Big Brain Academy

"A fun brain training game"

Big Brain Academy, which is thought of as a "sequel" to Brain Age, is a pretty fun experience that's worth picking up. It's not an earth-shatteringly great game, but for only $20, it's worth it. It basically provides small exercises to keep your mind sharp. As someone who enjoyed Brain Age quite a bit, I picked this up. Big Brain Academy is better than Brain Age in some areas, but lacking in others.

GRAPHICS
Nice, bright graphics for this title are effective. Since you'll be making choices, this works very well. They're not great graphics, but, like many other games, the graphics work, and Metroid Prime: Hunter graphics aren't needed.

SOUND
Very simple sounds, a ding if you're right and a buzzer if you're wrong. Very cute-sounding music for the menus, which fits the mood well.

GAMEPLAY
How the gameplay works is you choose to take the test, which gives you five parts: Think, Memorize, Analyze, Compute and Identify. One test out of three is randomly chosen for each category. You take the test and get a grade at the end based on how you did.

The way the tests work is basically, a question comes up with four choices, and you have to select the answer. The quicker you answer, the more questions you get and that means more points, but if you answer too quickly and get it wrong, that's less points, so it allows the player to answer quickly but not too quickly. The tests are much more fun than Brain Age. In Brain Age, things such as math and reading might turn someone off to the game, in which case, they could try Big Brain Academy, with more accessible exercises like memorizing sounds and identifying sounds.

If there were a problem with the tests, it would be that some tests in the same category are sometimes harder than others (such as Analyze, in which CubeGame is one of the harder tests in the game, whereas Animal Lines is one of the easier ones).

Also, you can choose to take the tests separately to try and get medals and beat your old scores.

EXTRAS
There isn't much in terms of extras. Taking the test is all you have to do. One thing that is different than Brain Age is the urgency to play every day. In Brain Age, you are prompted to play at least once a day, and if don't then Dr. Kawashima will say something about it. Also, you can only have one Brain Age Check per day (and have it count). In Big Brain Academy, they don't keep count of when you play, just as long as you play. You can also try over and over to get a better score.

One thing that this game lacks that Brain Age has is an extra game. Brain Age had Sudoku, which added a lot of replayability to the game. Big Brain Academy doesn't have an extra game. In my opinion, Sudoku should have been added to BBA as well, as it fits in the theme of brain-based games, is considered fun and would work here (if given graphics to fit well with the games look) and adds a lot of playability.

OVERALL
Big Brain Academy is a good brain training game that has its differences from Brain Age. As for which one to get, if you're into more serious things like math, reading and such, then go for Brain Age. If you're into more accessible and easy to get into things like memorizing and identifying, then go for this game. Either way, both are fun and educational at the same time and a good break from the Castlevania and Sonic Rushes of the DS library.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/18/06