Yoda's Challenge
As an edutainment title - this has more going for it than some. Of the six activities, the
best ones are jamming with the cantina band and exploring the caves. Playing along with the
cantina band is fun. There are colors and sounds to help you duplicate the introductory
themes to songs that the band will play for you. If you decide to make your own music
you can experiment with different types of chords to accompany your melody. The chord
bit is novel. Most music activities stop with a simple single line melody. Teaching chords
could be something that might interest a lot of people.
For teaching how to follow directional instruction like left and right and North and South
I haven't seen a better example. The cave exploring activity starts out with simple left and
right directions and graduates to the cardinal points of the compass. A triangle on a
simple plan tracks your progress, so you get a little map reading experience. The choice of
an equilateral triangle was a poor one because it does not clearly indicate the players
change in direction. Maybe next time it will be perfect.
In Trap the Droids you have to match the pitch and tempo of drum beats to spring the
traps. It has amusing animations but the background drumming is confusing. In the races
between Jar Jar and Queen Amidala you not only have to evaluate what is the shortest
route, you have to select a course that takes advantage of the racers innate skills.
Interesting concepts, but more work should have been done on the cursor control since
quick and accurate response is important.
The tangram puzzle is standard stuff, the matching word shapes is weird and I'm not sure
useful. I mean, what can you do with the knowledge that the word till is made up of a tall,
a short and two tall shapes?
It still adds up to a pretty good game. With a little more care some of the annoyances
could have been avoided. While there is little replay value, by the time you get through all
the puzzles you have gotten your money's worth.
Reviewed by Genevieve Katz
Ages 6 - 8