Screenshots :.
Brain Age
DS
Matt
03-07-2007
"A bit?"
"You'll mainly run into problems with this challenge if you can't read."
"Is this the test? What about now?.....Now?..."
Well? Mine’s about 27, if you were wondering. I know, I know – most of you are probably much younger than me when it comes to brain age, but I’m still pretty proud of myself. I’m not what one could call the sharpest of pencils in the toolbox (hey, I’m a form of journalist after all), but with the use of Nintendo’s latest DS release what little grey matter I do have feels tuned and ready to roll.
Which is the whole point, according to the blurb. The aim of Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training is not to turn you into some sort of mega scientist and allow you to understand the principles of aerodynamics overnight; rather it is to sharpen your mind in a number of areas such as mathematics, reading and perception. Does it actually work?
That’s a question which not many people will ever be able to come up with some sort of conclusive answer to. As with anything which involves learning it’s all down to the individual and the amount of attention and effort they put in. The game presents itself as a series of simple puzzles that the player must solve to the best of their abilities against the clock. The trick is to repeat each type of puzzle once per day to ‘train the brain’, whilst also taking a daily test to determine how young or old your brain is, with the former being better.
These tasks are simple enough. Making use of the touch screen and stylus to allow the player to scribble across the screen, exercises like writing answers to simple sums, joining a selection of numbered dots in numerical order and scribbling words remembered from a random selection in a memory test. You can complete each exercise an unlimited amount of times in practice mode, or have a one-a-day test that plots your results on a graph so you can see your progress.
You can also take the Brain Age test once a day, which basically offers a trio of tests that tax different parts of your brain. One of these is an initially boggling game whereby the words ‘red’, ‘yellow’, ‘black’ and ‘blue’ flash up on the screen but not necessarily coloured correctly, i.e. ‘red’ may show up coloured blue. The task is to shout out the colour of the word as quickly as possible, and despite the odd voice recognition issue this tends to work very well, although my rather plain posh Southern accent means I am rather clearer than some heavy dialects.
The main thing with Brain Training is that it is addictive. You’ll start off doing each puzzle to a level you are relatively proud, but continued practice will see you improving and feeling a genuine sense of achievement. Notching that little bit higher up on the graphs as the weeks go by becomes some what of an obsession, and frustrating days when you mess up the big test will see you deepening your resolve and wanting to come back the next day and put things right.
During all this, Dr. Kawashima himself will pop up occasionally to impart advice and have a bit of a waffle. What he says though is genuinely interesting, and taking his advice on timing of taking your tests and such will no doubt have an effect on how you’re doing. There are also some moments of comedy packed in there too - occasionally, Dr. Kawashima miscalculates your brain age before realising his mistake and giving you your proper score. In between noodle stretching you can also have a whiz on the huge number of Sudoku puzzles packed in to the game. Without the constraint of the looming time counter clicking down you can relax and really settle down to some number crunching if that floats your boat, and with over 100 of the things for you to work your way through you’ll be kept happy for a good amount of time.
Brain Age is exactly the kind of game the DS was built for. It is an innovative, enriching experience which gives the player tangible rewards for his efforts. Heck – if it works for me, I’m sure the majority of people out there will get something out of Dr. Kawashima and his wonderful little game. Anything that improves your mathematics, awareness and spelling whilst being compulsive good fun can only be a good thing, right?
Which is the whole point, according to the blurb. The aim of Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training is not to turn you into some sort of mega scientist and allow you to understand the principles of aerodynamics overnight; rather it is to sharpen your mind in a number of areas such as mathematics, reading and perception. Does it actually work?
That’s a question which not many people will ever be able to come up with some sort of conclusive answer to. As with anything which involves learning it’s all down to the individual and the amount of attention and effort they put in. The game presents itself as a series of simple puzzles that the player must solve to the best of their abilities against the clock. The trick is to repeat each type of puzzle once per day to ‘train the brain’, whilst also taking a daily test to determine how young or old your brain is, with the former being better.
These tasks are simple enough. Making use of the touch screen and stylus to allow the player to scribble across the screen, exercises like writing answers to simple sums, joining a selection of numbered dots in numerical order and scribbling words remembered from a random selection in a memory test. You can complete each exercise an unlimited amount of times in practice mode, or have a one-a-day test that plots your results on a graph so you can see your progress.
You can also take the Brain Age test once a day, which basically offers a trio of tests that tax different parts of your brain. One of these is an initially boggling game whereby the words ‘red’, ‘yellow’, ‘black’ and ‘blue’ flash up on the screen but not necessarily coloured correctly, i.e. ‘red’ may show up coloured blue. The task is to shout out the colour of the word as quickly as possible, and despite the odd voice recognition issue this tends to work very well, although my rather plain posh Southern accent means I am rather clearer than some heavy dialects.
The main thing with Brain Training is that it is addictive. You’ll start off doing each puzzle to a level you are relatively proud, but continued practice will see you improving and feeling a genuine sense of achievement. Notching that little bit higher up on the graphs as the weeks go by becomes some what of an obsession, and frustrating days when you mess up the big test will see you deepening your resolve and wanting to come back the next day and put things right.
During all this, Dr. Kawashima himself will pop up occasionally to impart advice and have a bit of a waffle. What he says though is genuinely interesting, and taking his advice on timing of taking your tests and such will no doubt have an effect on how you’re doing. There are also some moments of comedy packed in there too - occasionally, Dr. Kawashima miscalculates your brain age before realising his mistake and giving you your proper score. In between noodle stretching you can also have a whiz on the huge number of Sudoku puzzles packed in to the game. Without the constraint of the looming time counter clicking down you can relax and really settle down to some number crunching if that floats your boat, and with over 100 of the things for you to work your way through you’ll be kept happy for a good amount of time.
Brain Age is exactly the kind of game the DS was built for. It is an innovative, enriching experience which gives the player tangible rewards for his efforts. Heck – if it works for me, I’m sure the majority of people out there will get something out of Dr. Kawashima and his wonderful little game. Anything that improves your mathematics, awareness and spelling whilst being compulsive good fun can only be a good thing, right?
8/10
