WorthPlaying writes: "Brain Challenge fits into the ever-growing niche of casual puzzle games disguised as self-improvement devices. The game offers a brain training mode, a daily rating/tracking feature, and a stress management mode. Each mode is chock-full of different types of puzzles that fit into primary categories such as focus, logic, math, memory and visual. Likewise, the stress mode likewise uses puzzles in these categories to help you manage stress, but I'll get to that in a moment.
I sat down with a fresh Monster Lo-Carb drink because nothing epitomizes learning and calmness quite like a huge infusion of liquid energy. Brain Challenge starts off innocently enough with a statement that I took as a challenge: "It's said that people only use 10% of their brains. What about you?" I've got to use at least 50 percent, right? And with the Monster drink, that's got to take it up to 55 or 60 percent, easily. I jumped into the initial challenge to check my supercharged brain rating."
If you've ever tried one of the many popular brain-training games on the Ds, you might understand my frustration. There are quite a few titles out there that claim to "train your brain" in just "minutes a day." Brain Age, Brain Boost, Brain Assist, Brain Challenge-the only requirement seems to be inserting the word "brain" into the title in order to instantly boost intelligence. Amy Nelson at Goozer Nation recently picked up Big Brain Academy from my kids' bottomless stash of Ds games (thanks Gramma)and thought, "Oh, I'll give this a try. Show the kids how it's done."
IGN writes: "If there was an abundance of DSiWare games on the market, then sure, I'd be all for porting older titles onto the service. But the fact is that this is one of the only games to come out this month in a catalog that is pretty weak so far. Granted, that's more of a complaint about the service, and doesn't affect the quality of the product. Still, why couldn't this have been Brain Challenge 2? If you've never ever played the game, then it's actually a pretty decent brain game, though when compared to the recently released DSiWare Brain Age, it's hard to recommend this over that".
This week, Cyril looks at a few retro titles for the Wii and DS. Some that he checks out this week are Pulseman, Secret Command, and Brain Challenge in Haiku style.
