Well, you can colour me surprised. I never expected this monster Japanese hit to ever make it across the land of the rising sun’s borders and into the Western world. That isn’t to say that I’m not glad that it has, because I certainly am. After literally hundreds of titles that either use the touch-screen as an afterthought, or as a half-assed control mechanism for a game engine that really did need to use the d-pad, it’s nice to see that Nintendo’s innovation isn’t on the wane.
Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes A Day (to give the full title) trains you to, well, use your brain. The theory is that everyone’s brain has a ‘brain age’, and this is representative of how they use their allocated grey matter. The first test of your mental mettle sees the game determining your current brain age based on how you do with a series of simple tests. After telling the software whether or not you are in a position to use the microphone or not, you can begin. My initial examination used the system’s built-in microphone, and saw me calling out the colours of certain words as they appear on screen. Easy, huh’ Well, when you realise that the words are colours themselves, that you have the word ‘Red’ showing in blue text, and that you have to resist the temptation to scream ‘REEEEED!’ ‘ things become tricky. Next up was some simple arithmetic to see how I could do with addition, multiplication and subtraction. All input for this test is done with the stylus, with the requirement being that you write your answers on the right hand ‘page’ of the DS, as the questions appear on the left.
Yes, I said page. You see, Brain Age requires you to rotate your DS so that you’re holding it like a book ‘ and I have to say that this works very well. All of the tests are quick enough to get through, requiring some quickfire brainpower if you want to lower your brain age. My initial tests proved that I don’t think enough, and that my brain was 61 years old. Crikey. I’m only 25. Best get to work’
After a few days of playing, Professor Ryuta Kawashima’s tests have lowered my brain age to 49, which is impressive to say the least. All of this is based on prominent Japanese neuroscientist Kawashima-san’s years of study and proven methods of improving the way in which your brain processes information. You have to play every day if you want to see any real results, though, and the game provides a calendar, which is stamped for every day that you play ‘ so that you can see exactly when you’ve missed a day and exactly when you’ve been ‘good’ and completed a whole week.
Also on offer is the ability to just quickly try out some of the challenges without messing up your historical profile ‘ which is perfect for when your friends or family want to see what you’ve been spending your time on every day. On top of this, an incredibly competent version of the current puzzling craze is available. Yep, I’m talking about Sudoku. I don’t have any interest in this myself, but I’m reliably informed that this is one of the best representations of the challenge available, even beating out specific Sudoku-only titles.
In a perfect world, Brain Age would be a very competent way of training yourself to think about things in a more efficient way. The three to five minutes that are required each day to get your brain really working would be of real benefit, and you’d find yourself being unable to live without your Brain Age, as it would really get you moving in the morning (the recommended time to play). However, there is a real problem with the input system that has caused me so much frustration that it has to be highlighted. Everyone knows that 8 minus 8 is 0. So, the game asks me this question, and I write a big, fat zero on the right hand screen. The left hand screen shows ‘8-8 = 6′, because I haven’t quite (by a pixel or two) joined up the top of the zero. Indeed, just drawing a dot on the screen gets the game to think that you’ve drawn the number 6. In the recollection game that sees you staring at a page of words for two minutes in order to remember them, and then writing the words down that you recall. The word ‘monk’ comes up as ‘monr’, so you hit ‘erase’ and try again. Several times. Until the software finally gets what you’re trying to say and you’ve forgotten the other words that you were tasked with remembering.
Unfortunately, given that the entire game relies on your answers being either correct or incorrect based on what you have written, when the engine gives you a big red cross because the answer you wrote isn’t what has the DS has interpreted, the whole thing seems pointless.
When things work as they should, Brain Age is fantastic fun, and is a genuinely useful tool to have to hand. When they don’t, you’re left thinking that there isn’t any real point to the whole thing. You’re writing the correct answer, and being told that your brain age is much higher than it should be, since the game gave you four wrong answers out of 20 because it thought you wrote something that you didn’t. This is most frustrating; because I believe that the system could genuinely improve the way that your brain works and make you more alert and ready to deal with complex problems. If it worked more than 75% of the time. One or two mis-reads I can deal with, but it happens far too frequently.
And you also have to bear in mind that this isn’t strictly a game. Imagine my surprise when I ripped the packaging off, put the cart in and started my initial brain age test, but by the time I’d completed the test and run through a few other challenges, was told that ‘I can only record your brain age score once a day!’ by the disembodied head of Prof. Kawashima. You can play the games again, but your score won’t be recorded until you play again tomorrow. So, you get a whole thirty minutes of enjoyment on your first day (unless you play Sudoku) and then five to ten minutes a day, every day after that. Sure you can go forth and multiplay, but this is hardly the ultimate party game ‘ even if it does provide a good bit of initial novelty value.
