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DS | Puzzle | Big Brain Academy

Boxart for Big Brain Academy
Big Brain Academy 10 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.50
  • SOUND: 3.00
  • CONTROL: 4.00
  • FUN FACTOR 4.25
  • AVG USER SCORE 3.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.7

Review: Big Brain Academy

Review by JohnnyK | 06/09/2006 | 08:42:37 AM PST

School is now in session at Nintendo's Big Brain Academy, so enroll now! Great mini-games and a unique scoring system help give this brain trainer a passing grade.

As if your brain hadn't gotten over the bashing it endured in Brain Age Academy, get ready to take it for another cerebral ride in Nintendo's Big Brain Academy. Offering up five new brain-related areas to test your intelligence on, it's a healthy mix of fun and thinking. While it may not be deep enough to really keep you coming back for more, month after month, it does dole out bite-sized chunks of brain-exercising activities ideal for commuters or those with a lot of time on their hands.

When you fire up Big Brain Academy for the first time, much like Brain Age Academy, you'll create a new user account and put your brain through a preliminary run to gauge its general "weight." Instead of giving you a mental age, your brain is instead assigned a weight. The heavier the weight, the more fit and limber your grey matter is.

After a round of testing, your brain will also assigned a corresponding occupation, which is directly tied to the various brain-testing categories that are in the game. There are five testing categories: think, memorize, analyze, compute, and identify. Each category tests a specific area and thinking type, and the end results are tallied to figure out your brain weight and your occupation. Much like Brain Age Academy, the game features quite a few different games to play, with most relying heavily on visuals, not numbers (goodbye multiplication tables!). If you're dropping the ball in any particular category, the game features a handy Practice mode where you can pick any game from any category to sharpen your skills at. The games also come complete with a few different difficulty levels, to give your brain that much more of a work-out.

Outside of the main Practice and Testing phases of Big Brain Academy, the game lets you play some single-card multiplayer via Wi-Fi. The object of each multiplayer game is simple -- solve each test as quickly as possible. Each multiplayer session features a target brain weight (which you can increase or decrease when you start a session). When you complete a test, you're awarded a certain amount of brain weight, all in hopes of being the first one to accumulate the necessary amount. It's addictive and fun, albeit it a bit shallow in terms of overall depth.

Visually Big Brain Academy isn't going to be setting any benchmarks for quality, but the game does have a nice charm to it. Your "teacher" is an amorphous blob wearing a mortarboard, which is weird but slightly less creepy than the giant floating head of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, who loomed over Brain Age Academy like the Wizard of Oz. The tests themselves are charming enough, too, given their simplistic and cartoon-like visuals.

Overall Big Brain Academy should really appeal to those folks out there who enjoyed Brain Age Academy, but wanted a bit more depth. The various tests should give your brain quite a workout, while the neat visuals and multiplayer mode should keep you busy for quite some time. It may not have the legs to keep you busy for an extended amount of time, but as long as you're not getting any "real" exercise, you might as well be giving brain some virtual training.


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