 Review By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | Nintendo |
| Publisher: | Nintendo | |
| Genre: | Puzzle | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Once you’ve finished training, it’s time to move onto the real deal and actually find out you brain’s age. To determining your brain age, Brain Age will select three tests at random and calculate the results. Apart from Calculation x 20, these are all tests you will not find in the Training section, so we’ll go over these new tests now.
When you first enter the Brain Age Check section, you’ll be asked whether or not you can speak. What it really means is there even a cricket in the room, because if there is, select "I can’t speak". Otherwise, your first task will be the Stroop Test, which will flash up a colored word (actually the name of another color) and you must say what color the text is in, not what it spells.
To complete the Word Memory test it takes five minutes: two to memorize a list of 30 four-letter words that appears on both screens and then another three to write down as many as you can remember using the touch screen.
Though there is really no check that you are pronouncing each number correctly, Speed Counting is really just exercise in making noise, though you are really supposed to be counting from one to 120 as fast as you can without slurring.
In the Connect Maze, you’ll use your stylus to drag a cursor in an alphanumerical order (from A to 1, from 1 to B, from B to 2, etc.), going as fast as you can and without touching any other number or letter along the way. And, in Number Cruncher, you’ll see various colored numbers all over the screen and sometimes performing a variety of actions (sliding from side to side, pulsing, spinning or just sitting static). The game will ask you a question which will require a numerical answer – how many [fill in the action] #’s are there, how many [fill in the color] #’s are there, how many [fill in the number] are there – and you must write it in on the touch screen.
Since so many of the training exercises make use of them, it saddens me to tell you the two main problems with Brain Age: the touch screen interface and the voice recognition (boy, it’s like I’m reviewing Nintendogs all over again). For the most part, they both perform pretty well, but when they do mess up, it is usually with disastrous results. Take for instance the voice recognition. With this game, I only really had recurring trouble when I was doing the Stroop Test and, even then, it was usually just with the word "blue." However, combined with the constant failure of recognizing that word (and a few others occasionally scattered throughout the game) and with the sensitivity of the microphone, which requires you to be at exactly the right distance from the DS and in a room so quiet you can hear a pin drop, it is cause for concern. It’s not as bad as Nintendogs, but it is an issue I would like to see addressed if the second Brain Age (there’s talk of a third in Japan already) reaches our shores.
I’d like to see the same consideration given to the touch screen aspects of this game, which in comparison are exponentially worse. Nowhere is this more apparent then in the Word Memory test. In that, it isn’t so much a task to remember all the words, as most will probably come back to you easily, but you’ll spend most of your three minute time limit just trying to get the right letters registered. Brain Age is sloppy in this sense – or, rather, you may be too sloppy for Brain Age. Unless you write letters in a single stroke and with textbook grade accuracy and direction, the game will almost always turn it in to something else. This, by itself, wouldn’t be that much trouble, except there is no backspace and you instead have to erase the entire word and start all over, wasting even more precious time. And don’t even get me started on tests that have you writing numbers, which are much more numerous, since Brain Age has the uncanny ability to turn almost every number but four into a four! Of course, this is due in part to the fact that it is easier to write every thing at a slant, since it is highly uncomfortable to hold the DS vertical and write with your hand aligned straight.
However, while there’s nothing really to be done over the tests that require you to vocalize and answer orally, there is one simple fix I can think of that would solve both those problems (writing letters and numbers): a virtual keyboard and numerical pad. I mean, the Nintendo DS has two screens and, even holding it length wise, a touch screen keyboard wouldn’t really affect the gameplay so much. While the alphabet would probably take up the whole screen, Word Memory displays what your are writing on the second screen anyways, so there’s nothing really lost at all, and there would probably even be enough room for a backspace key. And, when it comes to math problems, such as the Calculation tests, a numerical pad wouldn’t take up nearly as much space, so you could still see your answer above it and the problem you are trying to solve on the second screen, again, without much change to the existing setup.
Also, I must admit that it doesn’t really make sense for all the tests in Brain Age to require the DS to be held such as it is, with a screen to the left and right, instead of the traditional fashion. A lot of the tests would be easier the normal way, holding the DS as it was originally designed to be, and with an intermission between tasks, there is plenty of time for the instructions to tell you how to hold your system.
As you progress through Brain Age, the game will track you growth, show how much your brain age has improved and how well you’ve done over the months in each activity. In fact, the disembodied and pixilated head of Doctor Kawashima (not unlike Max Headroom, if any of you remember him) will keep you up to date of your status as you complete an activity, providing words of encouragement or stern motivation. Throughout the entire game, you’ll see a lot of the doctor, as he’ll constantly supply you with helpful information on how to keep your brain healthy and fit and explain all the tests and their results to you.
