Brain Challenge
The cool and funky member of casual games has arrived!
By Matt Kelly
Since Brain Training hit the scene under Nintendo’s touch generation branding a few years back, publishers seem to have assumed that all casual gamers want is Brain Training clones and so many of them are shovel ware. It’s for a whole range of reasons as well and there can be no drive to the game, no progress tracking, or the games just seem lame and pointless. And now Gameloft’s Brain Challenge has hit the scene. When this got handed to me I honestly groaned, just simply because it had ‘Brain’ in the title. But if you’ve ever played one of Gameloft’s mobile phone or iPod games, you’ll know that they’re great at taking something that others do badly and making it awesome. Whether it be performance on a low powered system, controls, or just general game play, Gameloft seem to have it down how to get the most out of very little.
Straight out, if you’ve played Brain Training or Big Brain the format of the game will be nothing new, revolving around a series of mini games to test the capacity of your brain. Brain Challenge does bring a lot of new styles of games to the table, and also one very cool new mode. On the standard brain training side of things, you’ll find games that involve picking the heaviest object based on several sets of scales, working out which set of colored tiles has the least number on screen, catching particular objects and a whole bunch of other neato things. While they’re fresh and funky they’re not ground breaking in their design.
What is really cool though is the Stress Training mode, which takes the common elements of Brain Challenge type games and puts them in a stressful environment. Say you have to write in the answer a simple maths problem, that’s all easy and fine except you’ll have your ‘boss’ yelling at you, banging on the screen and screaming you’re worthless. Another example is having a standard game in progress, except you’ve got cars driving back and forth on a bridge above the game, with a piece that needs to be moved around so the cars don’t fall in the water. You'll even just simply have a siren blasting at you in some scenarios, and it's quite loud! The objective of these games is to balance two things in a calm, methodical way. You’re scored on how many of the brain puzzles you solve in the stressful situation, and how long it took you on each. They’re actually pretty challenging and fun, and what make this casual gamer title standout from the rest.
Statistic tracking is something a lot of games miss out on including. Brain Challenge doesn't make this common mistake, including a very comprehensive set of charts measuring your average score and also the 5 core elements, logic, math, memory, visual, and focus. It also features a stress levels chart for each day.
Another common failure in these games is hand writing recognition, and again, Brain Challenge doesn't drop the ball. You'll find even the worst hand writing is detected very well, rarely outputting the wrong characters.
There are also a number of additional toys in the game, just focusing on fun little relaxing things. These include a little drawing function, music, or even just chilling next to a virtual fishpond. While they're not make-or-break features of the game, it's a nice addition to the well-rounded gameplay.
On the sound and vision side of things, if Nintendo’s Brain Training was the nerds in the high school library, Brain Challenge is the cool group of kids who go out and party, putting all the photos on MySpace to show it off. Visually Brain Challenge is really rich in color right across the board, from menus to games to your brain coaches, the whole thing is very bright. The actual games are really interesting look at, using lots of little effects like reflections to make it all that much more interesting. If the simplistic look of Brain Training wasn't your thing, you may find something to love in Brain challenge. Gameloft has still opted to use a motivation character in the game, going with two life like people instead of a disembodied head. They look faintly soap opera like but if you're into cute blonde girls and rock hard ab guys, you'll be quite satisfied. They're also fairly interesting, chatting to you about what time of day it is (“I feel like Chinese for lunch”), your progress, remind you to keep playing, quiz you on facts, and so on. Again it's nothing really ground breaking, but it's just makes everything more fun. And thankfully they don't drone on and on, instead keeping what they're saying short, simple and to the point.
Sound effect do the job, and the music is very funky and pretty nice quality for the DS' inbuilt synthesizer. There's a wide variety of tunes throughout the game, most of them being 'bop along' worthy.
Summary:
Brain Challenge does what pretty much every other Brain Training clone fails at, and that is be worth playing. While it's not a ground shattering change to genre, the stress mode and various bonus options are enough to make this stand out from the pack. If you've never played any kind of game in the genre, this is a good place to start.
Gameplay – 7.5
It doesn't shatter the genre but it only brings a few new things, like Stress Mode. It's fun, challenging, and is a good alternative to Brain Training.
Graphics - 8.0
Funky as heck with eye candy doctors and with a really responsive interface.
Sound - 7.0
Funky tunes to be found throughout, and the title puts out some serious volume.
Replay – 8.0
You'll be there for a while unlocking everything, and even longer to master it all. Stats tracking and the doctors keep you going.
Overall – 8.0
While it doesn't have the same impact as the original Brain Training titles, if you've never played the genre or find Brain Training stale,
Brain challenge is a really awesome alternative.
Submitted by Robtot
22/03/2008
12
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