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Some good edutainment for the Wii.

If you have a child chances are that you have heard of JumpStart, the company that makes educational materials for teaching early childhood fundamentals. Back in the day it was audio compact discs and training courses. Recently, however, they have started in with video games and Escape From Adventure Island is their next installment in the console arena. How did they fare you may ask? For the most part, they did alright. The game has many issues and would not stand on its own if not for the educational content it conveys. With the game's issues put to the side, the game has succeeded at what it set out to do, which is to make learning fun.

Escape From Adventure Island is a three dimensional, third person educational game in which the player roams around trying to retrieve helium canisters dropped from the airship your character crash landed in while flying over the island. The helium tanks are revealed by the characters inhabiting the island as you earn sand dollars. These sand dollars are awarded after completing the mini-games that are scattered around the beach and under the water. On top of just getting the helium containers, collecting sand dollars also unlocks clothes for your personalized character or jumpy as the game calls them, and upgrades to your own personal tree house, such as paint color or window type.

The games are played using the Wii remote and nunchuck. All of the games use the motion sensing capabilities of the Wii controller set, but some more than the others. For instance, some of the games have you tilting the Wii remote to move the character around the board. The other types of games have you moving the character using the nunchuck stick. Movement around the game is easy for the most part and pretty intuitive. I did have to explain the controls to my little gamer but not much. That being said, the game's controls will not appeal to the designated 5-9 age group. My little gamer is on the lowest end of the age group and did not care for moving the character around. Five minutes into playing was enough for a return of the controller to me. The game was not through, however, we kept on playing but with me controlling and asking for the correct answers.

There are two main types of mini-games in Escape From Adventure Island: educational and just for fun. The educational games are the main reason to play this game and they cover a large array of topics including: counting, addition, reading, grammar, capitalization, shape recognition and a very sizeable amount more. By educational, I mean the player will be learning information about a topic that may be tested on in school. I make the distinction because most of the mini-games are not educational. Most of the educational mini-games feature three learning levels and all of them feature three game skill levels. To be a little more clear, the learning levels cover the difficulty of the educational content and the game skill level covers how many bad guys, or Punk Punks, are on the level as well as how aggressive the Punk Punks are once they spot you.

The just for fun games are there, it seems, as filler or perhaps to take your mind off of things while keeping the player in the game. The just for fun games have you moving around to achieve some goal like finding something in a three dimensional maze or pushing eggs back to a nest. These games are on the other end of the spectrum educational wise. Sure the child playing may be learning timing or how to navigate in a three dimensional space but this only teaches the player how to move on to more advanced games.

There are six types of mini-games in Escape From Adventure Island, of which there are really only two that are educational. Since there are only two it, may seem a bit limited and boring. While it is true that the game play is not varied, the educational games are not boring. This is due to the fact that there are so many different lessons to learn. You may be playing the same board over and over but the questions change each time. Think of playing a game show multiple times, sure it is the same game but it is also different each time. In addition, there is a very positive side to the repetition. It is a proven fact that people learn better through repetition. It is a proven fact that people learn better through repetition. Sorry, just kidding.

The worst part of JumpStart Escape From Adventure Island are the graphics, they are pretty bad. So bad in fact, that I had to move pretty close to signs to read them. I went onto the JumpStart web site and the graphics are pretty much the same or a bit better. I don't know if they needed to stick with the same low level modeling or what but it brings the whole game down.

Another aspect of the game that I thought was bad was that some of the answers were wrong. This blew me away. How in the world do you have a learning game with incorrect answers? You may think that I am just not as adept as a 5-9 year old but I do have a decent grasp of the English language. For the non-believers out there, the skeptics if you will, I did have a teacher in the room watching and she verified that I was correct.

My personal teacher and my little gamer both approve of this game. It is fun, educational and entertaining. Yes, there are some flaws, but they are not serious enough to fail this game. Fail an educational game, get it? So, while you are out looking for a new game for the Wii, do your self a favor and put the shovelware game down and pick up this game.