Blazing a Trail.
User Rating: 7.1 | The Oregon Trail PC
Oregon Trail is one of those games that I used to play on the classroom computer when it was raining outside. We would pass the time laughing immaturely at Jake getting a snake bite and wondering (what the hell?) and trying to reach the end of the path, all the while taking turns going hunting after we would run down on food. Ah, those were good days. Well, as I remember it, Oregon Trail is a swell RPG\adventure game that manages to keep a good hook on its formula that any gamer can relate to, casual or otherwise. It follows a steady system. You start out in Independence, a city in….. Well I can’t recall right now. But as you start, you must choose your occupation: A banker will start you off easy with a lot of money, a job as a Carpenter will put you in between, and working as a Farmer will put you in the hardest difficulty, with the least money and the most grueling conditions. So it’s pretty much choosing your difficulty there. You stock up on supplies, and you set off to reach The Dalles. The game follows a day by day gameplay system. You are traveling in a Conestoga-type wagon all the way to your destination. On the way you may encounter disease, animals, thieves, and other perils. And you heal by resting, and by utilizing medicine. Your prime goal is to reach your destination with out many casualties. If your entire party dies, you lose. Unfortunately, this might happen more than you would expect. So naturally, Oregon Trail requires practice to get it right. As days progress you reach different locations for where you meet different people, and other travelers. At times some may be hostile, and others friendly, so it helps to be alert. A few of these locations involve forts where you may re-stock your inventory for when you run low on supplies. But you must keep a few bucks on hand in order to buy supplies. So make sure you don’t blow it all in the beginning. As you pass along, hunting is necessary to fuel up on food, and you hunt game such as Rabbit, Deer, Bear, and Bison. But there is maximum amount of meat that you may bring into the wagon, so even if you shot about 6 Bison and have about 1000+ pounds of food collected, you may only be able to bring half of that, or less. Hunting, incidentally, was always a fun thing to do on this game, mostly due to the fact it felt interactive. And it was a break from waiting and watching the wagon droll on by. But if you want to try and get there faster, you may also change the speed your wagon moves. And change your rations. But this also affects your party members. So keep it in check accordingly.
The visuals for this game are truly nothing special. It is a fair animated look on this game, with an old touch to it. But it gives feeling to the time it took place in. The animals look partially realistic, like something you would see in an illustrated children’s picture book. And the people are not exactly what I would call realistic by any matter, but they look fine, but in an animated-western way. The backgrounds and views on the locations you reach are probably the things the developers did the best job on. Take for example Chimney Rock, its not breathtaking, but its good work nonetheless.
The game sounds decent. Now we have to remember this was 1993 we’re talking about, and you’ll have to excuse the gunshots that sound more like a sound-bite from a Microsoft PowerPoint library than anything else, but they get the job done. I won’t go into detail about Oregon Trail’s sound, because there really isn’t much to it. But as I have said, there isn’t much to talk about when it comes to sound. In conclusion, Oregon Trail is a classic more than anything else, and its still got enough going for it that makes it playable even today.
