While I applaud the effort that has gone into to making a piece of software that encourages the mono-lingual gaming public to develop an interest in a very foreign and difficult language like Japanese, the game *really* sucks.

Mini “games”

The main in-game interface is a beautifully simple 3D walk-around thing similar to animal crossing – the only on screen icon being a backpack. The interfaces for each mini-game however are so badly thought out with irritating minor quirks that it really detracts from the overall experience. For instance, the first two mini-games I found after jumping in (it took a good 30 minutes to find anything mind you) were the hopscotch game for learning adjectives, and a slingshot shooting game for nouns, both of which were essentially the same stupid spelling game.

Who the _____ doesn’t know the rules of hopscotch?!

As far as I remember, hopscotch is a game where you jump along a series of chalk drawn squares. So when the game asked me to spell out the Japanese word for yellow (KIIRO, by the way), I found myself stumped to find neither of the letter squares in front of my character contained a K. Little did I know that they had rewritten the rules of hopscotch so that now you could jump on empty squares and go back and forward finding the right letters. Fair enough once you figure that out, but even then it’s so damn frustrating and slow to move around that I really just wanted to click on the right letters and be done with it – but then where’s the “game” in that. Don’t even mention the retarded balancing part that they tacked on one when they realized THIS SUCKS – apparently your character has troubling standing on one leg and hopping, so you constantly have to adjust the balance while doing the whole painfully slow jumping on the right letters thing … It made me want to kill myself, and certainly not “learn” more words.

Hit the letter in the right order – again!

And as for the slingshot game – this time you have to shoot the right letters from the selection rather than jumping on them. While the shooting feels vaguely satisfying – the stretchy sound when pulling back and moving around the lower screen by touch to aim at the letters on the top screen – I was frustrated again to find that the right letters weren’t always an option. You have to wait for at a whole damned minute or more sometimes for the next correct letter to pop up again before you can shoot it and continue. When I realized it was taking 5 minutes or more for one word I powered off my DS.

GFX

The graphics are nice enough for an adventure game, but then it fails in every other aspect so whats the point in praising that? Oh, I should mention that if you double tap while moving around you do a little jump, if thats enough to convince you to buy it. NOTHING in the environment is interactive, though. So essentially the whole wondering around the school thing is just a really slow menu systen, but the PR blurb wouldn’t have worked so well.

THE AMAZON BLURB vs REALITY

Mind your Language; turns understanding a new language into a fun, exciting game, where you learn while you play.

Mind your language turns learning a limited number of basic new words into a tedious, drawn-out and frustrating experience where you learn whilst using a really slow non-conventional menu system.

By using mini games to teach Vocabulary and Grammar, Players gain a knowledge of a foreign language without even realising they are learning.

By using mini “games” to frustrate, players are painfully aware that the software is trying to teach them something whilst simultaneously wasting their time and effort.

DO NOT BUY THIS CRAP

By all means, this ninja implores you to learn Japanese and expand your cultural horizons – just don’t touch this. Don’t even download it, like I did. If you want a lame adventure game that fails to teach you anything then go ahead – if you want to actually learn Japanese I suggest you take a look at the free smart.fm online learning tools which are infinitely more effective and will teach you a million times more vocab in half as much time. Bring your own motivation.

When not wasting his time with badly written DS software, Blue Lightning also masquerades as a tech professional over at TokyoBIT, where you can learn all sorts of things like tethering your iPhone in Japan and safe torrenting