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From:Vivendi Universal
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See Product Page
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#7948 |
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 Plenty of fun, but a few notable problems, 2008-04-17
Hi, I'm StoryMaker. I've been enjoying JumpStart products since I was a kindergartener. Recently, I got this game - JumpStart Spy Masters: Unmask the Prankster - as a birthday present from my grandparents. With the help of my sister, Chocolate Dog, I finished it with less than 2 days' work. It features characters from JumpStart 3rd Grade, the 2000 version of JumpStart 4th Grade, JumpStart 5th Grade and JumpStart 6th Grade. The characters, apparently, have formed a Spy Masters agency in order to do good. (Jess and Zack must of ditched EarthQuest - either that or they were kicked out. LOL!) One day, some evil robots appear. It turns out a mysterious villian known by the alias of "the Prankster" in causing this nonsence and havoc. So, what will you do to save the day? Exactly! Play a computer game.
The gameplay of this game is good. You design your own "secret identity" by choosing looks, catch phrases, and your grade level (determines the difficulty of the questions and subjects in the games and activities). Luckily, you can skip the catch phrases part if you, like me, think it's stupid. Unfortuneately, I couldn't find any girl body parts, so I had to settle with a guy as my secret identity. (I'm a girl, if you didn't guess). Luckily, it goes uphill from there. You start out in the headquarters. You can leave or watch the most recent cutscene (a scene or video where the player cannot interact). Once you leave, you are able to use the arrow keys to guide your character around a 3D world. It's not that much of a 3D world, though; you seem to have a bird's eye view on everything, and the sprites are small (if you've played Sonic 3D Blast, it's very similar to that). You can shoot different weapons at evil robots walking by. In turn, the robots can shoot at you. As you progress in the game, bigger, stronger robots will begin appearing that take more hits to destroy. It's very fun, though sometimes I find myself wanting to just click on the place I want my character to go or I wish I could take shortcuts or go faster. Until you complete the game, you'll always have a "mission" to go to a certain place to play a certain activity or game. You must walk to the buidling where that game is played. One of the Spy Masters will meet you there and talk about what you need to do. Then, you must play the mini-game or activity to make more progress in the game. Then you'll get another mission...and another...and another until you're finished. You'll often see cutscenes to explain the storyline.
The mini-games themselves vary in educational value, fun, difficulty and overall quality. I have to say, none of them were fantastic. In one type of mini-game, you must shoot colored molecules or power spheres (depending on where you are) out of a thingy-ma-jiggy. If three or more molecules or power spheres with the same type of word (adjective, noun, adverb, etc.) touch each other, they will disappear. The objective is to clear the screen. This would be a good game, but there's one serious problem: it's color-coded, no matter what difficulty/grade level it's on. In other words, you don't have to match parts of speech; you can just match colors and not learn anything. This makes it WAY too easy in terms of educational value. (Isn't this game for, like, ages 7-11?) Another game is fun - you have to shoot either mustard or beach balls into either blenders or pirate ships (again, depending on your location). Once you get the hang of it, it's fun for the most part and pretty educational. However, at the start, it frustrated me a lot. You have to get the aim just right and the power just right in order to succeed - and you have a limited number of shots! Overall, I found the math in this mini-game to be funner than the gameplay of this mini-game.
I'll admit I am being kind of pessimistic about the games - they're not really that bad. The thing is, they aren't really that good, either. I've seen better games in JumpStart products. Another note: sometimes, the games teach history and similar social studies. I'd like to point out a little problem with that, however. If you're not studying that particular part of history at the moment, it doesn't benefit you all that much. However, it does, sometimes, challenge you to think. We had plenty of problem-solving, thinking, and just reviewing-everything-you-know practice when playing a game teaching about different religons. (The particular game we were playing is one of the best, I think. can be found in the robot factory and map/globe/whatever-it's-called room. You slide around data chips or tiles that are about the same thing; for example, if it's teaching zoology, group tiles/chips with reptiles' names on them together. 4 or more correctly-grouped chips together, and they will disappear. It's got some use of color-coding, but only enough of it to give you helpful hints and clues. It's similar to a game in the JumpStart Mystery Club bonus discs that come with JumpStart Advanced 2nd Grade - 4th Grade. Get enough to disappear, and you win, though you can still work for bonus points.)
(One last note on the graphics: for the most part, it's in 3D computer-generated graphics. However, when you meet a character at a place where a game is to be played, the character is apparently in "weird cartoon 2D-animated mode". It's not that bad, and in a way I kind of like it. But the thing is...what's the point? Also, I'd just like to mention, there's one insanely easy game where you have to figure out a super-simple graphic-word puzzle. I mean, things like snake-n=sake. The final notes: For one thing, there is seperate levels for gameplay and difficulty, which is nice. Last note: the storyline can get weird and hard to follow. I mean, it's hard to understand...what exactly did they do with that infested bread? What exactly does that one thing mean? What clocks got reset? What about latitude and longitude? I think they might be trying to give the plot educational value, but they just gave it confusing value.)
What's my overall opinion? It's plenty fun. I have to say, though, it's not the most educational - it mostly just makes you think while drilling facts that are either simple, only helpful if you're studying them, or presented in a bad way. It's not that horrible, but a better job could've been done. If you have to splurge or pay lots of money for it, don't bother. Otherwise, however, I think you'll have fun with it. Check out other JumpStart products and ClueFinders procuts, too! Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"
5 of 23 customers found the following review helpful:
 This game deserves ten thumbs! ( if you have ten thumbs that, 2002-04-29
Ok ok I can't really say I've had the pleasure of buying this game (frankly I think it's a bit over priced ) but I can say I've purchased Knowledge Adventure's previous merchandise before it has always had complete satifactory. I've bought a few of there items in the past and they were very educational and benifitial .Knowledge Adventure trys to make there software educational and fun . That's what's important right? You wanna teach your children and help them to learn yet try to catch there attention with something at a children's level. This spy idea sure did catch MY attention ! I think it's one of the best ways to teach children instead of forcing facts in to there heads with telvision shows all the time and work books. In conclusion I'd like to say this item sounds like a good way of teaching your children langauge , math facts and so on . Go ahead and buy it!
8 of 11 customers found the following review helpful:
great game, 2002-03-17
This game was challenging even though I'm a strait "A" student in 8th grade I learned alot from it. If you want to learn or your parents want you to buy a fun educational game this is the one.
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