Big Brain Academy (DS)

Gamecow’s Price	RRP $49.95     Save $4.00 $45.95
Availability
Genre	Action Adventure
Platform	Nintendo DS
Release Date	06/07/2006
Rated

Work up a mental sweat with Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo DS.  Big Brian Academy will test your brain in 5 games categories: think, memorize, analyse, compute and identify.

Big Brain is suitable for all members of the family and is extremely good fun to play (just don’t tell the children in might actually be educational).

Parents will find Big Brain Academy (DS) challenging and a great way to pass the time on the commute to work or when the children are not around and you just want to chill.

Big Brain Academy (DS) Product Information

Welcome to the Big Brain Academy where having a thick head is a GOOD THING! The second title in Nintendo's series of brain games, Big Brain Academy trains your brain with a course load of mind-bending activities across five categories: think, memorize, analyze, compute, and identify!

When you begin, you'll be challenged in an exciting test of lightning-fast activities to determine your "brain weight", areas of strength and weakness, and which occupation or famous personality best compares to your weight score. The faster you complete the activities the "heavier" your brain!
After the test, hit the homeroom and choose between three classes: Practice, Test, and Versus. Each one is designed to help you increase the weight of your mighty brain and, most of all, have a great time!

Practice mode lets you work on activities at your own pace. Use it to improve at the activities in Test mode that are giving you trouble, or to get even better at ones where you excel! Activities last only 60 seconds.

Test mode is always available when you want to try and increase your brain weight and show off that massive cranium!

Versus mode presents you and up to seven friends, using only one Game Card, with a riotous multiplayer competition. See who has the biggest brain, but burn through randomly chosen activities!

Big Brain Academy (DS) Review

Although similar on the surface, Big Brain Academy is actually a rather different game to Brain Training. The whole thing plays more like a traditional game with scores and goals as opposed to just playing for the fun of a daily brain workout. For starters, each of the tests are divided into five categories: ‘Think’, ‘Memorize’, ‘Compute’, ‘Identify’ and ‘Analyze’, each containing 3 games with 3 difficulty settings. ‘Think’, for example, requires you to work out the heaviest item on a set of scales while ‘Compute’, which is maths themed, has you adding up the value of two sets of money and pointing out the highest value. ‘Memorize’ is obviously based around memory tests involving numbers, patterns and sounds while ‘Identify’ has you picking out objects in silhouette or finding pairs of numbers. Finally, ‘Analyze’ requires simple some puzzle solving involving cube counting and shape drawing.

They’re all simple to play but few could be described as easy. Not only are there 3 very different difficulty settings for each test, there are bronze/silver/gold (and platinum!) awards to get so there’s plenty to do. And unlike Brain Training where 20yrs old was the best score you could achieve, the scores in Big Brain Academy can technically go as high as you want meaning there’s always potential to better yourself by answering questions quicker and giving less incorrect answers. When you finish each test the results are then relayed onto your main graph. This helpfully shows you the areas that you are best in and the tests you need to work on more. Big Brain Academy also features a multiplayer mode for up to 8 players which makes for some surprisingly good fun as you go head to head (or should that be ‘brain to brain’?) with your friends.

On the whole, Big Brain Academy just about edges out Brain Training in all the right areas - all barring presentation that is. Brain Training was clean and simple with tidy use of black on white throughout. Here however they’ve gone a little overboard and filled every square inch with colour. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from ugly, but we probably could have done without the cartoon animals that are about as generic as you would find from some online flash game. Not that it’s not nice to see that Mario hasn’t been slapped on the box to shift a few more copies, but you would expect more than what we have here from Nintendo. Maybe the somewhat child-like feel of Big Brain Academy is an intentional move to interest younger people considering the more mature style of Brain Training but that still doesn’t quite excuse garish purple monkeys and red cats.

Depending on your situation there’s in all probability one of two questions in your head right now as you are reading this. The first being ‘I already have Brain Training, do I need this?’ Well I would say yes. It’s similar enough so that many of the things you liked in that game you will also enjoy here, but it’s different enough not to feel like you’re playing the same thing again. The other question is ‘I don’t have either Brain games, which one should I buy?’. Now that’s a trickier one to answer as they both do what they do well. Brain Training has the advantage of Sudoku packed in there, but Big Brain Academy will almost certainly last you the longest in terms of replayability due to its structure with score tracking and medal awards. If forced to decide Big Brain Academy has the edge where it counts. But given the relatively low price of the two you would certainly be forgiven for owning both.

Full review PALGN