My 3 year old son has reached the point where he’s no longer content to watch me play Descenders while he taps away on his (unplugged) controller, he wants to actually play. That’s great, but Descenders is NOT a kid friendly game, so I’d like to find him something more appropriate to his very basic controller skills.
Something on PC would be ideal, but I do have access to a 3DS, PS3, and some earlier consoles. I’d rather not buy a whole new console for him yet (though we’ll get there eventually, I’m sure). Any thoughts?
I had good luck with Mario Kart 8 at that stage, because it has an assist mode that will automatically steer you back onto the track to avoid getting too frustrating, and you can race against your own ghost (since even the easiest AI opponent was too hard at that age).
Not sure whether the assist mode is in MK7 on 3DS. You could probably emulate either the Wii U or Switch on PC though.
I found Unleashed impossibly difficult. I own it and thought about showing it to him but was concerned it’d just frustrate the hell out of him.
Does it resolve the weird difficulty issues with the first one?
Yeah, I’ve heard great things about 8, but don’t have a platform that can run it and would really prefer not to have to buy a Switch just for this. I have no experience emulating modern consoles.
I really have no interest in starting that. I’m sure it’s a problem I’ll have to deal with down stream but to the extent I can keep him away from it (and any other kid’s microtransaction hellscapte) that’s definitely what I’m going to do.
If you have GamePass, there is a free Paw Patrol racing game. I’d imagine a 3 year old will know them and it will teach them very basic steering and button pressing.
If I had it to do again fwiw, I wouldn’t ever introduce my kids to video games at home. It’s really hard now as teenagers to get them to do anything else. Putting a controller in their little hands isn’t really something you can undo.
They’re pretty basic. At least the few my son has played. Mostly straightforward 3D platforming on mostly linear levels, with some mini games (usually vehicle based) between. They’re fine, I guess. Nothing you would find anything interesting about, but something a 4 year old can comprehend. Though mine has difficulty with some of the (very forgiving and no failure stare) QTE elements.
Mario Kart. The other, cheaper character racing games (Cars, presumably the Paw Patrol one as well) don’t have the assists that make the game playable for young kids. My youngest could win races in Mario Kart at 4, with all assists on, but couldn’t even finish a lap of the Cars 3 game. Now that he’s 6, the assists aren’t needed anymore and he’s able to handle other racing games as well.
The nice thing about MK8 is the level of assistance is really great for younger gamers. You can still have fun in the race even if you are really new to games.
One of the reasons I’m interested in the Paw Patrol game is that it has assists like that, as do some other games in the genre.
Yeah, I think assists are vital for a gamer his age, I’m just looking for games that have those options and aren’t going to require me to buy an entire Nintendo console just for this purpose. :)
No, just the Mighty Pups one (received as a Christmas gift), and I believe the movie tie in game (we got it from the library). Never knew there was a racing one until you mentioned it.
