GamerParenting: The Family Game of the Year Awards

The GamerParent phenomenon is growing every year as adult gamers pick up the gamepad to play with their kids. GamerParenting is a biweekly column exploring parenting issues in the gaming space.
2/6/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (All Platforms): A child-friendly game that also appeals directly to the action-figure collecting child in every gamer of a certain age? The Complete Saga is both the first and second games in a single package. Since it's Star Wars, it's safe to let kids play, and the game lets another player drop in for co-op at will. Is your Padawan having trouble? Here comes Mom for a Jedi Master rescue. (ESRB Rating = E)

Age 10+
Winner: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Wii): What has a short pirate and a propeller-driven gold monkey as main characters? The answer is Capcom's Zack & Wiki, an innovative adventure/puzzle game with a fun sense of humor, a lot of slapstick violence, and very clever use of the Wii remote. Fair warning: It's a very challenging game. (ESRB Rating = E-10+)

Drawn to Life (DS): What a great idea! It works like this: Draw a character, any character, on your DS and watch him come to life; then use that character to play a fairly standard platform game. Kids love the magic of seeing their doodle come to life, and older kids will have an easier time and a lot of fun simply drawing. (ESRB Rating = E)

Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek (PC): Okay, there goes my hardcore gaming cred, right? Well, I have a daughter and this series of PC adventures offers 'tween girls the exact right amount of challenge. (ESRB Rating = E)

Age 14+
Winner: Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS2, PS3): Rock 'n' Roll band everybody's waiting/ Getting' crazy, anticipating/ Love & music! Play! Play! Play! - Boston.

Can you believe that song isn't in Rock Band? Despite that minor oversight, Rock Band does Guitar Hero one better by tweaking the game into something more serious and adding vocals and, especially, drums. This means you can play the game three different ways in single-player and still enjoy building a family band. We're planning on buying a bus and touring the country as "The Bubby Bunch." (ESRB Rating = T)

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3): Teens want to play M-rated shooters. I get mail about that all the time, teens begging me to help convince their parents that Resistance: Fall of Man is "kid-friendly." Rated T -- and given the constant violence and the scare factor I'd call it a "hard T" -- Uncharted offers a fully realized main character and one heck of a grumpy old friend cliché. (ESRB Rating = T)

Portal (PC, Xbox360): Yes it's part of an M-rated package (the fabulous but not recommended for kids The Orange Box bundle, though it can be downloaded solo for the PC), but Portal is something special: an innovative first-person puzzler with a wicked sense of humor that'll teach kids spatial geometry, physics and other math disciplines at which I'm not very good. (ESRB Rating = T)

There you go. Trust me, you won't go wrong with any title on this list. Since this is a family-based column -- and given that Crispy Gamer has an excellent Game of the Year article -- there's really no point in my picking an M-Rated game (*cough -- BioShock -- cough*). 2007 was a terrific year for games, and 2008 looks even better as Sony continues experimenting with the PlayStation Eye, Microsoft is committing more to family gaming, and of course, Wii developers are getting better and better at taking advantage of the Wii controls. You can't go wrong with any of these titles. Go ahead, pick a few for your own kids. They will thank you for it!