Category: Review

Review: Mater’s Tall Tales for the Wii

Disney, Review, Wii

Cars Toon 2“Did I ever tell you about the time I told Lightning about the time I was a Fire Truck?”

Mater’s Tall Tales was a series of short Disney/Pixar cartoons that showed Mater telling Lightning McQueen a (what else?) tall tale about his past.  Mater would be a bull(dozer) fighter or a drift racer in Tokyo or befriend a UFO.  Just when Lightning couldn’t believe any more or when Mater was backed into a corner of his own storytelling, Mater would pull Lightning into the story.  “Well, shoot.  You should know.  You was there too!”  Usually, this would result in the pressure being shifted to Lightning and Mater emerging victorious.  Flash back to Radiator Springs and Lightning would express disbelief with the whole tale.  Meanwhile, something would happen that would lead us viewers to wonder just how much of that tale was “tall” and how much was “truth.”

While these Tall Tales are entertaining, can you make a fun Wii game out of them?  Dadgum!  Of course, you can.  Each of Mater’s six tall tales is represented: Rescue Squad Mater, Mater The Greater, El Materdor, Unidentified Flying Mater, Tokyo Mater, and Monster Truck Mater.  (NOTE:  There are 3 more Tall Tales cartoons, but I believe these were released after the video game work was done.  Perhaps room for a Mater’s Tall Tales 2 for the Wii?)

Cars Toon Screen 2 Each tall tale includes 5 mini-games which are integrated into the story.  Games range from firing hubcaps at floating tires, to putting out fires, to racing up a tower in Tokyo, to dodging bulldozers.  Before each mini-game, a quick tutorial on how to play it appears.  The games fit in perfectly with the story and really make you feel like Mater’s included you in his tale.

With just this, Mater’s Tall Tales would be a pretty good game, but they upped the ante.  Depending on how well you do, you can earn a bronze, silver or gold trophy.  Earning a trophy, unlocks the game in Free Play and Playlist mode.  Free Play mode lets you choose a single mini-game to play while Playlist lets you choose a series of games from across all of Mater’s Tall Tales.

Cars Toon Screen 3 In addition, you earn money for completing games.  The better you do, the more money you earn.  Money can be used in your garage to buy cool add-ons for your car like spinning hubcaps a new paint job or a rear spoiler.  There are enough free items that you start with to nicely customize your car avatar, but you’ll quickly find yourself trying to earn a little more to buy that cool accessory or paint job.

Another cool feature are the collectibles.  Each game, besides having a goal, has a second goal that adds a collectable to the board in your garage.  These vary from doing very poorly (don’t get the flag in a bulldozer fighting game) to doing very well (don’t get hit at all by ninja car throwing stars) to the somewhat odd (knock over 5 cacti while fleeing from government cars after Mator’s UFO friend).  By and large, they aren’t hard to get, but they spur you on to play the games more and more.

Cars Toon Screen 4 As you earn more trophies and unlock more items, you can also unlock more cool license plates for your car.   While these don’t have any in-game use that I can tell, they are a nice touch.

Finally, there’s the multiplayer aspect.  Up to four players can play at once.  Players aren’t really ranked from first place to last place, but each player earns money/trophies depending on how they did.  Of course, the design of some games means that one player can only do well at the expense of the other players.  (The fan spotting game, for example, where the fastest one to spot the fan gets the points.)

Cars Toon Screen 1 NHL and I both loved playing this game.  Not a day has passed without at least one request from NHL to play Mater’s Tall Tales.  (An NHL video review will be coming soon.)  JSL even joined in on the fun.  Although he was a bit too young to play it properly (and too independent to allow me to help him), he still had a blast.  I would definitely recommend this game for anyone, but especially for anybody who is a fan of the Disney/Pixar movie Cars.

Anything you’d like to add, Mater?

“If I’m lyin’, I’m cryin’.”

 

 

Disclaimer: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Disney Interactive Studios and received the Cars Toon: Mater’s Tall Tales Wii game to facilitate my review.  All of the opinions expressed above are my own.

Math Rider: An NHL Video Review

Computers, NHL, Review, Videos

When I reviewed Math Rider, I planned on getting NHL to review it as well.  After all, he’s the one who played the game.  I can say it’s great and wonderful and all but if your child doesn’t really like it or want to play it, then there’s not much point, is there?  So I sat down with NHL last night, loaded up Math Rider and let him play while doing a video review.  Here’s the result:

 

So there you have it.  NHL’s thoughts are “I think everybody should have this game.”  I’m pretty sure that would be a two thumbs up if his thumbs (and the rest of his fingers) weren’t typing out math answers.

