This ludicrous scenario may seem an unlikely story for a children's game, but that pretty much sums up the plot of Spanish for Everyone, Activision's tongue-placed-firmly-in-cheek game for the Nintendo DS. This whacky linguistic adventure not only fails to teach kids any Spanish, but encourages them to accept rides from strangers, wander the streets of Mexico's most notorious neighborhood by themselves, and get involved in the family's illegal business practices. How it got an E rating we'll never know.
Spanish For Everyone is divided into four short scenarios following the adventures of a boy named Shawn (no last name provided). One day Shawn's DS is stolen by his friend Miguel, whose father forces Miguel into a limo and drives off to Mexico with the police hot on their tail. Instead of being alarmed for Miguel's safety, Shawn is so devastated by the loss of his DS that he resolves to travel to Mexico to get it back. Luckily Shawn's aunt Gina, a pedophilic woman with a penchant for being in the right place at the right time, offers to drive her nephew to Tijuana. Along the way she offers to teach him "many things," and Spanish is one of them. If you think that's creepy, wait until you meet the talking bull who proclaims Shawn the savior of the world or the slimy uncle who works for Miguel's uber rich father, but refuses to divulge any details about his job except to say that he is an "exporter" to the United States.
Not only is this game horribly offensive with its barrage of Mexican stereotypes, but it completely fails in its objective of teaching Spanish. Instead of learning how to conjugate verbs or learning the difference between masculine and feminine nouns (a key component when learning a Latin-based language), you're subjected to four pointless mini games that pretty much require you to know Spanish in order play them. Worse, there are tons of grammatical mistakes in English that make the dialogue hard to follow.
The only useful feature in this game is the dictionary. It contains an impressive six thousand words, some of which can be heard by tapping on an audio icon with your stylus. Of course this is of little use since the speaker sounds like they've inhaled too much Tijuana tea.