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Rating: 
Summary: Very Poor Game - frustrates children and is slow paced
Review: I've seen a lot of children's fun and educational games and this is one of the WORST I've seen especially given the awards it has received. The graphics are great, but the game is EXTREMELY slow paced. It takes too long to get from one activity to another meaning that most of the hours required to play are spent just wandering around Mia's house not learning or accomplishing anything. The character Mia is geared towards 5-year-olds, but most of the games are geared towards 9-year-olds. The font used is hard for young kids to read. (The "g" and "a" for example are not like hand printed letters.) Some of the activities are not explained well, the child often looses even when only chance is involved, and the reward system is so strong that the child is left feeling inadequate rather than enlightened. For example, one activity requires full understanding of syntax of written words. When the child forms word by word the sentence "The cat like to hit balls", he is told "that is not a sentence" and all the work disappears. The child is not corrected or given a second chance to change "like" to "likes".
If you are looking for good adventure games for 3-6 year olds, try the "Putt-Putt" series; for learning games try "Davidson's Learning Center Series" and the "Reader Rabbit" series."
Rating:
Summary: Very Poor Game - frustrates children and is slow paced
Review: I've seen a lot of children's fun and educational games and this is one of the WORST I've seen especially given the awards it has received. The graphics are great, but the game is EXTREMELY slow paced. It takes too long to get from one activity to another meaning that most of the hours required to play are spent just wandering around Mia's house not learning or accomplishing anything. The character Mia is geared towards 5-year-olds, but most of the games are geared towards 9-year-olds. The font used is hard for young kids to read. (The "g" and "a" for example are not like hand printed letters.) Some of the activities are not explained well, the child often looses even when only chance is involved, and the reward system is so strong that the child is left feeling inadequate rather than enlightened. For example, one activity requires full understanding of syntax of written words. When the child forms word by word the sentence "The cat like to hit balls", he is told "that is not a sentence" and all the work disappears. The child is not corrected or given a second chance to change "like" to "likes".
If you are looking for good adventure games for 3-6 year olds, try the "Putt-Putt" series; for learning games try "Davidson's Learning Center Series" and the "Reader Rabbit" series."
Rating: 
Summary: An impressive, polished and educational experience - buy it!
Review: This new (2001) game has exceptionally good graphics and animation. Scattered throughout the adventure are educational activities which were:
(1) extraordinarily good (I remember being taught to read with exercises similar to these, but using flash cards)
(2) varied in difficulty -- some were too difficult even on level 1 for even a bright 5 year old (e.g. read question sentence, then read and choose correct *form* of answer for the question). However, the well written CD insert gives adults helpful advice on when and how to assist children -- I found that re-assuring. With appropriate adult assistance, even the hardest activities became fun learning experiences.
(3) covered an impressive breadth of reading skills (on level 1: starting short words, matching short words with images, matching questions with answer forms, choosing words - structured in a column-ordered matrix - to create sentences) and even problem solving involving lever-fulcrum, etc.The game is fun, and I found it best to supervise sometimes and let my child just explore for a while at other times. The "skateboard" accelerator is a great fun feature for the child and can be used to keep the action from dragging. The story's theme - getting medicine for sick Granma -- is a very positive. The initial mugging in the dark by the evil rat character is less so -- but perhaps the story needs that edge (my child was careful to avoid the rat thereafter -- perhaps a lesson in itself!). A selection of interesting characters are encountered enroute. Occasional surprises prevent the action from slowing down. The script does not talk down to the child -- too many books and games treat childen condescendingly, using "baby talk" and slang. This is by far the best childs game I have come across in the 3-5 year old range (it is for 5-9 year olds) so far. Is it perfect? Well no (see below) but it is an order of magnitude better than other games I have encountered. It is hard to find substantial faults with this, but here are a couple of issues I found:
(1) It always installs only on the C: drive -- I hate that, my C:\ partition is always near full because of this sort of half-baked installer. I expected the installer to fail because of lack of space, however it succeeded -- I can only assume the game has a fairly small hard disk requirement (footprint) -- despite the advertised need for 40Mb.
(2) Mia apparently walked through a slipper at one point. It looked odd, but did not effect the game. Works great on Windows XP Professional.
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