Cosmos Chaos
© 2010 Mentor Interactive
Featuring solid reading content but a mediocre presentation, this $30 cartridge transforms a Nintendo DS into a reading enrichment activity, complete with record keeping. As you move around the map of a town, you can visit ten locations where you "talk" (read dialog boxes) to shop keepers or other characters. At various points, some of the words are highlighted, and by touching them you can look them up in a dictionary and add them to your word list, earning you points. The more words you collect, the more points you earn, and the faster you level up. In other places, you can earn more points by completing word multiple-choice style games. Compared to commercial video games, the production quality of this experience is limited. However, the reading content is well leveled, and while we wish the font were larger and easier to read, it could be an effective language enrichment activity for a hard-to-motivate older reader. A child's progress is stored on the game cartridge. Content contains 45 new words per level, for a total of 450 vocabulary words, that cover math, science, and social studies. The game was funded by a Star Schools grant from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement. It was created by Pacific Resources for Reading (PREL).
$30, Nintendo DS
Teaches: reading comprehension and vocabulary building
CTR Rating: 78%