[Panthera]

My mom just bought a ps2 for the family, she wanted singstar and dancemat and such. She's also asked me to look for games for it. My little sister is 10 and my little brother is 4. The problem is that my mom doesn't accept any violence. Not mario kind of violence or boxing, American football or anything like that.

This effectively rules out most of the well known games. Ratchet and Clank and other games like that won't cut it, and most of the platforms based on children's movies also have some form of violence in them.

Does anyone know of any games that are completely non-violence and can be played by either a four-year old or a 10-year old who hasn't played any console games before.

Bratz/Barbie games are also out of the question, and games like Catz and Dogz where you have to feed and look after the animal every day.

All this makes it very difficult, therefore I'm asking for help.

[Terramax]

I was gonna say Harvest Moon is a terrific example. I have a 10 year old sister and she loves those kinds of sim games (Theme Park, The Sims respectively). But if your mum won't allow Catz & Dogz...

Eyetoy? This is very much like the dance games (there's even an Eyetoy dance game).

Although I've barely played any of the games for the device, they seem to be mainly of minigame fun.

So what games DOES she allow? I mean,

[Ninja Dodo]

"Katamari Damacy" or the sequel "We Love Katamari".

Roll around with a ball gathering objects that stick to it amassing more and more things until you become large enough to roll up cars and people, buildings, even continents.

The controls are very intuitive.

[MoriartyL]

What's wrong with virtual pets?!

[Endosanity]

A PS2 isn't exactly known for kids games. There are some racing games like Disney's Cars but I don't know if you can wreck into other cars or anything like that.

There is also a great game called Lights, Camera, Pants which you pick a Spongebob character and either compete or work together with someone against the computer in a series of minigames to become the starring role in a movie. Mini-games are things like serving food at the Krusty Krab the fastest, stacking boxes, popping bubbles, racing, smashing rocks, fixing machines. Me and my daughter play it all the time. Could look into that.

I'll second the Harvest Moon games.

[aries323]

Viva Pinata perhaps? You have to make a garden and stuff.

There's some Danish games I could recommend but I doubt they have been translated to English yet. And as I recall, there is a bit of cartoony violence in them as well.

Sim City? or Sim Hospital? comes to mind, too...

[TiAgUh]

Originally Posted by Panthera

My mom just bought a ps2 for the family, she wanted singstar and dancemat and such. She's also asked me to look for games for it. My little sister is 10 and my little brother is 4. The problem is that my mom doesn't accept any violence. Not mario kind of violence or boxing, American football or anything like that.

wow..

Why not buy EyeToy ? Only one game of has "violence", the others are fun.

[Panthera]

Thanks for the recommendations.

As I said she bought the ps2 mostly for the "partygames"; karaoke, dance mat and buzz.

I've already bought a few games for her.
I bought Karaoke stage 1 and 2 with microphone and since Karaoke stage one was on a take three pay less offer, I also bought
Noddy (which my 10-year old little sister is to old for)
and
Cars, but after looking at the manual for cars I'm afraid that it might be a bit to complicated and realistic for my little sister.

I bought Eye toy with eye toy sports to my ps2, but haven't used it, so I'm giving my eye toy to them. I bought Eye toy play (the first) used, but there's three mini games there they're not allowed to play..

I know there's a lot of eyetoy games out, but how to find out what to get?

She doesn't allow virtual pets because they require you to take care of them every day, and might make you rather do that than other things, and the animal dies if you don't take care of it. Or something like that.

She doesn't like Barbie and Bratz because they are all about shopping, make-up and other things like that which she doesn't think young girls should be interested in, and my little sister isn't very interested in things like that.

They have a lot of children's games for the computer; Hugo, but not the platform version, play and learn and several other games like that. The similarity seems to be fun, educational games where you do things like count the leaves on the plant and things like that.

My little sister's best friend is a boy with both a ps2 and a wii, so she's interested in Mario and games like that, but she won't get them from my mom. She has not tried sims yet, and I'm not sure if she'd like it, so I think Harvest moon is a game I would get her if I knew I could change it if she doesn't like it..

