GameZone writes:
"I figured I'd be the perfect test for Ubisoft's My Chinese Coach. After all, I had an interest in learning the language, and no experience to speak of. It would be a true test; either My Chinese Coach would work, or it wouldn't. In the end, however, it wasn't quite that simple.
The game is broken up into lessons, where you'll have to master about 10 or so words before moving on. And in each lesson, you'll make full use of the DS hardware. Tap a word with the stylus, and the game will speak it for you. Then, make use of the DS's built-in microphone to correctly pronounce the word. You can even play your recorded pronunciation at the same time as the in-game pronunciation to hear a comparison. On top of this, you can then practice writing the Chinese characters on the DS's touch screen. It's almost as if the DS was made for learning Chinese. And that's a testament to Ubisoft putting together a great toolset for learning this language."
Gameplay 8.5
Graphics 7
Sound 7.5
Difficulty Medium
Concept 9
Overall 8.0
DHGF: Welcome back to the sixth installment of Kickstart My Heart, Diehard GameFAN’s look into the world of crowdfunding for the gaming industry. Last week, we looked at good reasons to pull funding from a campaign. This week, we talk about what happens when a project that makes its funding goal falls apart and you don’t get your stuff. We’ll also look at what I personally have backed since last week, and ten up and coming products that you might want to back yourself.
Guardian writes: "Ubisoft's "my coach" series for DS has so far covered Latin-based lingos like Spanish and French to good effect, and this latest instalment follows the same template – a series of mini-games and lessons encompassing more than 12,000 words and 1,500 phrases."
IGN writes: "Last year Ubisoft released My French Coach and My Spanish Coach for the Nintendo DS, successfully cashing in on the growing demand for language games that allow people to quickly pick up on the basics. This year they've once again teamed up with developer Sensory Sweep in order to capitalize on the need for Mandarin speakers outside of China. Although making Chinese accessible to everyone is certainly a step in the right direction, My Chinese Coach sometimes proves to be a tangled web of frustration and confusion rather than an enjoyable learning experience.
There are plenty of reasons to want to make a game like this. China is home to a fifth of the globe's total population and is quickly becoming an important economic and political player on the world stage. It's only natural game developers would want to cash in on this. But Chinese isn't something Westerners can just "pick up" like French or Spanish. For one thing, Chinese has very little in common with the European language family. Not only is the writing system vastly different (consisting of pictographs as opposed to an alphabet), but the language itself is both analytic and tonal, with four basic tones and one toneless tone. Trying to teach all of this outside a proper classroom setting would be a formidable task for anyone, but Sensory Sweep seems to struggle with this new, complicated dynamic."
