Bow Street Runner

Today in Mandy's lesson we were all put into groups and each group was given an online 
game to play, evaluate and assess. I thought being able to actually play the games ourselves to evaluate was exciting and was actually looking forward to trying the game out. The game that we were given to play was off the Channel 4 website called 'Blow Street Runner'. Here is a little overview about the background to the game which is:  

Blow Street Runner is set in London's Covent Garden in the 1750's and depicts a time when crime and vice in the city had hit such high levels that the local Magistrates began to introduce the first instances of physical policing of law and order.

The game started off with a little introduction to a story of a man being murdered, however you do not learn how or why this man was murdered. After the story i knew that the aim of the game was going to be trying to solve the murder mystery. I don't really like these kind of games and it showed as it took my nearly the whole lesson to just get past the first level. This is the image that is given and you have to look around it for clues:

I felt like there wasn't enough information given as to how to progress and go onto further stages. However at the end of the lesson Mandy showed us how we could have accessed the cheats, which showed you exactly what to do on each level. So maybe I could have gone further than level 2 in the lesson if id known these!! 

Overall I really didn't enjoy this game even though I didn't really play much of it, I felt I couldn't get into it after the first stage and found myself getting extremely bored of playing it. I wouldn't recommend the game to any of my friends either! However I do think that this game would be more suitable and enjoyed more by boys, maybe of an age range of 10+. 

To conclude I feel that this game could be good in some ways towards education for example it is has an Historical setting and theme so children can learn what it was like in this era. Also as the game evolves solving a mystery so children can gain and improve their problem solving soling skills to some extent. I do feel however that there are better games out there can enable children to progress with these skills and would say that I think this is more of a game to play in your spare time just for fun and not mainly educational.