I think Katamari might be a good alternative, but the Katamari game I bought didn't work on my ps2. It's also very hard to find now, being so old and well-liked.
I thought Viva Pinata was only for the Xbox360? and I think my little sister has sims park, and I can't remember her playing it..

[Marrow]

How about SSX 3?
Not to sure about Grand Turismo 3: A-Spec, a racing sim of sorts.
NBA Street Vol.2 is pretty fun, arcadey while doing tricks that you can't do in Live
And if you like Golf (who doesn't?) Tiger Woods PGA Tour, 2005, 07, I'm not too sure if it matters which one you choose.
Can't believe I had to use a gamesite to find these games.

[marshal99]

How about

Dog's life (cute game where you play as a dog)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_CfARDv7ug
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog's_Life

[Ninja Dodo]

Katamari Damacy was never released for PAL but the sequel We Love Katamari was. So if your PS2 is not an American or Japanese one that might have been why the first didn't work.

[marshal99]

I would also suggest Ape Escape 3 although it has violence (towards monkeys) since the whole game is all about catching monkeys. Fun Fun fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEsl4B3hNwg

[Terramax]

Originally Posted by Marrow

Not to sure about Grand Turismo 3: A-Spec, a racing sim of sorts.

For a 4 and 10 year-old?

Katamari is a good choice actually.

I don't know what things are like in Canada/ America, but the best way would be to go out and rent a few?

Where I'm at, you can usually rent 2 games for £3 or 3 for £5 or something like that at our local Blockbusters. If you're really afraid of investing $10-30 or whatever on a game she might not like, get the extra one or two games, wait after Christmas and just rent out a handful.

EDIT: Oh wait, you're not American/ Canada. You keep writing 'mom' instead of 'mum', sorry.

[Panthera]

We don't have game renting here, but we can buy games on a 10 days open buy deal, which means you can get a new game or a gift certificate if you bring the console game back before it has been 10 days, but I couldn't do this now, since I'm spending more than ten days with my family.

I think I'll definitely get katamari when I find it, and look around on the web. Do anyone know if there's a game site for children's games which rate them after violence and things like that?

My little sister is just like the rest of the females in the family, she hates sports, so I don't think any sports game will be interesting for her.. My family has always been hard to shop for..

(I think I write "mom" because we call our mothers "mor", among others)

[Melanie68]

D'oh! I forgot about this site. I'm linking you to the gamer guide for the 7-10 year olds but the rest of the site is probably worth a look.

http://www.gamerdad.com/detail.cfm?itemID=3973 (7-10)

http://www.gamerdad.com/detail.cfm?itemID=3972 (6+)

Your mom may not agree with all of these but at least it's another list to look at. Not many for the PS2 though.

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by Terramax

For a 4 and 10 year-old?

I know that I would have been majorly pissed at somebody getting kids games™ for me around that age. That's not to say that there aren't developers out there who make fun games for little toddlers (or at least they THINK they do), it's just that looking back at my own youth it's probably a much better thing to take a listen what a kid actually wants, and discuss it with her or him, and then going from there, rather than deciding that Winnie Pooh Racing Simulator and Barbie Doll House Designer is the kind of thing to get. I suppose that on an XXL system such as the Playstation2 there's more diverse stuff out there than what people give it credit for. I don't think the PS2 is all that, er dirty.


Crank the Weasel, Jacked, Black and Bruised, Ghost Vibration, The Adventures of Cookie and Cream - if you stumble upon one of these, don't mistake them for "that kind of movie" though! Even moreso since the latter might be exactly what you're looking for. Now this sounds rather interesting...

[Terramax]

I not sure what you're getting at there, but I mean, Gran Turismo for a 10 year-old? A driving simulator. Not an arcade racer like Ridge Racer, but the driving simulator - tweaking tyres and gearboxes for the best performance and all that.

[ShadeJackrabbit]

Bombastic might be good, then again it might be too violent. Though it's kinda like donald-duck or road-runner violence...

