I remember playing Math Blasters Plus as a little kid. It was one of the few games my parents encouraged me to play because it honestly has quality educational value. At the time it seemed like a ton of fun, now compared to high powered graphics and what not, it is rendered a dinosaur, but the basic concept is still sound. It’s pretty simple; you answer math problems to progress through levels. The farther you progress in the game, the tougher the math gets - but it never really gets hard.
It would be a good review for, say, a third grader. It covers basic addition and subtraction, and the higher "pro" levels cover multiplication and division. The game also has a correction function, where if you make a mistake, it takes you through the problem systematically and works it out, showing you where any errors would have been made. Of course, that just explains the "math" part of the title, as for the blaster, well, that’s where it gets exciting.
Set in the future, there are a bunch of different game modes that encourage a comprehensive understanding of math, not just rote memorization. There are modes that have an internal component of an equation missing, where you have to plug in the missing part. Throughout the entire game,
encouraging animations and pop-ups prevent any player from becoming despondent at their sub-par math abilities. For each of the different modes, there is different acceptable number of errors.
The easy modes (2+4=_) would only allow for one try, while a harder mode, like the one mentioned above (2+_=6) would allow for a couple of tries because it challenges the player to think of the equation in a more abstract way. This method of learning is great, it almost tricks the player into learning (assuming that the player IS actually learning something from the basic math) by having fun, and at the end of the day, isn't all learning supposed to be fun?
I would recommend this game to anyone who knows a child who needs help with the fundamentals of math. Also, this game is engineered for a young audience, so keep that in mind, its not going to fly with anyone with an education that exceeds elementary school. Otherwise, download this game and start blasting those numbers!
