metzomagic.com Review

Saddle Up: Time to Ride

Developer:  Lexis Numerique
Publisher:  DreamCatcher Interactive
Year Released:  2004

Review by Clare Sheehan aged 12 (October, 2005)
Saddle Up: Time to Ride Screenshot Saddle Up: Time to Ride is set on a horse farm and you, as Lucy, are staying on the ranch with a few other friends to learn some new tricks about horse riding. Once you get good enough, you and your friends can enter your first horse races and win some prizes.

I would recommend this game to girls aged 8 years and up, yet some 8 year olds might need some assistance from someone a bit older, it all really depends on the person. Even younger audiences might enjoy watching an older sister play and have a go at some easier parts like grooming the horse.

It's pretty easy to work out what you have to do in this game although it did take me a while to figure out how to properly groom my horse. There is a mystery and some treasure to find but the game is mainly about the horses.

Learn about horsy things
Not only horse lovers will like Saddle Up: Time to Ride. I didn't know much about horses when I started playing but by the end I had learnt heaps of things! How to approach a horse, what grooming tools are most effective and how to use them properly, a horse's dietary requirements, and what clothes are most suitable to ride a horse were just some of them.

By using the computer in Lucy's bedroom you can look up interesting facts on horses, which are updated during the game as the other characters send you files from their computers. You can also get more information by finding computer disks which are hidden all over the place.

Learn to ride
Saddle Up: Time to Ride Screenshot Handy Hint: When doing the obstacle courses Akiko, Christobald and Garance have set out for you make sure you visit them in this order; Akiko, Christobald and then Garance. That's in order from easiest to hardest. I made the mistake of visiting Garance first when I hadn't yet got the hang of riding and jumping. I also was only allowed two refusals (that's when a horse doesn't obey you) in Garance's obstacle making it difficult, whereas I was allowed more in completing the easier ones.

Getting the hang of riding the horse is the easy part, it's the tournaments you have to enter that are tricky. In order to move on to the next part of the game you have to complete the courses in a certain amount of time, if you don't you are given penalty points. If you get too many refusals, or you jump a course in the wrong order, you are disqualified. Nothing bad happens to you but you can't continue the game until this has been completed. Some of the tournaments were much harder than others and because of this I had to do them over a few times until I got a good enough ranking.

Care for your horse
If you perform well in a tournament a sponsor will give you a horse. I was given five horses. I called them Coconut, Candie, Chocolat, Ashleigh and Hazel. Although, after forgetting to feed Candie, I nearly killed her and wasn't allowed to ride her for a whole two days.

When you are in your stable there are 4 bars at the top of the screen which tell you how your horse is going. The blue bar tells you how clean your horse is, and the higher the level the cleaner the horse. The other bars tell you how happy your horse is, how healthy it is, and how much experience your horse has got.

When you are in a tournament there is a bar across the bottom which lets you know how many faults you have made, how many refusals, and the time you have taken. You also get penalty points which determine your ranking. I never came first because I always got too many penalties.

Saddle Up: Time to Ride ScreenshotTo let you know the order of the fences, a blue jewel pops up above the next fence. You can also follow white arrows along the ground, or the dirt trail in some courses.

You can get more experience if you train your horse by riding different courses. I didn't do much training but it didn't stop me finishing the game. There are also some options you can choose where you get to practice on different courses.

Finishing up
I didn't like the ending of the game. There wasn't really a conclusion, and the game just sort of stopped. You find the treasure by solving a puzzle at the end, but the game just ends after that. It was a bit disappointing.

There aren't really any puzzles in this game besides the last one. Sometimes you are given tasks or errands to do, but besides that it is really just about looking after your horse and entering races. And riding; that's probably why it's called Saddle Up: Time to Ride.

Controlling the game
The keyboard is the main control for the game. When you ride your horse you have to use the space bar to jump and the up arrow key to make your horse go faster. To slow down you use the down arrow key. This worked well, I think, because it was quite easy. Moving Lucy took a bit of time to work out, though, because you can spin her so that made it a little confusing. The camera angles were a bit annoying because I didn't really know where I was going at times and I crashed into things more than once. After a while I got used to it and I knew my away around the farm so that made it easier too.

Saddle Up: Time to Ride has two difficulty settings 'easy' and 'hard'. It was a fun game, I enjoyed it.

metzomagic.com rating:  

Copyright © Clare Sheehan aged 12 2005. All rights reserved.

System Requirements:
Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, Pentium 450 MHz (800 recommended), 64 MB RAM (256 recommended). 3D video card with 32 MB RAM, 4x CD ROM, 800 MB disk space, DirectX 9.