Play videogames or study for the SAT, now you can do both

9:47 PM on 09.04.2008   |   Justin Villasenor

11 comments

Did I study rigorously for the ACT when I was in high school? Hell no. I was far too busy leveling up my party in the .hack// series to read through some boring test prep booklet. Yeah, it probably hurt my score somewhat, but the siren song of videogames was just far too strong for me to ignore. Also, I tend to just hate studying in general.

If you happen to enjoy studying as much as you like playing videogames, and need to take the SAT at some near point in the near future, then Aspyr Media’s futureU might be something to look into. Promising to “sharpen and challenge skills” through a series of mini-games, futureQ sounds rather like a more academically serious Brain Training. Here are the subjects you can expect the game to cover:

• Reading: Focuses on refining players' reading skills, vocabulary, main idea identification, themes and arguments, technique, and recognizing word meanings based on context.
• Writing: Concentrates on improving players' writing skills by covering topics such as passive voice, run-on sentences, misplaced modifiers, parallelism, conjunctions, fragments, coordination and subordination, pronouns, subject-verb agreement, tenses, adverbs and adjectives, gerunds, idioms, wrong words, and double negatives.
• Math: Enable players to practice critical math areas such as algebra, geometry, data, statistics, probability, polynomials, and sequences.

I find myself doubtful that these educational games could really be all that fun, but if they end up helping some people stomach studying long enough to get into a good college, good for them. futureU is available now for the PC and Mac at an SRP of $39.99.