideal for a kid’s game, it would actually really benefit from a little more detail. Platforms blended into the background too many times. This just causes confusion on what is interactive and what is not. All animations are very bland as well. Using only a few frames of animation, all characters walk like they have sticks up their butts. But before and after each stage, the user is greeted with a friendly still frame picture to help materialize the story.
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Unfortunately, the sound department is pretty horrendous, even considering this is a kid’s game. I am pretty sure this game only has one musical track. But what is really agitating is the fact that this single track is continuously looped. It even bleeds from the pause of level one into level 2 and so forth. This one musical track just does not stop. And there is even a lack of sound effects. Shouldn’t Noddy make a “jump” noise like Mario does whenever he leaps in the air?
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Here is the bottom line: Noddy is a game that was designed for very young gamers. Parents should definitely consider this title if they want a non-violent, non-frustrating, and simple game for their son or daughter. However, this game might not entertain even young players for very long, considering I finished every level within 35 minutes. Noddy is actually one of the shortest games I have ever played. But children ages 3-6 will have the best time with this game. If your little GBA user is older, you should probably look to a different title such as Disney’s Aladdin or Finding Nemo. But I must say, for the target age group of 3 to 6 years old, Noddy is one of the best games to fit in that category.