Hands on with More Brain Training on DS
We're not as clever as we thought we were
Maybe Nintendo thinks we're spending too much time playing games, and that it's going to our heads. If so, More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain? (or Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day in the US, where we recently got a hands on play) should be just the cure.
The aim of playing More Brain Training is to exercise your brain via a new batch of mentally stimulating mini-games.
As in Nintendo's original Brain Training game, on first starting Brain Age 2 you'll be prompted to create a personal profile for tracking your progress. A series of simple tests involving the microphone are then used to estimate your brain age for the first time. Based on your performance, you'll be assigned a brain age between 20 (best) and 80 (worst).
Once you've completed the initial tests, four options are available from the main menu: Quick Play, Daily Training, Sudoku and Download play. Quick Play lets you perform a brain age check at any time, but you'd be better off flexing your mental muscle with Daily Training first.
A total of 11 new games are introduced in More Brain Training. We had the opportunity to check out about half of them in our hands on session, as well as a bonus game that can be unlocked following good results.
First up was Word Scramble, a mini-game that tasks you with figuring out words from a jumble of letters. Letters – starting with four and working up to eight – rotate in a circle on the screen and you'll need to jot down the correct, unscrambled word using the stylus.
Sadly, many of the journalists in attendance at Nintendo's Gamers Day found unscrambling the rotating letters fairly difficult (ourselves included). But if Word Scramble is particularly challenging, most mini-games in More Brain Training ramp up the difficulty level in a more progressive manner.
They also use the DS' technology in slightly different ways to the original game. For example, one of the more advanced word mini-games, Word Blend, utilises audio prompts. The game states a word and you answer by writing down the spoken word on the touchscreen. After a few easy tries, two and then three words will be said simultaneously. Should you only catch one or two words, you can have the audio replayed. Letters are also added to help you out each time the words are respoken.
Moving from letters to signs, More Brain Training has a slate of maths mini-games that are as challenging as in the first game. Two were shown to us: Sign Finder and Math Recall.
Available from the moment you start the game, Sign Finder is a relatively simple game that presents you with an equation that's missing a symbol. All you need to do is draw the missing sign to complete the equation.
Infinitely more challenging (read: embarrassing when playing in front of others) is Math Recall. A number is displayed and then blacked out. The blacked out number then is placed into an equation and you're tasked with writing the answer. Next, one of the numbers from the completed equation is blacked out and then placed into a new equation. Considering we had trouble unscrambling the word 'fluffy,' this mini-game just about made our heads explode.
More Brain Training won't be totally focused on stretching vocabulary and crunching numbers, though. One of the more creative mini-games, Piano Player, has you tinkling a touchscreen keyboard to music displayed on the top screen. There will be 50 songs to stylus along to.
Complete your daily training and you can have a little fun with Virus Buster, a Dr. Mario-style puzzle game, and you'll always have access to sudoku and wireless multiplayer, too. More Brain Training utilises the same sudoku engine as the original game, albeit with 100 new puzzles, while Download play enables an impressive 16 players to connect using only one cartridge.
So there's more than enough content in More Brain Training to stimulate your little grey cells, if not to make them fairly spin with activity.
More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain? is due to be released on June 29th, at the very reasonable price of £20 (€30).
