Backpacker 2
This game could be described as a one-player version of Trivial Pursuit; it's basically a trivia game. You start out with some cash in your home town (or the closest city in the game) and travel from there to other exotic cities. The basic way to get more money to travel for is to take different jobs. You find a job by looking through the local newspaper and picking one you like. You "work" by answering questions more or les related to the job you have chosen. Sounds a bit lame, right? It isn't (who would have thought I'd say that? ;-). For starters, there are the certificates. Do well enough on a job and you will get certificates proving you did. Certificates also enables you to get jobs with higher pay. The game also keeps track of how many days and timezones you have traveled, as well as the shortest time you have gone around the world in and other interesting statistics. This makes competition possible, which is always nice. Another thing you can compete in is buying souvenirs. There is a souvenir shop in every city where you can buy and sell all kinds of strange things. The trick, of course, is to buy cheap and sell expensive. The game shows you how much your souvenirs are worth when you get back home, so you can try to bring home the most valuable backpack.
Backpacker 2 is very easy to get into, it's point-and-click all the way, with the occasional typing or "action"-sequence thrown in. Working is normally answering different questions accompained by some laid-back music and some nice photos. "Action"-sequences can be sorting fish rolling by on a conveyor belt or clicking on instruments in a cockpit on time. It may not be that advanced but it all fits together vey well and has a nice feel to it.
Not everything is good, however. When you try to take certain jobs, the game will lock-up without exception. And when you look at your certificates, there is an angry error-message each time you click on one. This doesn't crash the game, but it sure is annoying. Also, not all of the questions seem to have been checked correctly, sometimes the answer has nothing at all to do with the question.
Backpacker 2 is a basically very simple game made very nice. Even though you spend most of the time clicking on different icons, there is still a feeling that you are actually travelling around the globe, visiting far-away places. And you learn lots of cool-but-useless stuff, just like you do while playing TP. Oh, by the way, if you're not Swedish you can forget about this nice little game. As far as I know it's only available in Swedish. Poor you, you don't know what you're missing ...
