God I hate those cheesy 80s style adverts..
The concept is nice, but the game itself; gotta say hardly inspiring atleast from the vid.
Hate it when developers don't bother getting themselves an actual designer in to push for some polish in things. I mean there's no reason it can't be simple to pick-up'n'play while providing enough depth to give the gamer something to really sink their teeth into even if it is just an edu-game.
Hell, kids learn more from most retail titles than they do from schools. Ever played Civilization? I certainly got far more interesting information in those series of games in a way that made it easier to understand than a simple textbook stating the facts. Although still mostly reading, you can still see what your actions, governing styles, etc. effect more than something static.
There's certainly nowt to say a game can't be education and not be fun or cutting edge apart from the fact that most who work on them to be specifically education generally have no real understand of FUN.
I mean seriously, what would you find more fun.
A game about social interaction where you're trying to make friends through simple challenges and fairly blah graphics... or a detective scenario using the Mass Effect engine for interaction?
I certainly love how most RPGs generally subvertly teach social interaction with some fable style 'we should all get along' crap.
Hell, Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2 were a pretty damn good for teaching so many social aspects as well as that peoples actions have consequences; and it didn't bloody preach it in a totally boring and funless way.
I'd quite like to see a Tomb Raider some day having better puzzle interaction (Anniversay was a step in the right direction) where you have to find clues, and it teaches people stuff like history, physics, etc. in a way that they need to apply the knowledge to complete a puzzle.
Sure there's always gonna be the mindless stuff like GTA, Killzone and Halo; but there's also some damn good games that while they're not sold as education games, really do lend themselves to something that you would want kids to play in order to not only have fun but learn stuff.
