Cheap LeapFrog® Leapster® Learning Game: Ratatouille

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Since there's no review posted here yet, here's mine. I bought this for my two sons, ages 6 and 3, and as expected, they fought over it, but only for the first two weeks and now they've returned to their old favorites, Cars and Sonic. The games are nicely done for the most part, and use the real voices from what I can tell (including Patton Oswald). Leapfrog avoided duplicating game play from other cartridges, and did a nice job graphically with 4 out of 5 of the distinct games. I wasn't impressed with the one where Remy surfs through sewer pipes (first-person style game). The graphics on that one are poor, and the game play is particularly clunky. The game requires you to quickly identify numbers from letters, but I couldn't tell an "S" from a "5" or a "1" from an "I", so I don't get how a child could be expected to. There's a game where you have to sort items in 2 or 3 different categories, first based on color, then by food group. There's a lot of items, and I could tell that it was really challenging my kids in a good way, with no time limit. Unfortunately, I must report that I witnessed this particular game have a glitch no less than three times, because my kids complained to me. None of the buttons would work, the characters were caught in a loop, staring at you. The Leapster had to be restarted, or at least I had to exit the game by pushing "Home". There's a concentration-style matching game which requires the player to match sounds too, rather than just pictures. The recipe game got a surprising amount of play with my kids too, where the player has to follow directions and crack the right number of eggs, avoid putting in the wrong ingredients that are on the table, stir the pot a certain number of times, etc. Overall, I recommend this cartridge. It remains to be seen if my kids will return to it later. Currently they are fighting over "Number Raiders" a game I found on clearance, but one they initially dismissed because "it only has one game".

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My daughter just turned 4, and I got her Leapster 2 for Christmas. I decided on Ratatouille first, since we have the movie and games seemed suited to her abilities.

Graphics are not great, but work fine. Voices are identical to those in the movie. There are 5 games on the cartridge: sorting items into categories (by color, by food group), matching items (memory game; match letters, numbers, colors, shapes), cooking (choosing ingredients, adding them to pot, mixing, setting timer, putting on icing; includes 'create-your-own-recipe'), catching things (they plop from the ceiling and Remy needs to be moved around to catch the appropriate ones), and surfing through sewers (also a catching game: catch specified items while avoiding wrong ones).

My daughter has been playing with this game for less than a week now and plays with it not for long, but 5-10 times every single day. She loves the cooking game. She figured it all out immediately and keeps going back to it all the time. (BTW, there is barely any difference between levels 1 and 3 in the cooking game.) Matching she also found easy (she doesn't know letters, but was matching them without problem whatsoever, repeating sounds as Remy was saying them), in fact maybe too easy, because she much prefers cooking. Sorting is easy to do, but concepts get harder (e.g., sort items into fruits vs. meat and beans category) so she is not into it. She likes the surfing game but doesn't do much with it. And finally, the catching game I myself find too hard on level 1 (items seem to drop too fast, I have no time to move Remy) so we haven't tried it yet.

Problems: Occasionally (rarely) our Leapster just freezes, and we have to restart the Leapster. (This could be the console problem, not the game problem.) Levels of games don't start intuitively. E.g., memory matching started off with letters and numbers even at level 1, whereas colors and shapes should clearly come first. Yesterday we discovered that the recipe book in cooking, which has 4 marked pages (spice cake, eclairs, tomato soup, and create-your-own) had only the create-your-own recipe remaining, and we couldn't get the other ones back even by restarting the Leapster.

Summary: despite minor problems, I think there is a nice combo of games for different levels of different cognitive and motor capacities on this cartridge, so it should last for a long time. It seems to be a good beginner's cartridge, as it doesn't come on strong with reading and math skills which younger children may not have.

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Our daughter, 3, absolutely LOVES this game. We bought her the Backyardigans one but she couldn't quite figure it out. However, she has no trouble with this game and really enjoys playing it!

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I never get asked, "can you help me, mom?" with this one. They've been able to play independently with this game since day one of getting it. I do hear, "mom, has it been an hour already?" Which is my limit for any t.v. or "screen" activity. I really like this game.

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Our 5yr old daughter loves this game! She adores the DVD and now loves this game! She doesnt want to put it down! She gets super excited about making the recipes! (*_*)