LEGO My Style Preschool

Reviewed by Sara Hartman
Published by LEGO Media

Age Group: Age 2 to 5
Type: Art/Creativity, Language Arts, Math, Music
Price: $20

PC version requires:
P200 MHz with MMX, Windows 95/98/2000 only, 4x speed CD-ROM or DVD drive, 32MB RAM, 30MB HD, DirectX 7.0a, DirectDraw video card (640 x 480 16-bit high color), DirectSound sound card

Mac version requires:
200 MHz Power PC, MAC OS 8.1 or higher, 30 MB free hard disk space, Quicktime 4.0 and Sound Manager 3.0

Description:

Lego My Style Preschool invites preschoolers to a playdate in an exciting Duplo environment. The LEGO Learning System provides a positive learning experience allowing each user to experiment with various learning styles to find those best suited to his or her development. Rich 3D graphics with bold colors, familiar LEGO characters and a non-competitive format can't help but appeal to the two- to four-year-old preschool set.

Features:

  • LEGO Learning System tailored to individual needs
  • Five animal friends representing visual, musical, kinesthetic, linguistic and analytical learning styles
  • Four learning landscapes -- music, math, language and art
  • Users earn magic lego bricks for admission to magic toy room
  • Users become teachers after achieving competence

Technical Aspects:

Installation was very easy on the Macintosh. Graphics are sharp with a definite 3D look, the audio is likewise clear and easy to understand. The program ran very well on my 280MHz G3. However, when we tried it on my son's 180MHz 603e, gameplay was choppy and we lost the sound. This was not surprising given the minimum system requirement of a 200MHz processor, but the experience did teach us that the game is very dependent on audio and would not be an enjoyable experience for a hearing-impaired user.

Report and Conclusions:

My two preschoolers, ages 3 and 5, have been having a great time with this title. My five-year-old was very proficient at the activities, while the games were more challenging for my three-year-old, so I think the age range is accurate.

Navigation is intuitive and the games are straightforward and easy to play even by very young users. There is quite a bit of repetition within the activities, which quickly annoyed my five-year-old, but which is necessary practice for younger users. I detected one weakness within the language activity with the giraffe -- she gave a "clue" that the color of the letter she was looking for matched the color of the lego block with the correct picture (see screenshot). This makes it too easy to arrive at the correct answer by matching colors rather than learning the sounds of the letters.

With five activities in each of four landscapes, multiple levels of difficulty, plus the magic toy room, this title will keep preschoolers busy for quite some time. Allowing users to teach their newfound knowledge to two LEGO characters after achieving a certain level of competence is a nice touch. Overall, LEGO My Style Preschool is a good title for preschoolers presenting many necessary skills in a fresh framework.




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