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Plug the Dora Links doll into the computer via USB, and girls will have access to her online world. Girls can help Dora and her friends solve the mysteries through engaging game play that affects change in Dora’s world. The Dora Links doll offers interactivity that allows girls to customize the doll and watch as she transforms before their eyes. As girls explore and solve the online mysteries,the doll’s speech, eye color and jewelry color can change to correspond with their play.
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Technical Details
- By plugging the Dora Links doll into the computer (via USB), girls will have access to her online world. There, girls can help Dora and her friends solve mysteries through engaging game play that affects change in Dora’s world.- Disguise Dora online by changing her hair length, eye color, jewelry, and more…and watch those changes magically appear on your Dora doll!
- Meet the Explorer Girls at their online café to help them solve mysteries!
- Explore new locations, get involved in community & charity functions, meet new friends, play games, and even receive D-mail!
- Your Dora Links doll will even alert you when there’s a new online mystery available!
See more technical details
By A. Dent (Minas Anor, GD)
BRIEFLY
This is a must have for any Dora the Explorer fan out there - only if it worked.
Dora is a teenager now and with your five-to-eight year old girl at the controls, she is exploring and solving mysteries in and around the town of Puerto Verde. Everything could have been super if the software was easier to install and less buggy and if the doll and its interaction with the child were better designed.
Parents will hate Dora Links but, if they manage to set her up, the little girl playing with Dora will LOVE her.
UNPACKING AND PHYSICAL SETUP
As it's the case with many toys, taking Dora and her accessories out of the box is not 'mission impossible' but it's not an easy task either. Whomever designs the packing of toys must really, really hate parents. Scissors, pliers and a lot of patience would free Dora and her accessories. In about 10-15 minutes.
Dora comes with the inevitable carry on bag, presumably to store her accessories and her disguise kit, a CD (useless), a folded pamphlet that explains how to set her up and spells out the warranty terms and a purple USB cable (too short) that plugs into Dora's side (kidney?) at one end and into the computer at the other.
We found the 3-foot long purple USB cable a little short if Dora was to be attached to a computer that's located under the desk - the case with our girl's PC. Unless Dora is linked to a laptop or a desktop that actually sits on the desk, consider the possibility that a longer USB-A to Mini-B cable may be needed.
Plugging Dora in is no easy task either. The cable has to go through a slit in Dora's rather tight dress and stab into her side and it took a while to get her connected.
SOFTWARE INSTALLATION BLUES
To make a long story short, avoid using the CD that comes in the box or, if you want to give it a try, don't be surprised if installation fails. Look at the first comment to this review for a information on where the Links installation software can be found and download it from there.
And, here is the long story - you may skip to the next section unless you really, really want to read about our little frustrating experience.
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I tried installing the software off the CD on THREE computers. On my little girl's XP machine, the basic installation completed successfully but, after a couple of hours of downloading the 'update' it all aborted with a message telling me that it needed at least 1GB of free space on the hard disk - we had over 100GB there. I tried the same again while logged in with an Administrator account but I got the exact same error.
On TWO Vista computers (one running Enterprise, the other the Home Premium edition) the installation off the CD failed with a message announcing that an error occurred and asking to reinsert the CD. No matter how many times the CD was reinserted the same error was returned.
Calling the consumer support, I got to speak with a very polite and apparently knowledgeable person who, nevertheless, could not help. On the false 'you need at least 1GB of free storage' message, he placed me on hold to discuss it with the specialists and came back quickly to tell me that no one had ever heard of such an error message but they were going to investigate. On the 'an error has occurred, reinsert the CD' failure he suggested that it was likely a firewall issue (not true, it turns out) but was unable to tell which specific program I was to allow through the firewall. As you can see in the comment I will post to this review, the problem was most likely the CD itself.
After so many Dora Links sold, the people supporting this item SHOULD know that there is a problem with the installation CD and should NOT waste their customers time with futile advice involving firewalls.
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Going the 'download' way (see comment) it took a while to get an executable about 550MB off the Doralinks site. Running that file triggered an installation process - another 10 minutes or so - that created a shortcut on the desktop. Clicking on the shortcut brought a little window with a 'Play' button on it and a progress bar that immediately announced that updates were being downloaded. This took another 2 hours on our 5 Mbps cable modem connection. Another 10-20 minutes of more installation and, finally, we were ready to begin play.
DORA'S MECHANICS
Before I discuss actual play, it's probably better to mention what the physical Dora's capabilities are. She can do the following:
- Speaks - in a voice that's not unlike Dora's voice as heard from the computer.