[Davies]

Your best bet is to refer to websites like Gamespot and Gamespy for detailed information on anything that looks acceptable. You might also visit some of the Christian fundamentalist game review sites, since they go into a lot of detail on anything that might possibly be objectionable. Plain Games seems pretty sensible, and gives suggested age ranges too. Google "Christian family video games" for lots more.

eBay is a good source for children's games in particular, since the parents sell them on once the kids have outgrown them.

If the objection to virtual pets is that you have to care for them every day, then a different sort of simulation game should be OK. The Sims themselves, for example. You can play when you want to, and everything just stays in limbo between gaming sessions. The Sims is arguably educational for children, in that you have to distinguish between needs and wants, and balance what you need and want against what you can actually do with limited time and money. The only possible objection is that it can seem materialistic: you're always wanting to buy something new or better than what you have, and "better" means "more expensive".

The 10-year-old might enjoy a management-sim game like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon. I don't know if they're available for the PS2, although the Roller Coaster series is so popular that I'd be amazed if it isn't. All the "Tycoon" games are pretty good, and none have anything remotely objectionable. Management games are also arguably educational.

There's also the Jurassic Park management game (JP: Operation Genesis), but that has dinosaur predation and the occasional escaped dino that has to be shot down.

Even without liking sports, the 10-year-old might enjoy the various horse-riding simulations, where you keep a stable, and train and ride horses in competitions. Not virtual pets, and not all are Barbie tie-ins.

How about the Guitar Hero games? Nothing violent, possibly fun for parties, but your mother might not want rock guitar at all hours!

Puzzle Quest has all the trappings of a straightforward fantasy RPG, but you defeat enemies by playing puzzle games against them. I'm not sure whether it would or wouldn't be acceptable, since it does contain magic, monsters, ridding the land of evil, etc. etc. It might be scary for a 4-year-old to be exposed to.

The Yu-Gi-Oh games are similar, in that monsters are defeated by collecting and playing cards. It is a TV franchise, though, so it might be out on that score alone. The reviews are a bit lukewarm, although I'd bet the game would score with a Yu-Gi-Oh fan.

Super Monkey Ball Adventure and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe -- you roll around various courses, collecting things. There is a monkey in the ball, but he wants to be there! "Adventure" got panned, but "Deluxe" got raves.

Or there's the option of straight pinball simulations.

Tetris-type puzzle games are popular (though I don't much like them myself) and not a hint of violence. I see there was a PS2 game called Egg Mania, described as "reverse Tetris", where you try to build up a tower from falling blocks. It came out in 2002, but there might be a copy on eBay. Lumines is described as "musical Tetris" and got some good reviews; the object is to group blocks of the same colour together.

There are straightforward puzzles and board games available, such as chess and sudoku, but I don't see a lot of point in bothering to play them on a console. You might think differently.

The Clever Kids educational games are aimed at ages 6 to 10 (so they might be too babyish for the 10-year-old). They contain a range of activities all centred around a topic -- either dinosaurs or ponies. Things like jigsaws, spot the difference puzzles, facts and quizzes, and even maths.

If they're not allowed any TV character tie-ins at all, there's not going to be much available for the 4-year-old. Most games for young children are based on popular characters. Then again, you said Noddy was OK.

There's a Bob the Builder game (for use with Eyetoy), where the challenge is to help Bob and friends finish a building project on time. Sounds like fun.

Dinosaur Adventure seems to be based on the Land Before Time cartoons. Help the lost baby dinosaur find his parents by solving puzzles such as simple jigsaws and colouring. Start him off young on adventure gaming!

There's the Happy Feet game, based on the movie of the same name and aimed at very young players. Penguin dancing, swimming, and sliding, with a message that it's good to be yourself even if you're a bit different. The only hint of violence is that sometimes you have to avoid enemies like leopard seals.

[marshal99]

Some so-called "kids" games can be hard for kids. I bought the Finding Nemo Ps2 game a few years back for my 8 year old niece and she couldn't handle it and even i found it really hard to finish some of the levels. It's just ridiculous to have the game to be so difficult for a so-called "kids" game.