Brain Age does its best to inject a sense of personality into the game through use of that head, making comments on how studious you’ve been, the time of day and season, but that is about the only flashy thing in the game. The graphics are simple and straightforward, which is probably for the best as you don’t want anything too distracting. The same goes for the sound effects, though I really wish there were some sort of calming background music to distract from the sound of your writing. But, since that isn’t an option, if you are in the right environment, the best I can offer is switching on your radio to a classical station and supplying your own.
As far as playtime, Brain Age isn’t at first glance one of those games you can just sit down and play for hours on end. I mean, you could continue to train and test you brain age if you wanted to, but it only records your first results for those tests each day. Playing everyday, on the other hand, is something you will want to do, as fulfilling certain requirements will unlock special rewards, such as training exercises, a personalized stamp and more. However, the real replay value in Brain Age comes from the Sudoku puzzles included in the North American version. The number puzzle game that has been sweeping the globe in recent years (even though it first started over two decades ago), Sudoku is really the only thing that keeps Brain Age from wearing thin quickly (so if you don’t like Sudoku, beware), though it has nothing to do with the main brain training portion of the game. Despite that, it is noteworthy to point out the actual setup for the Sudoku game in Brain Age, as it is the most competent I have ever seen.
You have two choices when you start a Sudoku game: have the game tell you when you make an error or not. There is no real merit to either, as they both sort of cancel each other out. On the one hand, if you choose to not have Brain Age inform you of a mistake, you just continue to work through the game until you finish without any hints at all. On the other hand, should you ask to be informed, you do have the added advantage of knowing if that number you were unsure about was right or wrong, but with the added penalty of only getting five mistakes (at which point your game ends) and with the mistakes you do make being applied against your completion time.
When you are playing the game, you tap on the square you want and it will enlarge, sliding the rest of the board off to the second, otherwise unused screen. You can then use your stylus to write in the number you think it is or to move around the other boxes, continue to play with a zoomed in field. If you are unsure of the number, you can write a smaller number, which is marked as an option, of which you can hold nine in each square. If you figure out the correct number, you need only select that box again and write the correct number but larger, and it will replace them all. This makes it all very convenient and it takes away the annoyance of perhaps having to erase answers with a pencil and paper game. You can also choose to leave a game if you wish, and save your current progress, which you can than pick up again any time you want.
While it would have been nice to, say, tap into Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and download more puzzles, Brain Age does have three categories (a beginner, an intermediate and an extra one which becomes unlocked later), each with two pages of Sudoku puzzles, so you’ll probably be okay. But, as it is, the Sudoku puzzles remain a pleasant distraction from the main portion of Brain Age while still believed to stimulate the brain as well.
There is also a multiplayer aspect to Brain Age, and it comes in a few different varieties, some that you may not even expect at all. First off, the main multiplayer comes in single-card DS-to-DS download play only. Through that, Brain Age can support a whopping 16 players for a quiz that has players answering questions until they get ‘em all right, with the player with the best time declared the winner. Also for players with a DS but without their own copy of Brain Age, the game is able to send out a demo (which can also be downloaded at the stations Nintendo recently installed in various stores) so others can try it out.
For the friend without a DS, there is Quick Play mode, which allows them to try out some Sudoku puzzles, some training exercises and even a brain age check without saving their progress. And, finally, since Brain Age has four save files, it can support the average family with just a single cartridge. If each person starts a game, they can compare results with the other save files when they are looking at their own graphs. Also, from time to time, when you start the training exercises, you may be asked a question (such as what you had for dinner the night before), which the game will quiz you on your answer for a few days later. However, if you enter and get a little test asking you to draw a picture, you not only get to compare it with the computer, but with other players too.
Bottom Line:
While I’m still uncertain as to how effective Doctor Ryuta Kawashima’s Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! really is, only time (and our own spectroscopy) will tell. However, for my money – and that’s only $20, by the way, which is a great price – it certainly seems to have something to offer most people. For adults, it is the perfect opportunity to keep your aging mind (no offense) in tip-top shape and it even has Sudoku, which seems to be spreading like wildfire anyways.
As for the youth, well, Brain Age may be a far cry from the games we are used to playing, but (if I may get up on my soapbox here) that is exactly what this country needs right now. Personally, I hope everyone with a Nintendo DS buys a copy of this game (and, to those of you without, I hope you go out and get both), if only so we get the other games in the series and a chance to, hopefully, experience the gameplay with its few flaws cleaned up. In the meantime, however, you can also use the money you saved from buying this (and not the latest and greatest sequel of whatever) as a down payment on Big Brain Academy, a sort of companion game to this title. You’ll thank me later.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
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| 8.0 |
Posted: 2006-04-21 06:13:27 PST