- Blinks - usually when greeting someone, Dora's eyes close and then open again in greeting.
- Changes eye color - whenever asked to do so, Dora closes her eyes for a couple of seconds and, when they open again, her eyes are of a different color (brown, blue and green are the options).
- Grows hair - this is a little disturbing, actually. Her hair grows or shortens itself by about 1/4 inch while some motor seems to be busy whirling inside her head.
- Glows lips - this is supposed to be in response to asking Dora to change her lips color. This is done by a reddish light turning on inside her mouth, making her lips glow and the glow intensity should be the several shades of red her lips can be.
- Glows cheeks - same as above. There are 2 more lights behind her right and left cheeks.
- Glows earrings - when earrings are selected for Dora, they glow in one of several colors - red, blue, green - depending of what type of stone her rings are made of.
- Glows necklace - same as above, only this applies to her pendant.
With everything glowing on her (lips, cheeks, earrings, necklace) Dora's looks can come close to that of a Jack-o-Lantern or possibly a Christmas tree in a dress.
PLAYTIME
The little girl needs to create an 'account' before she can play. I am happy to report as a positive that the child is NOT asked to provide an email address. However, her login ID must be unique inside the Dora universe and she must provide a password. A 2-letter password was accepted.
Once inside Dora's world, the child can play any of several dozen games with more games becoming available as she and Dora solve more 'mysteries'. In the beginning, she can dress her up or help Dora wear some disguise. This is where Dora can change her eye color, hair length, put some color (light) in her lips and cheeks and accessorize. Not all changes are reflected in the physical doll - sunglasses, hats, dress colors can't change on the doll itself but some are - see the list of Dora's capabilities above. It is possible to end up with a Dora on the computer that is very different from Dora the doll - white hair in a ponytail, sunglasses, hat and pants.
From time to time, Dora the doll (as opposed to Dora on the computer) expresses her approval of some particular article the child made her wear.
Dora also gets D-mail - it's like email, only Dora reads it aloud since some of the girls playing with her may be 5-6 years old. It's almost always about some new mystery that Dora may need to solve or activities she may be ask to help with.
Following a D-mail or whenever the child wishes, Dora can step into her computer world - the town of Puerto Verde. The town comes with downtown, a shopping center, school, park, beach and a residential area. It's where Dora interacts with her friends, goes shopping, can have her hair done or simply explore.
It's worth noting that Dora speaks mostly English but she and her friends mix their English with quite a few Spanish colloquialisms from 'Hola' to more more sophisticated phrases such as the Spanish words for 'beauty parlor'. I would say that 10-20% of her words are in Spanish but it is usually easy to understand what she is talking about.
EVALUATION
As much as my little girl loves playing with Dora, I can't rate this kit very high for the few reasons already mentioned above:
- Terribly difficult software installation - And I won't be surprised if some parents gave up in frustration and let their kids play with the physical Dora as if she was nothing but an expensive doll.
- Short USB cable - I am wondering how much money was saved by making the cable 1 foot shorter.
- Very frustrating packaging.
- Dora's creepy looks when all lit up.
All these being said, our girl simply LOVES playing with Dora, once we were able to set it up. She's still not running on her own computer but she manages to get 'time' on one of her brothers' laptop and she absolutely enjoys dressing up Dora, meeting her friends and walking around town.
It's very difficult to rate this. If I could do two separate ratings, Dora Links would be a one-star (just hate it) from a parent's point of view but a 5-stars if you were to ask our girl. The best and the fairest I can do is to do an 'average' and this makes Dora Links a 3-star toy for those who have the patience needed to make her work.
By Mimi (Florence, KY United States)
I would LOVE some help. I have followed all of the advice I can find to get this doll to be functional. It was opened on Christmas morning and I still cannot get it to download on to a 5 month old computer. I downloaded a Free Download Manager and that did work to get it downloaded...it only took 2 hours instead of the previous 3+ hour attempts. Not kidding...this is the 4th time downloading this and it has taken that long every time. Tip...If you download it once...even if it doesn't finish....you can download it AGAIN...wait for the 3 hours only to find out that you have to UNINSTALL the junk FIRST before the now completed download will work. Everyone is right...don't bother with the CD that comes with the toy. Go straight to the website and download it from there. Ok...so it is FINALLY downloaded and I even have a handy icon on my desktop. Now, you have to Launch it (I suppose) in order to register it. I clicked on the the desktop icon and DoraLinksLauncher comes up with "Downloading New Content" that is creeping. WTF could this be downloading now? It has already taken 2 hours... what? If ANYONE out there has any ideas what to do now...I'd love to hear from ya. Mind you...I haven't even plugged the doll up yet. UGH!! I cannot believe how frustrating this is. I bought it at Target and no longer even has the packaging to take it back. I don't even want my daughter to play with it yet because I am afraid she will lose something before I can even get it to work. This is a HUGE waste of money and time. I'm sure it is alot of fun and even educational if it will ever work. However, I couldnt' even rank this toy since I don't even know yet....I would NEVER have bought this if I had read these reviews first. I'm kicking myself now....
