The holiday season came and went faster than expected. This year I had the opportunity to use my expertise about gaming to my advantage, because I had set my sights on giving a copy of Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails localized to the danish language in gift to my boyfriends two nephews, who are big fans of the cartoon series. I just knew that this would be the perfect gift. Unfortunately it was nowhere to find in the shops, where we made our christmas shopping. But as luck would have it, I was able to get a copy through my contact in Pan Vision who are the biggest distributor in the Nordic region (Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden).

The christmas gift spread cheers in the household and we got a peek of the two nephews playing the game. They seemed to enjoy it very much.

The disc contains a range of minigames, suited for the target audience. You, who reads the article, and me, would expect and demand much more from a game we pay for – there is not many hours of play and the challenges are rather easy. For the target audience, children from 4 to 10, there’s consistency and playtime enough – and the child will experience that they are able of finish a game and replay it later on.

The story is simple and the danish voice overs were more than acceptable with simple and easy to understand speech. It follows the characters from the cartoon, and the fact that these boys were a fan of the series, and they could recognize the different trains is a huge plus. This is spiced up with minigames such as wash down a train, races, memory game, repair a train and a few others. While the racing games were appealing most to the younger boy, the memory game was the older boys choice. The boys played the game together, yet it’s a one player experience, but the younger boy stood beside the older one with his own wii mote and had a good time.

As a game for kids, especially for kids already crazy about the animated series of the locomotive called Thomas and his friends, this hits it right on the nail. The two boys aged 4 and 7 both enjoyed it immensely, but the 7 year old had an easier time getting used to the controls, as expected.