Star Wars: Yoda's Challenge Activity Center

Review

by Christopher Michael Baker

By the time they've reached the age of six, most kids these days know their way around the computer and are either discovering that they really dig school or that it's just a drag. That being said, Lucas Learning's Star Wars: Yoda's Challenge Activity Center does a nice job of not insulting their intelligence when it comes to computers (as many activity centers might). However, the will to learn is essential for a child to want to play this title for more than a few minutes.

Quite simply, Yoda's Challenge just isn't very fun. Though mature, it lacks the creativity and comic edge displayed in Lucas Learning's other contemporary Episode I-based edutainment game, Star Wars: Jar Jar's Journey. For instance, when children help C-3PO put words together to form a story, that's all that they are doing. Their payoff for successfully putting together each of the four sentences in a given group is merely having them all read together with a picture. Not very much fun.

And then there's the race game between Amidala and Jar Jar. If your child is a Star Wars fan who has or knows someone with a Nintendo 64 (and the odds are this is so at the time of this game's release in 1999), then he or she has probably played Star Wars: Episode I: Racer. If such is the case, they will no doubt be disappointed with the one-screen overhead view displayed as they race two-legged Nabooian animals instead of Podracers. They'll go from a first-person game driving at high speeds to slow-paced third-person action in which the only control they have is to instruct their character as to which path to take. Though it may aim to improve time over distance and critical thinking, it will only succeed if it entertains the child. That might not happen.

If your child has an inclination toward music -- and only if your child has an inclination toward music -- then there are a couple games included that he or she might actually find interesting. The jam with the cantina band is a phenomenal way to get them to learn to read notes off a music staff. And if keeping the beat is their thing, then they should love trapping Battle Droids with Jar Jar by emulating a given beat with three drums. In both cases, though, the will to learn music must be there. Unfortunately, my feeling is that this is not the case with 95 percent of kids out there.

The game that kept me busy for the longest was the geometry activity in which you must move triangles and squares around so as to insert them properly into a puzzle. This can actually be quite challenging, even for a person in his 20s such as myself. However, what really kept me with the game so long was the reward -- an in-depth description of something from the Star Wars universe. For mega-fans like me, it's really interesting to know things like Boss Nass enjoys learning new languages. But does your child want to know information like this?

I have a feeling that the one activity that will hold children's interest for the longest is the trek through the Gungan caves. This game forces them to follow instructions and read maps effectively as they progress on a first-person quest through the caverns en route to finding Gungan relics. If your child does enjoy this, then odds are you've got a future role-playing gamer on your hands! (Or they just might like mazes.)

Like many Star Wars games, voices actually heard in the movies are portrayed in Yoda's Challenge -- sometimes. While we do get Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and Ahmed Best as Jar Jar, Frank Oz's Yoda is noticeably absent. You know how you've got that friend who thinks he sounds like Yoda and does a relatively close job yet doesn't quite get it? I get the feeling that one of the people at Lucas Learning knew someone like that and, when Oz informed them he could not participate, recommended him for the part. ("I know this guy named Tom. . .")

Yoda's Challenge represents a valiant effort to teach those between the ages of six and eight, but I'm just not sure it succeeds in doing so. Still, if your child is as mad about Star Wars as I was at that age (and still am for that matter), then they're sure to keep with it for at least a little while. But that could be it -- just a little while. Though Yoda puts his name on the title, the Force is not very strong with his challenge.