Completion Time: 2h:14m:00s
Rating: 2/10

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Vamanos!

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So, it’s come to this. In order to get through some games quickly to make room for the weekly October GameCube Horror blog posts, I’ve been reduced to completing a baby game. Quite literally, there is no form of shade I’m trying to throw here. I think anyone can agree that “Dora the Explorer” would be a baby game, just barely on the edge of what might be considered “edutainment” before you come out on the other side with flashing-color slop. The beautiful thing about this experiment I’m running through is that I’d have to complete this one soon enough anyways, so no skin off my bones! Might as well jump on in and learn some elementary level Spanish while we’re at it!

This is gonna be outta this world! Or completely mundane and boring, who's to say?

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Do You See the Color Blue?

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There’s hardly anything here to discuss, as unsurprising as that is. Dora and her monkey friend Boots meet a bunch of aliens that need to make their way to their home, the locked up and isolated Purple Planet. You need to “adventure” your way past several colored planets to collect 5 keys that will unlock the gate to said final Purple Planet. Along the way you rely on random items from your backpack (named “Backpack”) and level direction from your map (named “Map”), and you meet characters that are in no way villainous and only provide obstacles through their own incompetence. “Oh, you need to pass through my door? Well, I’m a giant organ, so it’s a musical lock, but I’ve forgotten the code! It’s a shame I’m so stupid!”

Who built this monstrosity, and why?

The puzzles are nothing and the platforming is nothing, because the game has no fail state. Instead, rather predictably, it coaches you through your failures by encouraging you that even though you’re wrong, you can always try again. Selecting items to help solve problems from your trusty backpack is easy, because if you pick the wrong thing backpack will say he doesn’t think that will work. No need to provide us with extra animations of a task failing due to poor item selection! If you’re swinging across a river of hungry alligators, don’t fret about missing a button press and having Dora fall to an early demise. Instead, just mash the button wildly, trusting that the game will take the one correct input and progress the scene accordingly. It’s mind-numbing at a certain point, not helped by how surprisingly long the game is. It just kept going. I was always on edge that another colored planet would be revealed, prolonging my arrival at that fabled Purple one.

This is an asteroid field, be careful! I swear, Dora is the most reckless person I know!

The most baffling thing about the game, though, is the gems. To fuel this rocket that Dora has borrowed, at the end of each stage you need to have something between 5-10 gems that you can place into the reserves. As you traipse around the environment, jumping and dashing around, you’ll come across WAY more gems than you’ll ever need, and you just walk into them to pick them up. They aren’t necessarily hidden or found through puzzle-solving. Just grab them. There’s not really a counter to help you, but you won’t be longing for gems by any means. The interesting thing is I don’t know what happens if you reach the end without the required number of gems. They’re so easy to get ahold of that I never ran into that problem! But I imagine they wouldn’t let that happen, thanks to the game’s hand-holding nature. If someone wants to buy and pop this in, let me know! I’m NOT going back through this.

I've already collected more than enough gems to leave the planet, and we haven't even touched down yet...

Speaking of rockets, I guess the map is a rocket now? Not sure how that helps him with navigation, but sure

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Completing the Game

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There is no completing this game that isn’t just finishing the game. Did you really expect anything different, though? There are no unlockables to speak of. No Dora clips that can be purchased with in game points, no counter for the gems that you can collect on each of the stages. That part is at least strange, because Dora will congratulate you for collecting all the gems in the stage, but it doesn’t keep track and that doesn’t count towards anything either. And again, what would you expect? The game holds your hand the whole way so as not to isolate the target audience, so it’s just a matter of progressing through the game, collecting whatever gems you come across, and finishing out the game that honestly lasts for way longer than I expected. So yeah, no completion, but it doesn’t really need anything like that.

The thrilling climax of the game is determining where the "rojo" key goes

This is far from the last of these slighter experiences I’ll be engaging with and writing about in this series (in fact, I have another one coming up in two weeks)! But it’s still important, in a way, to see what the console’s library has to offer and what sort of material we’ve evolved from. Hell, the fact that the game isn’t even a problem to play is a triumph in and of itself, but I can’t in good conscience say I’d ever give my child a game like this to play. There are other edutainment materials that offer way more for education AND entertainment.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 40/652