I'm 34, apparently (Brain Training (DS))

Member Name: magenta23

Product:	Brain Training (DS)
Date:	29/12/08 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of gameplay, educational

Disadvantages: Dr is annoying!

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training seems to have opened gaming up from kids and teenagers to an adult audience. Hot on it's heels, more games such as Cooking guide are providing more alternative DS software to entertain this new older audience. The great thing about this game is although it attracts the older gamer, it really does appeal to all ages. The packaging states 3 years and up, personally I think a 3 year old would struggle with it, some of the puzzles I find challenging and I'm in my 20s! I guess it has that rating as it contains no content that a 3 year old shouldn't see.


It's hard to catergorise Brain Training. I guess it would be in the puzzle section. It's kind of what like Wii Fit is to your body, but for the mind. not so much of a game, but literally a trainer.


Dr. Kawashima is your 'host' for the game, and he talks you through how your doing and instructions for puzzles etc. He gets a bit irritating and I don't think there is a way to skip him. I've tried skipping through his speeches without reading them, but he knows and tells me to read it as it's important!! I don't like my DS bossing me around! Aside from that, there isn't much to fault it.

You start off by setting yourself up a profile, you are asked for birthday, name etc and each time you do any training and tests you do so under your profile and your progress is recorded by graphs and little patronising comments from the Dr! You can store up to four profiles, so you can compare progress with friends and family.

There three main parts to the Brain Training programme, Brain Age Check, Training and Sudoku.
Brain Age Check - This you can only record once a day. You are given three excercises to complete and your 'brain age' is calculated on how quickly you complete the tasks and how many mistakes you make. 20, apparently, is the best age for your Brain to be, so that's the aim.
Training - Training has a list of exercises to complete each day, do can do each task as many times as you like but it will only record your first time for each day. For these exercises, it's all about how quickly you do them, time penalties are added to your final time for mistakes made. As a guide of whether your time is good or bad a little cartoon is shown. For example walking speed is slow, but flying spped is very fast. I think this is a nice touch, a little fun twist on an other wise rather serious game. For each day you train you are given a stamp (if you know Wii fit, the format is very much the same). The more stamps you get, the more new exercises you unlock, and they get proressively harder.
Sudoku - There are 3 difficulty levels on the Sudoku puzzles, and you are again, marked on how quickly you can do them. You can complete each one as may times as you like and try and better your time. There is enough puzzles to keep me going for now, however I think this section is the weakest. There are not a vast number of puzzles to complete, and even with the element of trying to better your time, you will ultimately become familiar with a puzzle is you are doing it time and time again so the challenge will not be there.

Overall, I think Brain Training is a good game. I don't know if it has made me smarter, my 'Brain Age' has got lower the more I play it, but is that just because I'm more practised at the puzzles?

Summary: An alternative to the normal breed of DS game