Disclaimer: Math Rider provided me with a complimentary copy of the game for review in conjunction with the Family Review Network.  This video post, however, was my own idea.  All of the opinions expressed above (both in the text and video) are mine and NHL’s.

Math Rider: An NHL Video Review

Computers, NHL, Review, Videos

When I reviewed Math Rider, I planned on getting NHL to review it as well.  After all, he’s the one who played the game.  I can say it’s great and wonderful and all but if your child doesn’t really like it or want to play it, then there’s not much point, is there?  So I sat down with NHL last night, loaded up Math Rider and let him play while doing a video review.  Here’s the result:

 

So there you have it.  NHL’s thoughts are “I think everybody should have this game.”  I’m pretty sure that would be a two thumbs up if his thumbs (and the rest of his fingers) weren’t typing out math answers.

Disclaimer: Math Rider provided me with a complimentary copy of the game for review in conjunction with the Family Review Network.  This video post, however, was my own idea.  All of the opinions expressed above (both in the text and video) are mine and NHL’s.

Riding your way to improved math skills

Computers, NHL, Review

NHL is a big fan of math.  He’ll try to work it into pretty much anything he does.  Working on an art project?  Look for an addition statement to be tacked on somewhere.  Have a few minutes with nothing to do?  He’ll grab a calculator and figure out what 63,492 + 77,315 is.

Unfortunately, he really isn’t being challenged in math this year.  Thanks to his gifted brain, he picks up math concepts nearly instantly.  Other classmates, of course, need reinforcement.  So while the teacher goes over simple addition again, NHL is ready to move onto multiplication and division.  Seriously, he is.  I did some sample multiplication and division with him and he “got it” within seconds, even giving me the answer before I could tell him.  He then asked about fractions when I made an offhand remark about them.  I still think those will be above him, but not for long.

When I was given the opportunity to review Math Rider, I jumped at the chance.  NHL loves using the computer and he loves math, so he was sure to love this.  And man did he love it!  More on this later.

The basic premise is that you are a villager in “Math Land” with your horse Shadow.  Depending on which level you choose, you’ll get one of three missions.  The mission is introduced with drawings and a narrator, but the words are printed underneath.  (Nice side effect of boosting reading skills here.)  After the introductions are over, the mission begins.  For this, the child will need to solve math problems.  They aren’t just displayed on the screen, however.  Instead, your horse is galloping across the lands, racing to reach your goal.  In your way are hurdles with math problems (e.g. 5 + 3) on them.  Typing in the right answer (e.g. 8) makes your horse jump over them.  You can type the answer early.  Shadow is smart enough to jump at the right time.  Type the answer too late, though, and Shadow is forced to stop while the math problem and answer are read aloud.

This alone, would make for a nice game, but Math Rider goes further.  On a Statistics page, you can find out just how well you are doing and which problems are the ones that give you the most trouble.  These problems will also tend to appear more often while Shadow is running, helping to strengthen the child’s math skills.

Of course, being a full-featured math game, Math Rider lets you work with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  Each of those can be attempted on “Easy”, “Medium”, or “Advanced” mode, indicating whether the math goes up to 5, 10 or 12.  Finally, multiple riders can be set up so Child 1 can tackle easy addition and keep his statistics separate from Child 2’s advanced multiplication stats.

When NHL began his first mission, getting a magic flower to help his character’s sick mother, he quickly picked up on what he needed to do.  Before long, he was laughing with joy every time he got a problem right.  He was getting most of them right, too, so there was a lot of laughing!  Occasionally, he would get one wrong and he would groan in frustration, mainly at himself for not knowing it, but then he would get it right the next time it came up.

It was interesting watching the program zero in on the math problems that he took the longest to figure out.  Those would wind up appearing more and more so he would quickly pick up on the answers to these.  Confession time: I also tried it out on Advanced Multiplication and messed up on 9 * 12.  Sure enough, 9 * 12 came up quite frequently after this and I knew that it was 108.

If your child is struggling in math, loves math or maybe just needs a source of entertainment that doesn’t involve mindless video game destruction, I would definitely recommend Math Rider.  I, for one, know that NHL will be borrowing my computer quite often to advance his rider into new and exciting quests.

Disclaimer: This post was written for Family Review Network & Math Rider who provided the complimentary product for review in exchange for my honest review.

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