Description:
Take a working visit to a factory environment like no other, complete with parking lot duties, a mailroom, and a map depicting all of your various client countries. Become the Employee of the Year? But wait--what's the catch? This game is Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc. Scream Team Training, and a player's corporate goal is scaring kids all over the world. Scream Team Training is a typical Disney film tie-in game, which is to say that it offers a range of simple arcade games based on scenes from the movie in question. With a heavy skew toward fun rather than educational value, these activities challenge kids to sort mailroom packages, chase a rampaging human child through endless closet doors, practice frightening a training robo-kid, and attempt to mollify the young offspring of the company's googly-eyed workforce. Each game has thirty levels whose difficulty increases in extremely tiny increments--great for children who might be inclined to give up as soon as the going gets too tough, but perhaps a little dull for those who want to speed ahead to a harder level of play. Within its monster-based context, the game has all the architecture of a working-class job site, like timecards, employee lockers, and a cafeteria. Players are "trainees," and they must succeed at the mailroom activity before earning key cards that will give them access to other games. In that sense, it is an interesting attempt to show kids the many facets of the mysterious phenomenon called work that claims so many parents on a daily basis. The use of the work-site interface also provides a pleasing range of activities, too--some faintly realistic, some thoroughly fantastic. This makes Scream Team Training a great choice for Monsters, Inc. fans in particular or for any young arcade-game buff who enjoys a little zaniness. (Ages 5 and older) --Alyx Dellamonica
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