Brain Training Post-Mortem

[Now Experiencing] [Computer Gaming]

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.