Modern education generally reduces geography to simple memorisation, divorcing the subject from a sense of physicality and instead having students label countries along political boundaries and identify their capitals. Around the World takes a step in an alternative direction by challenging players to locate different things on an unlabelled illustration of the globe, and never anything larger than a city or a sea. Unfortunately, that's where the interesting variations stop, and the game provides a rather average experience otherwise.
The title includes three different modes: Point to the Closest, Quiz, and Stop-off. The first two have you choose a category between Big Cities, Geography, Wonders, Capitals of the United States and All. Only Point to the Closest is available for one player while the rest are intended for two to four, and at the end of a round, the computer shows how each has ranked.
Point to the Closest has players take turns as the computer asks them to find something on the map. You spin the globe in the same fashion as the News and Weather Channels, grabbing it with A and giving it a flick to send it flying, then grabbing it again to stop its motion. Selecting a spot by holding and releasing B, the game gives you an allotment of points based on how long it takes you to answer and how many kilometres your guess is from the requested site. You cannot swap to miles, which shouldn't affect things too much but might give American students a bit of trouble. Quiz is played in somewhat of the reverse order – the computer spins the globe and asks you to select from four different choices what site it's indicating. Stop-off is somewhat interesting, showing you two sites on the map as well as their names and asking you to select from four choices which place would provide the best point between the two to create a direct route. Their locations are shown on the map, but which name applies to which is not revealed until your selections are made. In these two modes, you're given an amount of points based on how quickly you selected the correct answer.
Around the World is flawed in the way that many trivia games are – it only gives you the questions and not any type of study guide to look over and help you prepare. It would also be nice to be able to turn names of states or countries on or off, or demarcations between states when going over United States capitals. This trivia subset is also a bit strange to utilise in Point to the Closest, considering that it allows you to select any spot on the entire globe instead of relegating you to the U.S. While it's nice to see a slightly different approach to geography that relies on location rather than matching something to its home country, students will be at a disservice as they wonder what nation or state contains the city or site they've located. Finally, the game lacks any information about the things you're asked to search for besides their geographical locations and names, severely limiting how enriching this experience can prove. We should also note that we saw a few repeat questions during our time with the game.
Presentation-wise, the globe illustration is not very detailed, though it gets the job done. There's a similarly adequate background image behind this as well, and you can select from a variety of somewhat humorously drawn yet relatively generic static illustrations for your characters. A few world music tracks play during the entire thing, and though the songs are decent, they will certainly get old after a while.
Conclusion
Around the World quizzes players over a limited set of information in a somewhat interesting way, ending up with a very basic and average experience. You'll be able to search for cities and sites on a globe, but you won't learn anything beyond their names and locations, including the countries where they're found. Some will enjoy the competitive factor, but overall this is a mediocre package of limited educational use.
Comments 16
Lame as it can get. This is yet another failure allowed in the WiiWare.
Reminds of the Daft Punk song.
purespanw0 wrote:
It's nowhere near as bad as MY FIREPLACE
Stop the world, I wanna get off?
I wonder who is supposed to play this. It has to be meant for Americans, because it discusses the state capitals. It also can't be meant for Americans, because it doesn't use miles.
...in 80 Days.
... Is there a such word as edutrapment?
I like how ambiguous it is. It asks me to find Alhambra. Alhambra is a Muslim fortification in Spain (I now know), but I'm thinking of Alhambra, the city in California. So I'm wrong. In the same set of questions I am asked to find "Salem", I think of Massachusetts, it thinks Oregon so I'm wrong. the names are unspecific and arbitrary- and the game is boring as hell.
this kind of game would have been an ok addition to an atlas program that taught you about countries and cities- but as an information free standalone, it's an utter piece of garbage. 5 is very generous.
The perfect trip.
The perfect trap.
the tourist
Im glad Im not the only one who thought of Daft Punk...
I always liked Geography, but this looks just plain boring.
Well I thought of Daft Punk AND of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers
This looks like a crappy version of a talking globe with minigames the kids I used to babysit have.
Since were all on laptop/computers, use Google Chrome instead of this junk.
@xPOTATOx: what does Chrome have to do with this game?
Its too bad they did not polish this, everyone can use more geography skills.
This media could allow for a very fun and interesting way to get it but then they drop the ball. asking to find a city on the planet by its name only? That's like asking some one to find James Smith in New York.
This could have been cool I guess I will have to wait. A 5 for this does sound generous!
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