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I was worried that the game would be only appeal to girls but he doesn't even mind the lack of firepower (as can be found in the kind of video games his friends are playing). My eight year old son enjoys the plot and the characters as much as my six year old daughter. We bought the software as a fun and educational way to pass time and we're quite pleased with the product. My children have been playing Mia Math and Mia Reading games for close to one year. They look forward to playing the games and set the level of difficulty themselves.
It is extremely frustrating to figure out how to get from place to place. Don't waste your money on this. I bought this for my son (6) and daughter (8). The designers obviously built this program to show off their skills but failed to really make it a productive use of time.Bottom line. Many other programs are also very fun and challenging and don't waste your time wandering aimlessly around. The program is very interactive but you will waste countless hours just wandering around Mia's world. If you spend 1 hour playing it you will really only spend about 10 minutes really learning anything useful.
Even when you're certain where you need to go, it is a chore to walk Mia to the next location. the numbers are on a conveyor belt or floating inside a crystal ball so one has to wait until the right answer comes along).The cut scenes were somewhat entertaining and the graphics and sound are decent but at times my son (and I) wish we had a button we could click to skip to the next adventure. I'm hoping to get some more gameplay out of this one; I hope when my son gets older there is replay value in trying the game at a harder level. I'm not happy with the manner in which they executed the story-based gameplay. I happened to purchase another Kutoka game at the same time which my son and I haven't tried yet. In a couple of games the correct answer is not always available for clicking (e.g. I only hope it's much better than this one.
The educational content we experienced includes but was not limited to simple arithmetic, filling in missing numbers from sequence, knowing how to adjust the clock, distinguishing between shapes, matching symmetry, sorting and identifying numbers. While other reviewers were excited about this, I'm quite dissapointed right now but hopeful. I'm tempted to e-mail Kutoka with some suggestions and hope they might consider changing a few things to make the gameplay more smooth by removing some of the guesswork and grind that goes inbetween segments as well as making the math games more user-friendly. My son simply found the games OK. clicking) to get to our next destination, we were sort of anxious to get moving along.I'm having a hard time recommending this one to other parents.
Your child's progress to the next segment is dependant on your child laboriously clicking to figure out what to do next. After taking part in the laborious walking (i.e. While the educational content is welcome, it always seemed like there was something missing - seemed poorly executed. Would be great it they had some software patches to make the "click boxes" for certain targets larger so Mia does not walk aimlessly into a circle when we're trying to make her perform an action on a item or simply walk a certain direction. He did not have the same excitement he had when playing other games like Dora the Explorer series.
The math puzzles, when we come across them, are fine, but most of the time is spent figuring out where to click for something. You just sit there, with Mia tapping her foot, repeating the same clue again and again and again and again and again. We have had this game for a while, and bought it because of the many reviews. This game is very linear, so if you can't figure one thing out, there's no way to move to another task where you might eventually better understand the gestalt of the game. The help at kutoka.com was good to find, but it wasn't sufficient to solve the problem.Even with the parts we have played, I don't find it terribly compelling. However, my daughter and I find it extremely frustrating. Even when we know what the task is to be done, we often cannot figure out how to do it.
As far as performance with the Mac operating system, this is the second Kutoko product we have owned and both work very well on our 2-year old iBook and on our new iMac (both with Leopard installed). I was led to the Mia's Math Adventure, because all indications were it would work well with the Mac OS X Leopard operating system and it was highly rated for educational content. I highly recommend this product. The only "problem" I've had is so far I have not been able to figure out how to get Mia Math to play full screen on our 20-inch iMac (a minor inconvenience). Both assertions have proven true in our use. My eight-year old daughter love's the game and the math and logic activities are a challenge, but the story line and the "adventure" aspects of the game also keep her engaged.
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