A friend brought it to a group hang-out. We had a bunch of more obvious picks for party games, but I wasn't gonna let this pass us up.
Elmo's Letter Adventure is a simple edutainment game with a very narrow scope: reading comprehension by learning and recognizing letters. Gameplay consists of moving around environments and pressing a button near letters of an opposite case as the one given. After you find all the letters, you move on to the second stage, which does the same thing with the same letter. After that, you find letters to complete words' spelling. Repeat this cycle three times, and the game is over.
I don't object to having a narrow scope for teaching, as there's often a lot you can do within that narrow scope. But Elmo's Letter Adventure isn't doing much within that framework. If we break the game down into three sequences of three stages, a full two thirds of the game isn't even concerned with what you're doing with letters, just rote memorization of what they look like. Now, I don't know Sesame Street very well, but I know that a big part of how it teaches numbers and letters is through scenarios involving character interplay, surrealism, or humor. This has the benefit of (1) presenting the material in a memorable context, (2) teaching application of the material, and (3) being fun. I think that's what they're going for here with each set of levels being based around a different type of adventure (visiting the farm, going to space, an underWATER adventure), but the game doesn't do anything with those; mechanically, there's no difference between hopping on a pogo stick, driving a moon buggy, and piloting a submarine. About the strongest moment of teaching comes when you're looking for letters to start words, where you can accidentally spell the wrong words by picking the wrong letters, but these sequences are over and done with too quickly, they disincentivise this learning through a limited try system (overly-lenient as it is), and they're not even uniquely themed across all three level sets. And you don't have nearly enough gameplay to get through all the letters!
I know this is a game for 3-year-olds, but there's so much more you can do with games for 3-year-olds than this.
Elmo's Letter Adventure is a simple edutainment game with a very narrow scope: reading comprehension by learning and recognizing letters. Gameplay consists of moving around environments and pressing a button near letters of an opposite case as the one given. After you find all the letters, you move on to the second stage, which does the same thing with the same letter. After that, you find letters to complete words' spelling. Repeat this cycle three times, and the game is over.
I don't object to having a narrow scope for teaching, as there's often a lot you can do within that narrow scope. But Elmo's Letter Adventure isn't doing much within that framework. If we break the game down into three sequences of three stages, a full two thirds of the game isn't even concerned with what you're doing with letters, just rote memorization of what they look like. Now, I don't know Sesame Street very well, but I know that a big part of how it teaches numbers and letters is through scenarios involving character interplay, surrealism, or humor. This has the benefit of (1) presenting the material in a memorable context, (2) teaching application of the material, and (3) being fun. I think that's what they're going for here with each set of levels being based around a different type of adventure (visiting the farm, going to space, an underWATER adventure), but the game doesn't do anything with those; mechanically, there's no difference between hopping on a pogo stick, driving a moon buggy, and piloting a submarine. About the strongest moment of teaching comes when you're looking for letters to start words, where you can accidentally spell the wrong words by picking the wrong letters, but these sequences are over and done with too quickly, they disincentivise this learning through a limited try system (overly-lenient as it is), and they're not even uniquely themed across all three level sets. And you don't have nearly enough gameplay to get through all the letters!
I know this is a game for 3-year-olds, but there's so much more you can do with games for 3-year-olds than this.
2 Comments
I just finished this, actually by far the laziest N64 game I've played yet. WOW. They didnt even try XD
Like at least make the letters switch up sometimes when you pick them up, come on!
Like at least make the letters switch up sometimes when you pick them up, come on!
Erato_Heti
11 months ago