Frozen: Olaf’s Quest – Nintendo DS

My 5 yr. old daughter was so excited about this game because she loves the movie Frozen and especially liked the character of Olaf. In the game, you basically collect snowflakes and flowers but for no real purpose. There is absolutely no problem-solving involved for gathering the snowflakes and the levels are pretty basic. For a 3 year old, this would probably be a fun game, but my 5 yr. old was bored after 5 minutes and only picks up the game to hear Olaf sing at the very beginning and then puts it down before the game actually starts.

Wow. This is among one of the worst DS games I’ve ever played, period, let alone the worst Disney-related video game. Apparently, the company behind the title, GameMill, seems to see the DS as a mobile device, considering they’ve ported Doodle Jump to it AND made this game in a suspicious mobile-style format (Complete with the giant icons representing options).

So what’s the story? Does it follow the movie? Well, I’m not one who has seen it (Unfortunately – I hear it’s great), but the game doesn’t explain ANYTHING. The story is told through picture stills of Olaf’s escapades, and it’s hard to tell what he’s looking out for until the ending.

The game is a 60-level (Trust me, it’s ridiculously short) 2D platformer, but each level tries to be a collect-a-thon, except failing miserably. You can go to the end of the level, regardless of the amount of flowers or objects you collect, and nothing you collect in the game is worth diddly squat, so what’s the point? The unfortunate part about this, though, is that the game’s levels are almost entirely consisting of collecting things. Hardly any enemies could be found. In fact, the first enemy in the game you encounter is a wolf in LEVEL 29! That’s nearly HALF the game! And even THEN, wolf encounters in the game are RARE.

While Olaf may walk rather slowly, it doesn’t matter because the levels are BITE-SIZED. 95% of the levels last WAY LESS THAN A MINUTE, while the other 5% consist of auto-scrolling levels.
What I think is even funnier is when the game decides to slowly add in something new into a level. As the game progresses, it tells you a new move you can do. HOWEVER, you’re actually able to do all the moves ever since the first level. You could hover, double jump, throw your head, and ground pound, but the game decides to hide all that info on how to do so until later. Trust me when I say that the game somehow made the moves less fun to do than they should have been.

With no fun to be had throughout in this game that feels like it was made in 2 weeks, Frozen: Olaf’s Quest is one of the worst DS games you could come across. It makes the Wreck-It Ralph game look good! Heck, It makes Rock ‘n’ Roll Adventures look like Super Mario 64! THAT’S how sorry of a licensed title this is!

Bottom line: Game Mill is the worst company whose titles I’ve come across. And this is just one of the two games from the company I’ve played (The other being the horrendously cashed in Doodle Jump game for DS). Stay away from this game, and anything by Game Mill.

I purchased this game for my two boys who both absolutely loved the movie Frozen. With Olaf as their favorite character, I hoped this game would be fun, especially with all of the positive reviews so far! My boys, ages 7 and 10, spent about 10 minutes with Olaf’s Frozen Quest before handing it back to me with disappointed faces. I popped it into my Nintendo DS, (being an involved Dad, its a must to own one for yourself these days! Plus, its fun!) and quickly realized exactly why they were so let down. When you get into the game you get one button, START. Then it takes you to choose which number you have your game saved to or if you’d like to start up a new game. There are only three buttons here. 1,2 and 3. Then you get 8 buttons to choose from. Nothing is labeled with words so its confusing on which does what. The upper left button will start the game for you. As the game starts there are no directions. It opens on Olaf in a snowy scene, about to walk into some snowflakes. After guiding the little guy through the level, I realized the objective was to collect the 45 snowflakes and the 3 flowers. No dangers, no bad guys, just go forward and jump. Thinking this was way too easy, as most level ones are, I gave the next few levels a try. But they were the exact same thing with one thing added. Olaf can get hurt on frozen icicles, so he needs to jump over them. Continuing on… Collect snowflakes and flowers avoid icicles. Rinse and repeat. My children aren’t allowed to play first person shooter games, or other violent style games, but I also don’t want to make them feel like I am babying them. I might recommend this game to a child closer to the age of 4 or so, although without the directions included with each step I cant imagine it being easy for them to use on their own without help. The graphics were also a bit choppy but not too bad. All in all, there are now 2 little boys and a Dad, very disappointed with a bad purchase.