By Paul Matheu
Big disappointment. Installation nightmares are just the beginning. Doll and game probably will expire in Sep 2010 according to documentation. To open new chapters in the game, you must purchase more accesories (real accesories, real money).
1. Installation
As many users, we spent a couple of days trying to get this thing to work (Dec 25). Different PCs, different windows versions. As CD didn't work, we tried downloading the software from the site - downloading got interrupted every single time (different PCs again). Even though we have high-speed internet, we had to use a "download manager" which finally did the trick (of getting the right software, that is).
2. No offline option, online game might expire 2010
YOU CANNOT USE THE SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU'RE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. C'mon!!!! We own games such as MySims for the Nintendo DS, which provide rich environments to explore, activities, currency management, tasks/errands for the player, all requiring just a few megs of ram in a cartridge on your nintendo, offline! That said, we wonder then, why did we have to download 500MB+ for something which still requires an internet connection everytime you want to play with it? If it was a website, it could have well been a simple flash-based game. Worst of all, documentation says that the online content is guaranteed to be AVAILABLE ONLY UNTIL SEPTEMBER 2010. Does this mean that this Doralinks virtual world game will not be available after that? For reference, I still have a Nintendo 64 and cartridges which still work.
3. No offline option, doll interaction features expire sep 2010 too?
Lets say you don't want to explore the virtual world, and you just got the toy for the doll. The doll's features (change hair size, eye color, earrings, pendant colors, cheeks) WILL NOT WORK unless you are running the game on your PC, which requires you to be on the Internet, and expects the [...] site to be up. However, if the site is not guaranteed to be up after Sep 2010, then there is no guarantee that after that date you will be able to interact with the doll! Tell that to your kid. I mean, after 3 years of owning Baby Alive, it still says "mama", all required is a change of batteries.
4. Bad game design
After downloading half a gig+, and given the "system requirements", I expected the game to be a bit more modern, rich in content and graphics. WRONG. As said before, MySims on the nintendo ds and animal crossing provide better animation, richer worlds, more activities, "out of the box". The Doralinks "world" seems like primitive games (think 1990's), where environments where just a static background and characters flat cartoons, no rotations or smooth animations. If you played PC games in 1990's, such as Kings Quest, this is the kind of movement/animations this game has. Very static, very primitive. Worst of all, you cannot save (same tasks keep being requested), and if you want new tasks YOU MUST PURCHASE (with real $$s) accessories. Out of the box, Dora's closet shows dresses she cannot wear. On other activities, she can only "try" dresses but cannot take them with her, (even though you are in the online world!!). Furthermore, to interact with the doll, you need to search for place where you can change the hair, eyecolor, light cheeks. You have to be Logged in to do this, no way to do it offline (even though you have a PC).
I urge the developers of this game/doll to take a look at MySims for the nintendo ds, or animal crossing (any version) to realize how bad your game really is. Furthermore, for many reasons including privacy and online child safety, please provide a software version which allows you to play the game WITHOUT an internet connection. This will also give the toy more life by allowing it to work with an offline PC even if the site is not up after Sep 2010.
By H. B. Runyon (Seattle, WA)
My daughter received the Dora doll and game as a gift from Santa Clause, it's been a week and still does not work. The software download is a nightmare and without it my daughter is playing with a paperweight of a Dora doll. Given the opportunity to make changes I would definitely have directed Santa away from this gift and will let all my friends, family and neighbors know to avoid this toy in the future. There is little if any help available from Mattel or instructions included with the toy. Don't waste your money and save your daughter some tears.
By Melissa 13
My daughter really loves this toy and enjoys playing the games online and solving the Dora mysteries!! The only negative about this is you cant unlock other games unless you buy her friends. So there is a lot of areas on the game that she cant get to until the other dolls are bought, which stinks for a 7 year old who just got this great toy for Christmas and she cant use all of it now.
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