More Brain Training

Written by Ben on August 20th, 2007 and posted in Reviews
Tags : brain, nintendo, nintendo ds

A quick note before I start this review. The official title for More Brain Training is “More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain?” Since I have trained my brain I can remember it quite effortlessly, however to make things easier for those of you who haven’t – I’ll refer to it as More Brain Training (and the prequel as Brain Training).

The first Brain Training sold a lot of Nintendo DS’s. The first time I took it to work we had a morning of people shouting colours at the small console and soon after two people in the office purchased a DS. I showed it to my girlfriend and her father and they both purchased a DS and brain training. It reached out to people who don’t normally play games and was enjoyable to boot. So playing the sequel is something I have been rather wary of – would it live up to the legacy?

The game came out a few weeks ago now, and because of the way it works, limiting your daily play time, it has taken a while to complete the review.

For those of you who are unaware here’s a quick recap on what the Brain Training games entail. In Brain Training you play a series of small games designed to improve the use of you brain – you start off with a single game, and over the course of 20 days or so unlock more and more until you have the full collection. Each game is timed or scored and your progress is charted. When you’re feeling brave you can do the Brain Age test which will tell you how old your brain is – the younger your brain age the better – get to 20 and you’re doing very well.

Compared to Brain Training the games in More Brain Training seem a little forced. Most of them are fine but a couple feel out of place to me… of course that could just be me not being very good

The best games, aka the games I am best at, aka my favourites, are Missing Symbols, Masterpiece Recital (although not on hard – that’s just crazy), and Correct Change. That said the liking or disliking of these games is sure to be subjective, different people are bound to have different favourites, based purely on their own skills so my opinion on this means little. I did have some issues with a couple of the games being less balanced though, I had issues with Word Blend, which I think are more to do with the DS’s speaker than my hearing/ perception, and with Days and Dates, which I found considerably more difficult than the other games – but that could just be me?

One of the nicer features of the Brain Training games is this difference between games, and the challenges this makes. The game has slots for four players to save their games, and gives you many graphs for comparing the different growth charts and skills of the different players. My girlfriend plays Brain Training as well, and has managed to beat me on most games now.

On top of all the mini games there are also two sub games. One is Sudoku (which was also included in the original UK Brain Training, but not the US one), and a smaller game that is meant to “relax” you. The relaxing game is basically a simple colour matcher which lets you move and rotate the pieces with the stylus, and to be honest it’s a bit rubbish. The Sudoku on the other hand is excellent, and almost worth the price of the game on it’s own.

If you liked the first game then it’s a pretty safe bet you’ll like this one too. Definitely worth a go – and make sure to show your non game playing friends.

• More Brain Training Information

• Ben's Rating :

  Rating: 3.5
  Readers Rating :

  Rating: 4
• More Brain Training website
• Buy More Brain Training from Amazon UK