The Oregon Trail (DSiWare) Review

Are we there yet?
The Oregon Trail has been on the DSi Shop for a while and I finally got around to playing it and it is a pretty awesome surprise. It looks like it popped out of a Looney Tunes cartoon and you start out on the east side of America with 5 family members. You got to make it to the West side of America. The controls are really simple, it's all touch based and there are options on what you want to do. You could rest for 1 - 3 days, you could run, walk or power-walk. Your family will get tired and you will have to stop, you can get food by playing mini-games, or if your wagon breaks down, another mini-game. Some of the mini-games are fun while others feel like there unplayable. There's some voice work and a wild west tune that repeats. You could either hear it very fast when you run or very slow when your walking. But don't walk it all the way, you have one of 3 months to start in, either March, May or June. If you start in June, then don't be taking your time. You got to make it to the end before November. I played this twice, I started in May, made it in November. The second time I started in March and my whole family died. I started a new game recently and I started in June and I know I'm not gunna make it in time for November, but then again I shouldn't have walked it so much. For a game that feels small, you get a lot of replayibility. You could play this over and over again and it'll still be fun. You can take photos whenever you get to a certain point on your journey, you talk to some of history's most famous like Abraham Lincoin. What's even cooler is that this is based on a real trail that actually existed in America back in the day and on some of the loading screens, which take to long to load, there are facts about the trail and some of the famous people you meet on it. For 800 Nintendo Points, this is a pretty awesome package. Yes, it does have a few downs, but it makes up for it in how much fun it is. This is probably the closest thing to Red Dead Redemption that the DSi Shop or the DS will see until Rockstar games makes a portable Red Dead or someone makes a Mature rated Wild West game like Red Dead for Nintendo's handheld. But until then, The Oregon Trail is getting an 8 out of 10.