 | | Brain Age - on the Nintendo DS - is half game, half edutainment, which attempts to gauge and subsequently improve your intelligence...or "brain age", as it were |
|
In theory, Brain Age is the quintessential DS title. By that I mean it's less conventional video game, and more like some kinda crazy interactive slab of entertainment that simultaneously crosses a ton of barriers and tries something truly new and inventive. I sure as hell haven't seen anything vaguely like this on a games console before, at least.
What's the deal then? Quite simply, Brain Age is designed to make you smarter. You turn it on, create a profile, and it proceeds to test you regularly, keeping charts and graphs of both your intelligence and your progress. This is done via numerous mini-games, puzzles, problems and questions, all of which you answer via the DS touch screen and built-in microphone, after which you're awarded a "Brain Age Score", which I guess defines your supposed mental age to a certain degree. You then work at bettering it tomorrow, because, well, somewhat annoyingly the game only lets you sit the test once a day.
This is a lot more interesting than it sounds for the simple reason that these puzzles and questions are specifically designed to get you using your brain in ways you seldom normally do. Apparently all this sitting around playing games, watching TV and getting drunk has turned us into a nation of morons who use but a small part of our brains you see, and Brain Age attempts to rectify that.
Blue Balls
One of the puzzles for example, involves flashing up coloured words along the screen - "Red", "Blue", "Yellow", etc - with you having to shout the colours you see back into the microphone. The twist comes in the fact that the font colours don't match up to the actual words, so you may see a blue coloured "Black" for instance, thus finding yourself pausing for an extra split second while your brain makes that distinction between the two before blurting out your (probably wrong) answer. These aren't punishingly hard tests by any means, don't get me wrong, they simply get you using your mind in a different way than you're used to is all.
Another, trickier puzzle involves the DS displaying a huge list of random words, then giving you 2 minutes to memorise the lot, before wiping the screen and having you jot down as many as you can remember before the time runs out.
Why is this sorta thing fun though? Isn't this just handheld primary school? Quite simply, the fun comes from the DS itself. A page of quick-fire multiplication problems would hold no interest to me at all in fact...if I wasn't scribbling the answers down on my awesomely cool DS touch screen with a stylus. Similarly, yelling into the mic is, to be frank, a bit of a laugh. As a result, this all becomes instantly 100 times cooler...it really is that simple. You just feel like you're interacting and interfacing with software in a completely new and interesting manner, and that goes a long way.
That's the good news, now for the bad. You see, after spending a fair bit of time with Brain Age over the past week or two, I'm on the whole rather disappointed with it, and I'll tell you why...
Dumb Droid
 | | As dull as this looks, it's actually kinda fun. Sadly it has...issues... |
|
First of all, while all this interfacing with the DS and utilising its extended functionality is a blast, Brain Age itself has some serious issues when it comes to interpreting your answers. Almost instantly it became obvious to me that it couldn't read any of the number "8"s that I scribbled down to save its life, nor could it discern at least half of my answers in the aforementioned memory puzzle/scribble fest. Perhaps worst of all, it had seemingly random problems recognising my voice in the speech recognition puzzles too.
This is understandable in a way - after all, machines are machines - but the problem here is that it fundamentally breaks the game. Those extra 3 seconds that Brain Age takes to recognise you saying "blue" for the fifth time, or the fact it just misread your answer of "18" as "10" yet
again, is forever costing you valuable time and points in these brain age tests, ultimately affecting your final scores in hugely negative ways. So while you have this theoretically rather interesting game-slash-experiment in the palm of your hands, any findings you gain from it are really rather pointless as its readings are always off by varying degrees.
In defence of the game, I will say that over time you start to figure out what the program likes and dislikes, thus adjusting your handwriting and speech patterns to more "readable" variations, but I'd say that's a bullshit solution if ever there was one, and even weeks later I'm still getting regular and annoying errors regardless. If anything, this should all work the other way around if you ask me; Brain Age should be the one getting used to
your writing, and training itself to
your voice, not vice versa. Due to this, it feels cheap.
My other main gripe is really the fact that the Brain Age tests themselves are, to be honest, half the experience I was expecting. There's barely a handful of exercises included, and although you can unlock more as you progress, even a fully unlocked cart feels pretty damn barebones and totally lacking in content. It seems Nintendo knew this and decided to shoehorn in Sudoku as a "bonus" at the last minute, seemingly to beef up the amount to do in the game, but as a non-fan, that holds zero interest to me. As a result you find yourself getting really quite bored of the same old Brain Age exercises pretty damn quickly...and I'd say it really needed at least double the content than what you're lumbered with.
Buyable Rubbish
All this negativity aside, it's worth mentioning that Brain Age retails incredibly cheaply to compensate - in fact some online retailers have it importable at a meagre 12 quid or so right now. For that price, I'd recommend it actually, simply due to its original and interesting concept if nothing else.
At full whack of 20 or 30 odd quid though? That's something for you to decide perhaps. It has its issues, and I'm really rather dubious about any kind of long-term benefit this could actually have on your mental acuity, but it is quirky and a little charming in its own way I guess.
Expecting more than a simple little toy will only lead to disappointment at the end of the day however. It sure did with me.
This review/report was created by the great team at TPSreport.co.uk:
More info >
