Polly Pocket: Super Splash Island

Fortunately for me, I happen to know a young girl who likes Polly Pocket, and I also enlisted her in helping me write this review as it is a specific audience that would purchase a Polly Pocket game. That being said this review took an awful lot from a certain 12 year old girl.

In Polly, the idea of the game is to ride the rides and collect tickets in order to open up a water slide, not just any water slide, the world's craziest waterslide (in the Polly world). As you collect tickets more of the waterslide is opened up, so when you have 2000 tickets, you can ride the slide for X amount of time. Then when you collect 4000 tickets the slide gets even longer, get it?

Now there is something else that should be noted and that is the difficulty of the game. You see, whenever you select one of the various rides in the water park (Polly won tickets for her and her friends) the game gives you the option to play it easy, medium or hard. Now pretty quickly, you will discover that only if you play the hard level will 'flowers'? become attainable. These flowers, once collected, unlock the dressing rooms scattered around the park that allow Polly more changes of clothes.

Polly and her friends can each be selected in the two player mode, which is basically a 'see who can get the higher score'? type of gameplay as you pass your GBA back and forth. This multiplayer mode is a viable way to play given the style of game. And graphically the game does pass muster, only just so. The various games that Polly plays are familiar in an arcade like way.

There is the river ride, the water squirter, bumper boats, a tube game, water ski race and a river crossing game that plays an awful lot like the classic 'Frogger'?. I was told that the bumper boats, the river ride (rapids) and river crossing were easily the most enjoyable.

Sadly the audio is lacking with only some basic background effects and a looping score that is lightly upbeat. Polly herself doesn't speak other then the grunts that she utters while playing and it was a big disappointment to my assistant that she did not speak.

In the end, Polly is an alright title, there is some challenges to be met here and the end result water slide would probably kill someone if they made it for real. Young girls will enjoy this title because there is fun to be had and you don't see too many games aimed at the young girl audience.