Brain Training - Drain Your Brain - 7/10
Aaaahhhhh, Dr Kawashima.... so smart, so clever, so intelligent.... so annoying!
Don't the TV ads for this game make it look fun?! A game the whole family can play, and what a good time everyone will have.
The reality is somewhat different. Firstly, the most glaring error in the TV ads is that two people cannot play in the method shown because each player needs to set up a Brain Training Profile, and the game is not set up for more than one player at a time so you have to get out of one profile to select another... a task that takes at least six or seven steps to perform. So there will be none of the quick swapping over of the DS to have another player try their hand at the same exercise you've just completed (not unless you want their scored logged in your Brain Training Profile, which will throw off your statistics).
The graphics are crisp and sharp, and the touchscreen is easy to use and highly intuitive. Dr Kawashima is displayed as a rendered face, no doubt to give the "I'm being trained by a computer - cool!" feeling. He is a good teacher, on the whole, but gets annoying when he gives the same "quick tips on how to better use this software" after each and every lesson, over and over again, every single time you play, and you just want to shut him up...
The game is ultra simply in concept and execution: set up your profile and then participate in a series of Brain Training Exercises each day, each of which takes only a few minutes. Your score for each Exercise is logged and compared with previous days to graph your overall progress. You start off with only three exercises, but getting a high score, coming back for a few days in a row for more Training or after having started playing the game for a certain number days you will be able to lock further Exercises.
The Exercises on the most part have to do with math and counting. Quickly solve the simple mathematical puzzles (2x4, 8+7, 5-4 etc) that are displayed on the top screen (the DS is held in book format, with the top screen acting as the left page and the touchscreen acting as the right page, on which all answers are entered) and write your answer on the touchscreen; count the number of people that enter and leave a house to find out how many are left at the end of the party; count how many syllables in a sentence. The other Exercises include reading aloud (to activate specific areas of the brain and Exercise them) from a famous piece of text displayed on both screens and tapping squares in a particular sequence.
Apart from the graphing of your overall progress, you can test your Brain Age by competing three random Exercises. Your progress is displayed as an age, with 21 years old being the best possible score. This score, too, is charted so that you can see your progress over time.
Another feature of the game is the independent sudoku game, accessed from the main menu, which might be enough to convince die-hard sudoku fans to purchase this title. The game is well thought out and is as easy to play as its pen-and-paper counterpart.
Submitted by jcadiram
19/12/2007
5
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More Info:
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?
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