Math Missions Grades 3-5: The Amazing Arcade Adventure
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Scholastic Developer: Scholastic Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Edutainment
Graphics & Sound: Math Missions Grades 3-5: The Amazing Arcade Adventure is a good game to pick up if you have a middle-schooler who needs to improve his or her math skills and you need to find a game that will give your child (or grandchild) a lot more practice. The Math Missions series has proven itself to be a good resource for improving a child's critical thinking, arithmetic and problem solving skills. The Amazing Arcade Adventure continues the graphical style of the other Math Missions games. Meaning that it shows Spectacle City (where all the action takes place) in a very cartoony style. Unfortunately, I noticed on a couple of occasions that the people of this city got choppy and distorted for no apparent reason. There isn't really any music, per se, in this game. Mostly, you hear background noises befitting the setting of the problem (for example, you would hear construction sounds on top of the future site of the World Peace Building, or checkout counters at the Incredi-Bulk Grocery store). As far as the sound effects themselves - nothing really special. They can get a little repetitive and nerve-racking after a while, but it tends to take some time.
Gameplay: Math Missions Grades 3-5: The Amazing Arcade Adventure brings you back to Spectacle City, which is even more run-down than before. Once again, the mayor has hired you as a Math Wizard to teach the shop owners and clerks what they need to know in order to run their businesses. But while you run around the city bringing it back to its former glory, Randall Underling, a man bent on seeing the city go under, works hard to see you fail. As you refine your multiplication and division skills, you will earn money to be used in the Spectacle City Arcade (when it is finally up and running, that is). Other skills that will be practiced in 3-5 are equalities, inequalities, estimations, fractions, ratios, pattern combinations and much more. As you progress through the game, the mayor will give you several items that will help you along you way, including a protractor and scales. To keep track of your earnings, as well as a map of the city and your access to the menus, the Deputy Mayor has given you an A-Pet (it looks like a PDA with ears). The menu system (found in the A-Pet) is easy to navigate and allows you to change the game's difficulty, volume and other basic options.
Difficulty: Math Missions Grades 3-5: The Amazing Arcade Adventure has three levels of difficulty (which can be set at any point in the game), and these vary the complexity of the problems. Basically, the better your child is in the different aspects of math (visual, conceptual, problem solving, etc.), the easier the game is for that child.
Game Mechanics: With a few exceptions Math Missions Grades 3-5: The Amazing Arcade Adventure is basically a Point-and-Click style game. These exceptions come into play when you have to enter a number or something similar. Math Missions is a good game to give your child more practice in the basic concepts of middle school math. Just like most edutainment games, this is not designed to teach your child how to do math. The purpose of 3-5 is to give him or her practice with these skills. So while it is a good game, it shouldn't be considered the pinnacle of your child's math education.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows Pentium II; 256 MHz or faster; Windows 95/98/2000/Me/XP or later; 64 MB RAM; 175 MB HD Space; 16-bit color; 8X CD-ROM Macintosh iMac 233MHz or faster processor; System 8.6 or later, OS X; 64 MB RAM; 175 MB HD Space; 16-bit color; 24X CD-ROM   Test System: Windows XP Professional Ed., AMD Athlon 600 MHz, 384 MB RAM, 24X CD-ROM, Geforce3 Ti200, DirectX 9.0.
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