Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue

Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue is the third game of the Barbie Horse Adventures video game series based on the Barbie line of dolls by Mattel. The game was released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Game Boy Advance in 2003. A Nintendo GameCube version was planned, but it was cancelled.

Gameplay

A storm comes in and causes the gate at a ranch to open, letting horses and foals run away. Barbie must track down the foals and horses through 3 parts of 3 different settings: the forest, the mountains, and the beach. There is an average of three foals plus one horse that can be found at the end of the section. In the 2nd part of the section, a missing horse will be found by someone else, and Barbie must race them.

Reception

The game has been heavily criticized by the gaming press. X-Play dubbed it a Game You Should Never Buy^[1] next to Monster Garage: The Game and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. In the episode, X-Play co-host Morgan Webb called Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue the worst game ever made, and continues to reference it so in ongoing episodes after giving the terrible review of having a 1 out of 5. IGN gave it a 4/10 rating, and XGP Gaming rating it a 4 out of 10.

Decent reviews, which mainly point out that the game was being geared towards children, were given out by TeamXbox (3.8/5) and the British Official Xbox Magazine (6.7/10.)

Xbox 360 compatibility

The Xbox version (and by extension, Xbox creator Microsoft) has been ridiculed for being a rare game for which the Xbox 360 is backwards-compatible,^[2] while some of the more popular Xbox games remain unplayable on the newer console. It is viewed as a minor licensed title which has little appeal outside of its niche market. However, it has been reported that the backwards compatibility of the game on the Xbox 360 was a side effect of emulation of a different game.

References