Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain? (Nintendo DS) Review

The dismembered head of Ryuta Kawashima is your guide through this educational masterpiece. The smiling, bobbing virtual head of the Japanese doctor sets you a number of different puzzles based on different aspects of mental exercise. By the time you've played this game for a few days you will know all about prefrontal cortex and how to activate it...sounds fun, doesn't it? Admittedly, Brain Training does push our definition of a videogame, but it is still damn good fun.

You start off with a small number of puzzles to solve, and the better you do and the more you play the more activities you will unlock. The aim of the game is to get the age of your brain down to the optimum of twenty years. This is easier said than done, and having a disembodied, blocky head tell you that you have the mind of a seventy-year-old is encouragement enough to keep on playing in an attempt to prove to the aforementioned head that you are actually a very clever person. Indeed, the human obsession of always wanting to complete a task and prove someone wrong is really played upon by this game. We know we're clever people, but until Dr. Kawashima says so, we won't be happy. Tragic, we know...

The game starts off asking for your name (which you write in), your date of birth and whether you are right or left handed. Then you are asked to do a quick test to determine your approximate brain age. Once that is done, it is your obligation to prove the videogame wrong and make it realise you are an intelligent person, and don't have the brain of a senile idiot. Hating maths, we immediately went for the more word and visual based puzzles, but that doesn't mean that we didn't enjoy the number-centric activities. There are a huge variety exercises to attempt: Calculation x 20, Reading Aloud, Low To High, Number Cruncher, Head Count, Triangle Math and Time Lapse to list just a few. Each one makes you think in a different way and involves memory, speed of mind and your ability to solve simple and complex problems. In one activity, you are asked to remember a list of words that you see for only a short time; you then have to physically write those words down before the timer runs out. It is a painfully difficult task at first, but the more you play, the better you get. In another, you have to read out the colour of words that appear (Red, Black, Blue Yellow), problem is, that the word Yellow will appear coloured Red and you have to say Red and not Yellow. Trust us, it is bloody difficult.

Unlike epic RPG titles or adventure games, this is a title that is only ever meant to be played in short bursts. Playing Brain Training for an epic five hours solid would probably make you either suicidal or very bored, but that is the beauty of the software. It is a game to enjoy and use in moderation, like a fifteen-minute fitness video starring Mr. Motivator. Admittedly, we're not the target audience for this game. We're not old, we play games and we know who Nintendo are, so the secret is already out for us. This is a game that is meant to be played whilst you commute to work, or whilst you wait for everyone to turn up to the local church hall for tea, biscuits and line-dancing. Whilst we're more than happy to drink tea and eat biscuits, we are not to be found line-dancing with a load of pensioners...

In terms of gameplay (if we can even call it that), Brain Training is pretty solid. It recognises even the scruffiest of handwriting (it only got confused a few times with out writing, which is impressive) and will pick up your voice really accurately (although you have to be in a quiet place, with no wind and hold the console the right distance from you). Aside from that, the touchscreen implementation is perhaps some of the most innovative and oft used we have seen to date. All the activities make use of the innovative aspects of the DS hardware and furthermore, they make good use of it.

The game comes with Quick Play, Daily Training, Sudoku and Download gameplay options. The first option is basically for your friends and family to have a go at, or yourself if you fancy some practice without mucking up your own precious file in Daily Training mode. Sudoku does exactly what it says on the tin, so fans of the irritating newspaper craze will no doubt be happy. The only problem with it being on the DS is you can't scrawl about so much, you HAVE to be sure of it, and for some reason solving Sudoku puzzles on the DS is a lot more difficult than doing it on the back of The Times. In Daily Training, your progress is tracked on a graph (exciting stuff...), so you can see how you improve in each of the tasks. The idea is you attempt as many of the tasks possible each day, and look to improve in each task over time. Your reward? That little line on the graph goes up a bit, wow!

When you consider that this game only needs to be played for ten to fifteen minutes each day (anything more than that is overkill), it does make for an entertaining thing to do whilst waiting for a bus, sitting on the underground, waiting for your hip to slip back into place, waiting for Bingo to start or even whilst your opponent is taking forever to make their next move in Scrabble or even waiting for the feeling to come back in your feet. Yes, we jest, but in all honesty this game is not for the young, it is for the old. It's being advertised during Coronation Street for crying out loud!