The Collection Chamber: SHREK 2: ACTIVITY CENTRE

It's time to join Shrek and his friends for fairy tale fun with a twist in a land far far away!

There's plenty of fun and learning to be had with Shrek and his pals as you embark on activities based on actual scenes from the movie!
2 unique levels of difficulty will encompass a broad range of ages for each activity.
Join Shrek and his friends including: Puss In Boots, Princess Fiona, Donkey, Gingerbread Man, King Harold and many others in this action-packed Activity Wonderland.
Awesome activities including: Dinner with the King, Careening Carriage, Fairy Godmother's Lab and many others that will keep you smiling, challenged and playing for hours.

~ from the back of the box

When Shrek 2 landed in cinemas, it managed the rare trick of being bigger, funnier, and arguably better than the original ogre-sized hit. With the introduction of Far Far Away, the scene-stealing Puss in Boots, and a plot revolving around awkward royal in-laws, the film quickly became one of DreamWorks' most beloved animated sequels. Naturally, the merchandising floodgates burst open, bringing with them a selection of tie-in videogames, including the obligatory kid-friendly mini-game collection. Developed by AWE Productions and published by Activision Value, how does Shrek 2: Activity Center - Twisted Fairy Tale Fun stack up with Disney's many entries to the sub-genre?

There are eight activities in the package, each one represented by a character. The standout is Donkey's Careening Carriage, a simple but energetic obstacle-avoiding racer. The game presents a vertically scrolling roadway viewed from above as a runaway carriage barrels ever forward. Your task is to guide it left and right with the mouse, dodging obstacles while collecting shiny bits for points. It's about as mechanically complex as shopping trolley, but the steady stream of hazards is just enough to keep your entertained. Weirdly enough, you use only the mouse to control it. Were the game designed for older, more discerning audiences, the mouse would be frustratingly imperfect, but for this simple iteration it's passable. It's not like you'll be spending long with it. A progress bar at the bottom marks how far you have to go before the ride ends, making it a short and brisk carriage ride.

Avoid obstacles and collect items in Donkey's "Careening Carriage" (left).

Shoot that cat and those coins in Puss In Boots' thoughtfully named "Catch Puss in Boots" (right).

If you want a game that fits the mouse input, you cannot go wrong with a gallery shooter. Catch Puss in Boots has you wait until the famous feline leaps out from behind scenery so you can click on him before he disappears again to earn points. Different denominations of coins also fall down which also add to your score, but watch out for Donkey. Clicking on him will make you lose one of your three lives. For a less chaotic screen-clicking mini-game, Hide and Seek swaps reflexes for observation as Shrek's friends conceal themselves in the background. All of the mini-games has three levels of increasing difficulty, but this one is insultingly easy no matter the stage. Instead of being a Where's Wally-style hidden object puzzle, it's a memory game where if you can count to four you're sailing. Graphically, it still looks nice though.

There are other nice-looking, yet empty activities in the package. Fairy Godmother's Lab has you mixing potions to restore Shrek’s normal colour by choosing the correctly coloured ingredients, essentially turning the whole thing into a simple treatise on colour theory. Dinner with the King is a memory challenge where Shrek must copy King Harold's increasingly elaborate eating order at the dinner table. Then there's Juice at the Beach, which has you preparing drinks by identifying the right ingredients that scroll along the bottom of the screen. They each offer up a smidgen of edutainment, but none of these will replace a maths textbook anytime soon.

Peek-a-boo! I see you! Find the fairytale characters in Shrek's "Hide and Seek" (left).

Make the perfect pasty with a frog-eye-squid filling in the Three Little Pig's "Muffin Masterpiece" (right).

For something a bit more arcade-like, Muffin Masterpiece has you catch falling ingredients to decorate towering baked goods, a classic "catch-the-things" type game that has been around since the dawn of interactive entertainment. Success in the various mini-games gradually unlocks bonuses in the Print Studio, which was seemingly a prerequisite for all of these types of games. You can gain access to printable artwork, certificates, and even themed recipes which is something useful I might actually want to waste my ink on.

In the grand tradition of PC activity centres, Shrek 2: Activity Center – Twisted Fairy Tale Fun is a colourful but lightweight package. The presentation faithfully borrows characters and locations from the film (even if they skimp out on the cast) and the simple point-and-click controls make it accessible to even the youngest of players. On the other hand, the mini-games are short, often repetitive, and unlikely to hold attention for long. Still, for the intended audience - small children who just watched the movie, and those of us grown-ups who still debate whether human Shrek is actually hot or not - it's a perfectly serviceable little distraction.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses dgVoodoo to run on modern systems with IMG Drive Portable to mount the CD ISO. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 293 Mb. Install Size: 445 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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