Avanquest Reader Rabbit Triple Pack 2 - Ages 6-8 review

Verdict:

Review Date: 15 Aug 2008

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Adam Banks

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

This bundle includes three programs: Year 2 - Mis-cheese-ious Dreamship Adventures, Reading - Ages 6-8 and Maths - Ages 6-8.

We tested the painfully titled Mis-cheese-ious Dreamship Adventures; the others offer similar kinds of activities in a more focused format.

We couldn't immediately see how to install it, since there's no Install option on the CD and the manual (supplied only on disc) describes a non-existent setup program. It turns out you have to click the option to run the program, and the first time this is selected it offers to install itself. Even with this done, the software will still only run when the CD is in the drive.

Children log in with individual accounts, and the difficulty level adjusts in response to their performance. Mis-cheese-ious Dreamship Adventures kicks off with a cartoon of Reader Rabbit being attacked by pirates, complete with properly lip-synced voice acting, which impressed our testers. This continued into a long introductory cut scene. The characters, including Page the book and, less wittily, Chesty the chest, make the activities appealing.

The tasks are varied: within the first few minutes, we were sticking bugs together from body parts, putting letters together to match spoken words and filling in gaps in sums. Our testers were impressed, but couldn't progress much without adult help. Voiceovers rattled through complex concepts too quickly, and tasks started at a high level. The bug game had us all confused for a while, and we had trouble understanding the turtle who read out the words we had to spell. Activities took too many repetitive stages to complete, too.

If you can put up with all this, and be on hand to help work out what to do, Reader Rabbit is reasonably enjoyable, educationally useful and good value.

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