Our 5-year-old has never really played video games. Yet. But recently his friends started talking about them, and in our basement is a Wii and an Xbox 360, which he spotted while helping with the laundry. So now he’s asking what games he can play.
Any good recommendations for kids this age?
Toy Story 3. The box does say 10+ but I’ve played it and a 5-year-old should be able to, maybe with an occasional bit of help. The tutorial is set up to be easier every time Woody fails.
Minecraft. Really. But whatever you do, don’t get Dogz, Horsez, or anything else with a similar name. They are very text heavy, require a lot of commitment from the parent and don’t do anything to hold a child’s interest, despite appearing to be aimed at that demographic.
The Wii has a few party-type games like Mario Party and Wii Play, which he can probably handle for the most part. If he likes music, there are a million Just Dance versions that you can probably get cheaply. They’re even releasing the newest one on the Wii, even though most new software dried up for it years ago.
Avoid shovelware like the plague. Look up a review for any given game before you buy it - if it’s lower than 50%, give it a pass. There is a ton of shitty shovelware aimed at the kiddie demographic, and it is all universally garbage. It won’t be fun for the kid, despite aiming at that demographic.
You want stuff that’s relatively simple and easy to pick up. The number one entry on any such list: Minecraft. Set the kid up on placid (or easy, if you think they can handle it). The Xbox 360 version is decent and has something of a tutorial attached. It’s a great little creativity tool, with tons to explore, and as long as the kid doesn’t get overwhelmed by the options, it’s essentially legos with an exploration element. Which is awesome.
Because you have a Wii, consider getting Super Mario All Stars 25th Anniversary Edition. The games in it are simple to pick up and there’s a ton of content there, plus there’s a reason that Mario is basically the face of gaming nowadays - these games have a simple learning curve and are a ton of fun. Also good: Mario Kart. Wii Sports is pretty solid on that front as well.
My six year old son is on the autism spectrum and our first “real” video game (non-tablet) was a couple weeks ago when we teamed up for LEGO Jurassic World. He loved it and although I did most of the puzzle-figuring, he was definitely able to contribute. I have no doubt that a ‘typical’ five year old could play through them unassisted. It has the advantages of being pretty simple, you can’t actually die and most puzzles are solved by just indiscriminately smashing things until you get what you need. Plus they’re fairly humorous takes on their respective franchises. They’re also pretty non-violent – stuff just breaks apart but in L:JW no one ever really died even if they died in the movie. Zara, who was eaten by a moasaur in the film, is shown inside the beast playing cards in the game.
The first LEGO game was LEGO Star Wars as I recall so you might want to start there as those were also the simplest – as they progress they start making the puzzles and stuff more complicated to make the game different from the one before. Not to scare you off the later ones; at their core they’re all LEGO games.
The **Disney Infinity **games are fun for kids about that age.
Yeah, but only worth getting from Steam because they include all the characters and play sets. Console versions still only have one free play set, everything else is an extra purchase.
I play Super Mario World with our 5 year old. He can mostly complete Yoshi’s Island and some of the Donut Plains, but Dad does most of the heavy lifting. He loves it.
He’s also pretty decent with any of the Mario Party series of games.
Wii Fit’s balance games and Wii Sports in general he likes.
(can you tell we’re a nintendo family?)
Mario Kart is out of his reach though, he hasn’t learned not to overcorrect and keeps going backwards down the course. Anything with text is out as his reading isn’t up to even simple sentences yet.