An extract from the WiiWare World review of Gameloft's Brain Challenge:
"If a WiiWare review can be judged on the sheer amount of notes taken then Brain Challenge deserves an award. We tried hard to fit everything on two sheets of A4 and still failed. While essentially being a copy-cat of Nintendo's immensely popular Brain Age games; Brain Challenge is a comprehensive package that should not be unfairly written off.
The game begins with a rather irritating sound bite and the appearance of a pretty face. Dr. Hurley, a blonde haired "yummy mummy" greets you depending on the time of your Wii clock and quickly moves on with some trivia and a general knowledge quiz. It has no bearing on the actual game and serves more as an ice breaker but it's clear from the realistic greeting and friendly tone that GameLoft wants you to feel like you are consulting with a real doctor whilst playing Brain Challenge. You'll even be able to select an alternative doctor later on, allowing the ladies to get some digital eye-candy in the form of Prof. Stevens. Both the doctors have distinctive personalities and while not being a major feature are fairly well executed.
The first thing the doctor wants you to do is to select a Mii profile and quickly complete a set of challenges, known as the "Daily Test". The "Daily Test" is broken up into a range of activities based upon several categories: logic, maths, memory, visual and focus. Each category has a number of activities designed to tune the focus of that group. For example, logic puzzles are based on completing shapes, maths puzzles will challenge you to finish equations and (a personal favourite) focus puzzles will test you on which ball bounces higher. There are variations on similar themes and while there are enough to keep you coming back it's doubtful the game will stay fresh for an extensive period of time. Regardless, the activities that are included are genuinely fun and difficult enough to get you thinking."
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.
