Gaming has a fine tradition of epic battles against disembodied heads. A hidden secret at the end of Doom II allowed players to open fire on the severed head of John Romero. Gamers reaching the end of Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars)
went literally head to head with the giant floating cranium of Andross.
And who could forget entering the awesome vector-graphic world of the Strong Bad Zone? ("Your Head A Splode!")
So
when the geniuses at Nintendo met the esteemed Doctor Ryuta Kawashima,
and discovered that he was, in fact, a polygon-rendered floating head,
it was only natural to make him the star of his own videogame.
The name of said game is Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? (Released in the US as Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes A Day) It's not to be confused with the similarly titled (but inferior) Big Brain Academy, released in Australia about the same time, presumably to capitalise on Brain Training's expected success.
For
those who haven't had the pleasure, or confusion, of seeing this little
game yet, it's not really too hard to describe. The game features
Kawashima's floating head, exhorting you to perform simple mathematical,
spatial, and reading challenges, and promising that following his
instructions will bring back your brain's lost youth.
That's
really as simple as it is. You turn the DS sideways (holding it like a
book), and use the stylus to write down the answers to speed arithmetic,
counting games, and so forth. The game mixes it up by sometimes
allowing you to answer verbally through the DS microphone. And if you
play with several people using the same card, you can compare your
results against each other with occasionally amusing results.
Well,
I've been playing it for 20 days now, and the game tells me I've
experienced all the content there is to experience - "but you can still
keep training!" Did I return my brain's lost youth? I don't know. On day
one, the game estimated my Brain Age as 20, which is as low as it can
measure to (low is good), and it hasn't budged since. What's more, on
most of the puzzles I'm routinely getting the highest score or highest
bracket possible, even on the "hard" setting. Is it possible I'm too intelligent? Or is it that this software just wasn't designed for people with gaming legacy skills?
It
was kind of fun and all, but I have to say, on the basis of the
software's main function, it wasn't remotely worth whatever I paid for
it. (I forget what I paid, but there's a strong chance it was in the
$50AUD "budget" range rather than the $80-$90 premium category.) I was
stretching a bit to keep playing it for the 20 days, and those aren't 20
days of heavy gaming. Much like Animal Crossing, Brain Training
effectively limits your play to under a half-hour per day (actually,
more like fifteen minutes a day, at most). You can replay the day's
"training exercises", but... why would you? They're not inherently fun,
and the game only takes account of your first score per exercise per
day.
However, there is a silver lining. The game also comes
packed with some 120-ish stylus-driven Sudoku puzzles, and a really
fairly good interface for solving them with. You can even play them with
a "cheat mode" that warns you if you start to go wrong (just in case
you're determined to not extract any longevity from this title). The
sudokus have kept me going a lot longer than the training, and I suspect
I'll be at them a little while longer still.
Is this game worth your time? If you're a regular gamer, no. Spend your money on Mario Kart, Meteos, or the upcoming Phantom Hourglass. If you're a casual gamer, though, just beginning to discover the magic of the DS, it might be worth your time. If you're really into solving sudokus. But I'd still suggest your money might be better spent on Animal Crossing: Wild World.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/07/2006.
Score: 6 out of 20 (A deeply flawed game that still holds some interest.)
For fans of the puzzle genre genre: 6 out of 20
For fans of the Brain Age franchise: 12 out of 20
Release date: April 2006
Developed by: Nintendo
Published by: Nintendo
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