I struggle to place when exactly I played my first video game. My earliest memories include Alex Kidd, Sonic 2, and Ecco the Dolphin, so I must have been around three or four when a Master System and then a Mega Drive first showed up at home.
I now have a three-year-old of my own and his growing interest in gaming further solidifies I was probably about his age when I heard “SE-GA” for the first time. Lucky for him, his introduction to video games has been much less of a baptism by fire than mine was. Have you gone back and played Ecco? I'm still not sure what the hell's going on at 33, let alone when I was three.
Upon firing up World Adventures for the first time, I assumed you'd play as Peppa. That's not the case. The first thing Finn had to tackle was a basic character creator. His first experience of a video game mechanic he will likely spend hundreds of hours in over the course of the next few decades if he's anything like me, and science would suggest that half of him is. The creator lets players pick which animal they would like their character to be, the color of their fur, and what they wear. By the time Finn was done, a pig in a dress felt incredibly normal in comparison.
Finn chose to be a dark brown dog wearing an orange t-shirt. All pretty standard stuff up until that point. Being a three-year-old, he then couldn't resist popping on a pirate hat and heart-shaped glasses. That resulted in fodder for the meme format where someone flamboyantly dressed can be seen sitting awkwardly in a room filled with men in grey suits coupled with the caption “when my character shows up in a cutscene”. That almost exactly what happened to Finn as his character sat in a classroom filled with other children sans pirate hats. Can't imagine that attire will fly when he starts school for real later this year unless it has changed drastically since I left.
After a quick trip to school, Finn and Peppa's around-the-world tour can begin. Even though my partner and I exist in Peppa's universe (Finn was given free reign to make us too, but he was a little less creative) Finn globe-trots with Peppa's family. Fair enough, I guess, they're the stars here. There's a list of locations to visit in whichever order you like, each of which is filled with fun tasks and mini-games. Australia might be the one I've seen the most of. Firstly because I foolishly and unintentionally led Finn to believe we might find Bluey there, but also so he could play the cricket mini-game a few more times.
Despite having a gamer's first open world technically the size of the entire planet to explore, Finn's favorite place was back home. Certainly fair as even though World Adventures is built on, well, adventures around the world, there's a lot to do back at home base. Things there change too as time passes. You might find one of the parents you created baking cupcakes, or Daddy Pig trying to do press-ups in the living room. Daddy Pig being the butt of jokes may well explain why Finn found the area you return to after every trip the most interesting. It's the place that most made him feel like he was a part of the show he knows so well. The Daddy Pig jokes, playing with Grandma and Grandpa Pig, heading to playgroup. All elements from the show he immediately recognized. He did develop a fear of Mummy Pig at one point which was a bit weird, but only because he thought she was following him. She definitely wasn't.
While bouncing between his own virtual house and Peppa's, Finn got stuck in quite a few loops. Stuck might be the wrong word to use actually as that implies a problem with the game. It wasn't that at all. It was Finn's desire to do the same thing over and over again. Bouncing on the sofa only to be told to stop by his mum, for example. You can just get right back on and do it again until you are told to stop a second time, and then a third, and so on. Very much art imitating life, not something I was expecting from a Peppa Pig game.
We haven't had the chance to visit everywhere in the game just yet. As eager as I am to raise someone who might be a worthy Mario Kart challenger one day, having a three-year-old play video games for hours at a time didn't really sit right. Even if it's a game like World Adventures that has clearly been teaching him stuff as he goes. He's been saying bonjour to people after picking it up through the Paris section of the game, and for some reason he's been yelling “Great Barrier Reef” for no reason whatsoever two to three times a day after paying it a visit in Peppa's Australia. That's learning, right?
If a game can teach him a thing or two as it also introduces him to gaming as a whole, then it ticks a lot of boxes for me. It was also a welcome break from Astro's Playroom, which has been his go-to prior to World Adventures. No hate for Astro, but there are only so many times I can help him defeat the “electric caterpillars” before wanting to sell my PS5 to the highest bidder. Now you don't need to wait in virtual queues to buy them, maybe that bid wouldn't be all that high. That being said, Finn trying to blow into the controller when he found World Adventures' windmills, something you need to do to make them spin in Astro's Playroom, might have been the most adorable part of this entire experience.
Finn was pretty excited when I told him we had a Peppa Pig game to play, and then even more so as it was loading for the first time. When he asked me why we had it, I told him it was so we could play it to figure out if other children might like it too. He then informed me, before even pressing a button, that it was a good game. Having now actually played the game, I can confirm his opinion hasn't changed and it will definitely be something we continue to play together moving forward, especially since we still have a few more locations to check off Peppa's list.
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