Brain Age- Nintendo DS Lite Game Review

There are more and more games hitting the market that claim to boost your intelligence, visual reflexes, and thinking capacity. Do I believe this? Not entirely. But still, the games can be fun, which has always been my reason for playing video games.

The Nintendo DS game Brain Age is one of the crop of games supposed to boost your brainpower. Your host through the games is a disembodied, rendered head of the game's creator. Don't worry, it's more funny than creepy.

You start out with a few games and the more you play the more games and extras you can unlock. Here are all of the games on the cartridge:

Calculations x20- 20 simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems which are to be completed as fast as possible.

Calculations x100- same as before, but now there are 100 problems. This game also has a hard mode which throws division problems into the mix.

Reading Aloud- A different literature passage is provided each day. You can either read aloud or in your head. The more syllables per second you read, the
higher your score.

Low to high- numbers are shown for a few seconds and then hidden; you need to touch them from the lowest to the highest from memory. Each time you get one correct you have another number added; if you miss one you go back to the previous number you mastered.

Syllable count- Read a very brief passage and count the number of syllables in it.

Head count- There's a house party going on, and it's your job to keep tabs on the number of guests present. You know the starting amount in the house and you have to keep a running tab on the number as guests come and go. On hard mode the guests can enter and exit the house through the front and back doors and the chimney!

Triangle math- Perform addition and subtraction on pairs of numbers and then on the results of the first operations. Hard mode gets kind of tricky as there are more operations and number sets involved.

Time lapse- Determine how much time has passed between a set of clocks. Not as easy as it sounds.

Voice calculation- Same as the other calculation games except that you speak your answers instead of writing them. For some reason my DS doesn't want to recognize my "two" answers, so that screws up my score because I have to slow down and repeat "two" about ten times before it recognizes my answer. It hasn't had this issue with anyone else who's played it though (maybe it's because of my braces-who knows?).

Brain Age also keeps a graph of your progress over the months, a speed indicator after each game (a man walking is the slowest I've seen- touch him on the screen and he whistles the Mario Brothers theme opening; a spaceship is the fastest I've seen; in between are a man on a bicycle, a car, a train, and a plane).

Brain Age gets its name from estimating your brain's age. 20 years old is the optimal age (my current score!). The older your brain scores supposedly the more you need to practice to get it into shape.

Brain Age is a very fun Nintendo DS game. I don't think it's going to boost my everyday thinking ability, but I don't think it's hurting it either. It's certainly more engaging than watching another sitcom rerun.

I recommend this game to anyone who likes puzzles, timed challenges, and a laugh. The floating head of the game creator will say and do some funny stuff sometimes.