Review: Dora’s Fix-It Adventure for Vtech V-Motion
Written on Feb 2, 2009 by Brian and filed under News
Dora for V-Motion is designed for kids age 4-6 and as is typical of Dora products, encourages learning Spanish. Dora includes a multi-part learning adventure story along with three mini games in the learning zone.
As with other V-Motion games Dora includes two skill levels. The learning adventure is not quite as well constructed as Kung Fu Panda for instance, but it puts together a plausible story kids understand. The games are very long though, it takes an hour or more to complete the entire story. As you’ll see, we’re not entirely crazy with the game, it tends to be slow and largely repetitive. Though there’s a lot for younger players (ages 2-4) and plenty of common Spanish language words for kids to work on.
Learning Adventure
Color Forest (Colors, color patterns, counting 1-10, Spanish)
This game is actually made up of several smaller games. In broken bridge kids have to identify the proper color or color pattern to fix the bridge. Then they have to rotate it so its properly aligned to fit. In bridge path Dora will identify the right direction with a color said in Spanish on the hard level and both Spanish and English on the easy level. After that comes missing logs where kids have to figure out how many logs are missing from the bridge. This game reinforces counting in English and Spanish on the easy level and Spanish on the hard level.
In locked gate kids have to identify the proper keys that match the same shaped holes in a lock. Next kids head to crocodile lake where they follow a frog and Dora’s Spanish color instructions to avoid crocs. Shortly after they have to walk Dora across a log while keeping balance. Logs and turtles are next, kids have to jump Frogger-style to safety.
There’s quite a bit of variety here and while none of the games are terribly difficult, this does help kids who have an interest in Spanish reinforce colors and numbers.
Number River (Numbers, number sequences, shapes, Spanish)
Number river starts out with kids listening to Dora instruct them on Spanish shape names to repair their boat. Kids pick the right shape then hammer them into place. Once the boat is fully repaired, kids navigate down the river following numbers that Dora counts in Spanish as they go. Kids have to avoid logs, Swiper and so on, but there’s no penalty for crashing and the most difficult challenge is number identification. At the end of this mission kids fish for four tires to help Tico.
Again, there’s nothing challenging here for the 4-6 age group this game is designed for. Kids will finish the mission every time since there’s no penalty for being wrong or making a mistake. To be clear, we’re not looking for games to be punitive, but we do evaluate the game against the suggested age group, which in this case appears to be way off.
Friendly Farm (Animal sounds, directions, Spanish)
Dora is helping find the propellers in this game and is using animal clues to navigate a long path. Kids will start with animal sounds, then use footprints, animal objects and finally road signs to make their way. The easy level uses English and Spanish words to help while the hard level only uses Spanish. Kids will have to complete the cycle four times to complete this game. We had a few test kids bail out early on this game since it’s very repetitive and actually pretty boring.
Ancient Pyramid (Logic skills, shapes, Spanish)
Kids must solve three puzzles to recover the engine. The first puzzle type has kids select the missing puzzle piece then fix the bridge to cross. The hard level has three choices where the easy has three, but either way kids will get this one pretty quickly. The second puzzle, ball drop, makes kids rotate puzzle pieces so they can drop a ball into a basket. This one requires a good deal of logic, even though there is a helping arrow. The ball drop is definitely a challenge, something we had been waiting for out of this game. At the end comes the balance puzzle where kids need to balance a scale. They rotate pieces to find the right match to even out the scale.
Ancient Pyramid is the lone bright spot in terms of games that are appropriately difficult for this audience. But even this set of games suffers from being repetitive. To complete the entire learning adventures takes nearly an hour, which is much longer than it should take. Our test kids enjoyed the main mission but only because it was Dora. And even so they largely got bored and wanted to do something else.
Learning Zone
Feed the Ducks (Counting 1-20, Spanish)
The first game in the learning zone is feed the ducks. Kids have to count the number of ducks that are quacking (not under water) in a series of progressively larger counts. The easy level uses English and Spanish and numbers up to 10. The hard level uses Spanish numbers only up to 20. The game is slow, but at least gets harder. The counting is obviously not terribly difficult and kids get repetitive action with the Spanish numbers. If learning 1-20 in Spanish is a goal, this game is useful.
Letter Lock (Letter recognition)
Letter Lock challenges kids to unscramble a letter to complete the word shown under a picture. This is one of the harder games largely because some of the pictures are pretty bad and kids had a hard time identifying the objects they were supposed to spell. Good readers will probably be okay, and the game is actually pretty good once kids get going. Just be prepared as a parent to help out with this one. There are six scrambles to complete the game, the easy level has easier words and three pieces to unscramble, the hard level has four pieces and more difficult words.
Animal Babies (Animal recognition, matching)
Kids have to pair animal babies with their moms in this game. This is about as basic as it gets. The mom comes out then kids have to find the baby, which in most cases looks exactly like the mom, just smaller and partially obstructed by a bail of hay. Kids in the target age range for this game will have no problem solving this one and probably little interest in playing it a second time.
Bottom Line
We’ve been pretty tough on this game, largely because it’s frankly way too easy for kids in the 4-6 age range. Even Dora fans were pretty bored here. Vtech really dropped the ball, the game just isn’t very good. Of course younger kids might get some benefit and those who are really interested in learning Spanish might enjoy it. We think there’s moderate value in the 3-4 age range, but that’s about it. Dora is not a good example of what the V-Motion system is capable of.
2 out of 5 stars
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