Leapfrog Leapster/LeapPad Explorer Wolverine Game

This game brought great benefit before it even arrived. My son was desperate to have it from seeing it on trailers on his Explorer but I said he needed to be able to read before he would be able to do it. That proved to be great encouragement for him to practise reading and once he'd mastered blending sounds I bought it for him. He loves it. We have Mr Pencil, Ben 10, Penguins, Globe and Toy Story games and this one is his current favourite (the other big success having been the Penguins game with Ben 10 a close runner up).

The Wolverine game is a slightly strange combination of traditional platform/fighting game with constant interruptions for effectively spelling tests. These tests are inserted under the premise that Wolverine has to pass them in order to progress with the game. To my amazement my son has never moaned about these interruptions and seems happy to do them as part of the game.

As far as the platform part of the game goes, it seems pretty good to me although it has several irritating flaws. I'm far from an expert gamer but the graphics seem very good, the game is large enough for him to still not have completed it after hours and hours of play and it certainly holds his attention. I'm quite impressed with the quality and size of the game for the price (especially for the price of the Leapster vs say a DS). The flaws are:
1) The most ridiculous thing about this game is the cartoon strip story-telling which intersperses the gameplay in the same way as the Ben 10 game. The game is aimed at 5 years and up and asks you to fill in the initial letter of simple words during gameplay but then the player is suddenly supposed to miraculously be able to read long sentences in speech bubbles said by the characters to move the story on. My son just skips past all of this but it means he misses out entirely on the story behind the game. So frustrating when it could have been resolved simply by having these parts spoken aloud.
2) It is frustrating that as with the Penguins and Ben 10 it only saves when you have completed a level, and as there are only about 5 levels in the whole of each game that is a lot of playing to do before it saves. That does cause a lot of tears and arguing when I tell him he has to turn it off because he knows he will lose what he's done.
3) It is inevitably violent. The whole premise is fighting and my son relishes talking about the characters he has killed in the game. There isn't any gore to worry about and I feel I just have to accept that this is how video games are (what with 8 year olds playing Call of Duty and all).

In terms of the spelling bits, it's pretty good and I think my son has learned to spell a lot of words from it. The voiceover says things like spell the word "from" and the word will appear with one or two letters missing. The player is then presented with 6 choices to choose from for the right answer. The two issues I have are:
1) Unfortunately the words are all spoken with an American accent (I have had this problem with all his Leapster games despite setting it up with "UK English" which seems to have had no effect). That does worry me because it causes an issue with the way children learn to read now using phonics. For example, children learn the letter "u" as an "uh" sound like the start of "umbrella". But when an American says the word "from" the "o" sounds like an "uh" so it sounds like "frum", if that makes sense! I often find myself repeating the words to him in an English accent to help him spell them.
2)It also doesn't tie in with the phonics learning system at all so it worries me that it might confuse the way he's learning at school. For example, it said spell the word "with" and the word was given as w--h and one of the answer choices being "it". But at school they would learn the word "with" as 3 sounds "w,i,th" so I don't think questions like that are helping him. The Toy Story Leapster game also doesn't use phonics properly, but the Wolverine game is MUCH better than the Toy Story one - it has much more fun game play (where Toy Story has hardly any at all), the graphics are in a different league, and the educational part is far better (in Toy Story all of the educational bits centre around having to count the number of sounds in a word which I'm not convinced has any benefit at all).

You might think with all those flaws that I would give Wolverine less than 4 stars. But in the end my son absolutely loves this game, it has given him hours of fun and I do think it has some educational value.

I bought this after much hint-dropping by my five year old, and am most impressed at the word skills it helps him with. He is at the perfect age to start trying out different sounds and working out what how different words are spelt, and this game is brilliant from that aspect.
On the downside, it is incredibly frustrating, and I've had to resort to online forums to get tips on how to do some of the skills and level up - I am not alone, it would seem. It makes me feel technically challenged, and I like to think I have the brains to tackle a children's game! We have certainly got stuck and can't work our way forwards, which is incredibly frustrating, and there's only so many word games that you can do without getting stroppy.
So I'd say this is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to buying. Yes definitely for the word creation element; No when it comes to levels of frustration with advancing in the game.

My son was an avid player of the Leapster 2 Wolverine game and for his 6th birthday we bought him a LeapPad with this version of the game. This game is a fun mix of combat sections and literacy elements such as spelling, letter recognition and identification. The audio accent is american which can be irritating for adults but amuses my son. To be fair this is the same on the Leapster 2 game.
A fun element introduced on the LeapPad game is the ability to download "micromods" (I don't know if this was possible with Leapster Explorer) from the Leapfrog webpages when the handheld is connected to your computer. Examples of micromods are new clothing, flighting moves and different skill level. They do not cost money, instead they are exchanged for tokens which are generated by playing the game and achieving badges or playing the Leapworld app on the Leapfrog Connect website. My son really enjoys this new feature.