The Oregon Trail
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
The Oregon Trail Trailers
Critic Reviews for The Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was, and is, a landmark product in gaming history. Gameloft’s remake updates a classic and makes it relevant and fun for gamers in 2022, without sacrificing the original’s personality. Setting off for the West has never been more inviting.
The Oregon Trail has been brought to the modern day with mindfulness and a wide-breadth of enhanced gameplay.
The Oregon Trail is a fun and simplistic survival-em-up that ultimately does little to justify its high price in the wake of more modern entries into the genre.
The Oregon Trail is absolutely one of the paramount classics of the edutainment games genre, and this newest version pays homage to that history while also introducing plenty of new content, and being more inclusive in its treatment of Native Americans. With plenty of unlockables, different modes, collectables and quests to undertake on every journey, the variety of things you can encounter means no two expeditions are likely to be the same. Plus, it might teach you a thing or two about 19th Century pioneer life along the way.
All in all, unless you’re feeling particularly nostalgic and want to play one of the original versions to relive your childhood, this is the go-to version of the Oregon Trail and will provide you with hours and hours of replayability, whether it’s by playing the main game over and over to explore each forking path, by playing the Journeys to live through the stories of characters like John and Annie Halfmoon, by trying to reach the highest score on the leaderboard, or by trying to unlock every last filter, song, and piece of artwork the game has to offer. It also gives an important platform for lesser-heard perspectives that weren’t represented in previous iterations of the game. – Joey
This isn’t just a new version of a game, this is the updated version that actually caters to what gaming personalities expect and look for in new titles. Sure, there’s no touchscreen controls, which is a bizarre choice for something that was just on a goddamn touchscreen device, but whatever! It’s The Oregon Trail, you can play and unlock the filter to make it monochrome green if you’d like. Or you can appreciate the color, the pizazz, and the actual gameplay and realize that it’s a frigging masterpiece.
With a game like The Oregon Trail, there’s always the concern that it’s simply a cash-grab banking on nostalgia of Millennials and Gen Xers. I’m quite happy to report that isn’t the case here. While there’s clearly a lot of nostalgia to be found, this iteration of The Oregon Trail proudly stands on its own. With one foot in the past and one in the present, it brings together all the best aspects of the original, and adds modern flourishes to give us a near-perfect game. Add in infinite replayability, as well as several different play modes, and this game is an absolute must-have for anybody who grew up with the original.
