Running On Empty
A Review of Big Job
John Butterfield
It's games! It's music videos! It's education!
It's a mess.
It's Big Job, a CD-ROM about big, big trucks, construction vehicles, farm equipment and fire and rescue engines from Discovery Channel Multimedia. The normally reliable folks at Discovery took a wrong turn with this confusing educational vehicle. They don't lose their license to drive, but it's time they went back to study the rules of the road.
Rated for ages 4 through 8, Big Job offers a chance to explore the world of big trucks and construction equipment. Well and good; anyone who's tried to drag a hypnotized 5-year-old away from a construction site knows that monster trucks grip a child's brain waves like four-wheel-drive Megazords.
But just because they're hypnotized doesn't mean the junior truck jockeys are brain dead. The best children's multimedia has raised the standard of excellence so high that companies wishing to compete had best be ready to be the best in the field or break new ground. However, rather than excelling or innovating, Big Job piddles and imitates.
Utilizing the tired notion of a child's clubhouse to introduce its activities, Big Job presents vehicles ranging from snorkel truck to combines, flatbeds to pumpers.
Animated guides, including a computer with a Brooklyn accent, a veddy proper robotic driving companion and a pair of chipper kids - steer the user through a look at big vehicles used by firefighters, farmers and construction workers. By exploring the options, guiding a vehicle down a winding road to encounter games and videos, and collecting "trading cards" (still shots of vehicles with statistics and accompanying 10-second video clips) children are supposed to soak up the big-rig experience.
Don't bet the farm. By trying to be all things - game, kiddie-level reference, interactive medium and sit-and-watch documentary, Big Job loses its focus and underwhelms in almost all categories.
There are far better games than the nine derivative, repetitious gamelets that kids will find by driving through the Big Job's countryside and examining their collected cards , or the several additional stand-alone gaming activities accessed from the clubhouse. Do the stacked-up veggies in "Grain Game" ring a bell? It's "Tetris" gone green. Does "Winston's Simsite" seem Sim-ilar to oh, "SimCity 2000?" Similar, but inferior - SimCity Lite. These games have been done before, and far, far better.
A similar watered-down quality affects the informational aspects of the disc. Yes, children can see heavy equipment in use - but only in short squibbets of full-motion video, or in a set of MTV-ish fast video cuts in four instantly forgettable music videos.
It's a shame, because there's plenty of room on the disc for additional text, diagrams, how-it-works information and the like, to make Big Job the jump-start to a child's imagination that the better Discovery CD-ROMs can be.
Technically, the video is clear and smooth, the sound is excellent and the animation and artwork bright, cheery and fun. But that's like chrome bumpers on a garbage truck. It may look pretty, but something still smells.
If you want to foster curiosity and imagination about big rigs, buy your kids a Tonka truck and let them bash around the sandbox. Better yet, take them down to the firehouse, or out to the countryside when spring planting is churning up the soil.
Just steer clear of Big Job.
School House Scorecard
| Product: |
Big Job |
| Company: |
Discovery Communications, Inc.
|
| Cost: |
$49.95 |
System Requirements:
P.C.:
486-25Mhz, double-speed CD-ROM,
4MB RAM (8 recommended), 256 colors
Macintosh:
Performa, Centris or PowerMac series computer,
System 7.0, double-speed CD-ROM,
4MB RAM (8 recommended), 256 colors.
Breakdown:
Ease of Use 2
Learning Value 2
Entertainment Value 3
Graphics 4
Sound 5
Overall Score:
Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.