Review: Star Wars Jedi Reading (LeapFrog Leapster2)

Written on May 18, 2009 by Brian and filed under LeapFrog, Reviews

LeapFrog has done a good job integrating well known brands with educational content to make learning enjoyable for kids. With Star Wars Jedi Reading, they’ve actually done something else, made it a little fun for parents as well. Jedi Reading is built on the classic Star Wars franchise (not to be confused with the Clone Wars cartoon) and helps kids age 5-8 work on core reading skills.

The premise of the game is core to the Star Wars platform – Darth Vader and the evil Galactic Empire are out to destroy the Rebel Alliance.  Kids get to join forces with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Master Yoda to rebuild the Rebel fleet and foil Darth Vader’s plans. 

Jedi Reading addresses the following curriculum:

• Letter recognition
• Letter sounds
• Consonants
• Sight words
• Vowels
• Blends
• Upper/lowercase letters
• Phonics skills

Gameplay

Starting out, kids get to select from one of three missions. Each mission is available in three skill levels, offering a wide variety of learning levels for different ages. There’s in-game help as well, so if your child isn’t quite ready for level 2 for instance, but too good for level 1, they can use the question mark button to get extra help. The game is designed for ages 5-8, which more or less spans K-2nd grade. The kids we worked with responded well to the content and the boys especially well to the Star Wars brand. While 5 is the lower suggested limit, if as a parent you are comfortable with some of the basic Star Wars themes, like shooting stormtroopers, the learning elements, like letter identification, can reach much younger. 

Each of the three games gives kids an opportunity to collect two X-wing fighters. Once they’ve amassed six ships, two from each of the three missions, they’re ready for an assault on the Empire and ultimately the Death Star. Each mission is different enough, while reinforcing the reading curriculum throughout. 

Asteroid Attack

Kids get to control the Millennium Falcon as they blast asteroids, TIE fighters and an Imperial Star Destroyer on their mission to identify letters and spell words.  Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia and C-3PO provide encouraging feedback through the game. As kids progress they’ll find health repair units to fix damage done by TIE fighters or the occasional asteroid collision. The game action is standard side-scrolling, kids use the D-pad to move about and the A button to fire. The only issue we found is that younger kids did well with the vertical movement, but struggled some with the side to side. The game is forgiving though, so younger kids on level 1 should be able to progress just fine.

Curriculum: Letter recognition, letter sounds, consonants, sight words, vowels and blends. 

Operation Endor

In this game kids use their spelling skills and letter recognition to help Luke Skywalker blast Imperial stormtroopers. While the content is similar to the previous game, LeapFrog changes up the interface some, so kids use the stylus and tap action instead of the D-pad. As with the other games, it’s forgiving in that there are plenty of health refills if the stormtroopers get a few shots in on Luke. 

Curriculum: Uppercase and lowercase letters, letter sounds, consonants, vowels and blends. 

Jedi Mind Training

Kids listen to Master Yoda as he asks them to identify letters. Kids will be spelling words or on the easier levels working on letter recognition and letter sounds. Kids interface with the game with the stylus, selecting their answers as Yoda requests. This game lags though, making it difficult for younger kids or kids who are light on patience. By lag, I mean that a tap on an answer, correct or not, is not recorded for at least a second, which means kids tap on the letter repeatedly. If it’s the right answer the extra taps don’t matter, but if kids make a mistake, they take damage, possibly enough to end the game. Parents will want to make kids aware of this issue, encouraging them to tap only once on each letter, so there’s no frustration.

Curriculum: Letter recognition, letter sounds and phonics skills.

After completing each mission twice, kids will have enough fighters to mount an attack. Each attack has a bit of a story with slideshow images. Kids press a red button on a fighter to attack and it’s done. You can’t really fail at an attack and there’s no skill involved. This gets to our only major complaint with the game, and that’s the repetitive nature of the game in order for completion. Kids have to mount several attacks to gain rank. So that means kids have to play the games over and over to reload their ship count before mounting a new attack. That adds up to 12 plays of each game if kids want to ultimately attack and destroy the Death Star. Depending on the child, this may or may not be an issue, but we suspect it will take many weeks of gameplay for kids to work through the entire progression.

Bottom Line

Even though we think the path to the Death Star attack should be shorter, the game is very solid overall. Kids who are working on anything from letter identification to spelling 3-5 letter words will find something to do here. Even better if kids are into the Star Wars platform, as they’ll find their favorite characters. Parents who grew up on Star Wars will like the tie ins as well, which is an added bonus. Of course the Leapster2 can be connected to a PC to bring the data into a kid’s profile as well, so parents can track progress online. Star Wars Jedi Reading effectively engages kids in letter/reading games and is a worthy buy for the Leapster2 platform.

4 out of 5 stars

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