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Reviews
The Princess Bride Game
Posted 09/03/2008 at 9:59:25am | by Susie Ochs

screen shot of Princess bride video game
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

After more than 20 years, Rob Reiner’s 1987 fractured fairy tale The Princess Bride holds up as a fun and funny movie for the whole family. Now Worldwide Biggies has brought the story—including the voice talents of Robin Wright Penn (Buttercup), Wallace Shawn (Vizzini), and Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya)—to your Mac, translated into five different casual and point-and-click game styles slotted between animated videos that trace the plot.

The game’s five stages contain 72 levels in all, but if you take the easiest path, you can make it to the end after solving just 23. The first stage, As You Wish, has you controlling Westley around Buttercup’s farm, completing point-and-click tasks before a timer runs out. At the end of the stage, all the pre-kidnapping events of the movie are explained, Westley leaves, and Buttercup’s heart is broken—your mission in the other four stages is to mend it and reunite the two in true love.

Next is the Battle of Wits, in which Westley faces off against Vizzini answering trivia questions and solving anagrams, again with a time limit. Some of the trivia requires knowledge of the movie, but the scoring is forgiving, at least for the first several rounds. The third stage, The Fire Swamp, has you leading both Westley and Buttercup through several platforming mazes, avoiding fire spurts and battling Rodents of Unusual Size. Miracle Max, the fourth stage, contains find-the-object and mix-the-potion puzzles in Miracle Max’s workshop. And finally, Storming the Castle has you skipping back through previous stages to collect inventory items to construct a Rube Goldberg–like castle-storming device.

screen shot of princess bride game
Buttercup runs Westley ragged on her sunny Florin farm.

The story is told in each stage’s intro and outro scenes, which are animated in a cheery cartoon style. Of the stages, we found As You Wish the most exciting and the most difficult. Hunting for objects to click in Miracle Max’s workshop was good brain-teasing fun, but Vizzini’s questions were either too easy or required too-specific knowledge of details from the film, stuff younger kids might not know. While kids or non-gamers can make it to the end of each stage by solving only five or six levels before being allowed to see the outro video and moving on, players looking for more difficulty should try to unlock all of each stage’s dozen-plus levels before venturing out.

THE BOTTOM LINE
We would have liked more music in the levels themselves, and the addition of some two-player modes or minigames. But the sound, graphics, animation, and story are all charming, and the system requirements fit a wide range of Macs. Kids 8 and up, especially fans of the movie, will play happily ever after

COMPANY: Worldwide Biggies, Inc.
CONTACT: www.princessbridegame.com
PRICE: $19.99
REQUIREMENTS: 867MHz G4 processor or faster, Mac OS 10.4 or later, 512MB RAM
Rated E for Everyone. Ranges in difficulty, but easy enough for kids. Charming animated cutscenes. 
Universal binary.
Single-player only. Some trivia requires knowledge of the movie
4/5
COMMENTS
avatarOne of my favorites!

Don't forget - Westley is none other than the Dread Pirate Roberts!

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