Brain Age Review

Have an old brain? Maybe you just need a little tune-up. Well now you can have it. With Brain Age! The simple once-a-day game that takes your brain and puts it into full physical form. All you need is this simple software which contains a scary man that tells you some tips to make your brain work better. How wonderful. And it's only $20!!! Call now and we'll throw in dinner with Princess Peach with a wonderful view of Bowser's castle. CALL NOW!!!

Ok, the real review. Brain Age is.....well.......training software. I really don't think you could classify this as much of a game. The "game", is based on the research of the Japanese neuroscientist Ryūta Kawashima, and in this game, he is a scary floating head that tells you many things. He will most likely give you bad dreams, but he's in there. His research shows that a person's brain is more active when solving a simple puzzle or math problem then apposed to an extremely hard and outrageous one. That's how this "game" was made.

Mr. Kawashima's floating head expects you to train everyday with the fun little mini-games on the training mode. There are a lot of mini games. You have Calculations x20 (20 problems), Calculations x100 (100 problems), Reading Aloud, Head Count, Syllable Count, Triangle Math,
Voice Calculation, and there might be a few others. The floating head would like you to play all of these games daily, but you don't have to. If you play one game, you get a stamp for that day. If you play three games on that day, you get a larger stamp for that day. Believe me, you can't play all of them everyday, it's way too boring and repetitive. Throughout the game, the more stamps you get, the more things you unlock. Usually a mini-game, or a "create your own stamp" feature, or a section where you can read all of the "brain tips" the floating head gives you.

One thing this "game" does is right when you are about to go to training or do a sudoku puzzle, it either asks you to draw a picture of an object it tells you, are answer a question along the lines of "What did you have for breakfast", or "What was the best thing you saw on t.v. yesterday". But usually when you get the questions, later on it asks you what you answered on that question. This can get annoying, but sort of improves your memory.

There is also something called a Brain Age which has its own different test. It contains Stroop Test, Calculations x20, Speed Counting, Connect Maze, and a few others. Once you play three of them, it totals up your Brain Age, best number being 20.

The "game" also has a sudoku section. There are only about 120 puzzles split into three different categories, 40 each. Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. 4 of the puzzles in each are weird training puzzles that require one number to be solved, so really, there are really 108 puzzles (wow, those math courses in school really payed off for this review.) We wish there were more, as you finish these very quickly. Hopefully in the sequel, they can make a random puzzle maker like that new PSP sudoku game.

The "game" takes complete advantage of the touch screen and microphone. You very rarely use any face buttons. All the touch screen. A weird characteristic of the "game" is that it's completely sideways. You must turn your DS to its side in order to play. It's pretty odd. Most of the games use the touch screen, but some of them use the microphone (usually the ones with Voice in its name.) This can be fun, but very annoying as the microphone sometimes doesn't pick up your voice and makes you repeat the same darn thing over and OVER AND OVER! (ok, im good now.) But I like how it uses the touch screen so much.

Overall, this "game" is......alright. It gets so repetitive that you end up only playing it for the first few weeks you have it, then throw it to the side and play the newest DS game. You would probably not make it to more than 3 months on this thing. Very boring. So, Brain Age gets 3 floating heads of a Japanese neuroscientist out of 5. Zam, out.

(Ok, we made that screenshot.)