Nintendo's Brain Age DS releases were very successful titles, so it comes as no real surprise to see them releasing a trimmed-down version of the games for their brand new DSiWare service. Whereas the original Brain Age titles featured a wide range of brain-training exercises, Brain Age Express: Math focuses much of its attention on various mathematical-style challenges, many of which are taken directly from the retail releases.
There are eight different math exercises to choose from, although only three of these are open when you begin the game for the first time (as you play through these exercises, you'll eventually unlock the remaining challenges). The exercises themselves range from simple math calculations – addition, subtraction, and multiplication – to adding up whole chunks of numbers, or choosing one specific number from an assorted group. If you've played the original Brain Age games, you should feel right at home with these challenges, as they haven't changed much in the transition to this DSiWare title.
To add a little variety to the package, Nintendo has also tossed in a group of exercises called Themes, which involve various tasks: from acting out scenes from an imaginary movie, to having to draw out specific objects assigned you by the game. The acting challenges allow you to use the DSi system's built-in camera and microphone to input your answers, and the game will even allow you to save your creations to the DSi system's SD card for later viewing via the slideshow option. The downside to these themed challenges is that there are only seven of them and, once completed, there's little reason to come back to them.
Much like its big brothers, Brain Age Express: Math will keep a log of your progress as you take on the various challenges each day in an effort to improve your brain age – it even charts this out on graphs for you to view at any time. There's also the distraction of the game's Slideshow and Theme Album sections to toy around with if you find yourself tiring of the various brain exercises.
If you're looking for a lot of eye candy and fancy music, you've come to wrong place. The musical and visual styles in the game are very basic, as you'd expect from a title like this. You'll get a few black and white drawings and a coloured block here and there – not to mention a handful of catchy sound effects – but other than that, the audio/visual experience in Brain Age is minimalist at best. In fact, the polygonal version of Dr. Kawashima's head is probably the most impressive visual feat in the entire game, if that tells you anything.
Conclusion
If Nintendo had created a demo for their retail DS Brain Age titles, Brain Age Express: Math would have been it. It features the fun and charm of the full versions, just in much smaller doses. In short, if you've already experienced Brain Age, you've essentially experienced this DSiWare release, but if for some reason you've never gotten around to giving the original Brain Age titles a try, Brain Age Express might be the perfect opportunity to do so.
Comments 18
I've never been fond of the Brain Training/Age games, so I probably won't get this one aswell.
DSi games seem to be doing well in reviews
For 800 points I would rather just buy the entire game at $20.00
I agree with Tony, this would be a much better value at 500 points or less.
The main reason I'd rather buy Brain Age express instead of the whole game would be no cartridge swapping.
I'm still considering getting this, and the reviews I've read are definitely giving me nudging me in that direction.
I'm actually enjoying this game a lot. Even though i bought brain age 2, i still think this game is a good value. Mostly because of the fact that most of the exercises on brain age 2 that i enjoyed were math based. Plus this game has the added benefit of being in the system at all times which means you would be more likely to play it on a daily basis. Oh, and also, virus buster rules!!
Virus buster is cool, but it is on Brain Age 2, I think I will just wait for Dr Mario.
How does the voice acting challenge work?
The acting parts are quite simple, and you really have to grade yourself on them. You'll have to read parts of a story and then at the end you'll be given a section of dialogue to read into the DSi mic. It records it for you and then plays it in context to see how it sounds with the picture. The same can be said of the photo acting. They'll just show you a picture of what you're emotion should have looked like to see how accurate you were. There's really not much to it.
I can't believe no one picked up on this yet but...
YAY!! ANOTHER 7 FROM CORBIE!!!!!
It's been a while
Hmmmm, I have Brain Training 1 and used to have More Brain Training; not to mention Big Brain Academy and Brain Challenge; I STILL want to give this some consideration as I can see me and the family getting a lot of play out of this being saved on the actual system all the time. The 800 points price tag is a turn off though, take note Nintendo!
EDIT: "A Frankfurt Ware Conference mini hands on playtest" suggests it is actually a worthy download. So coupling THAT to this good review has just about convinced me I think.
Nintendo DID release demos for the two retail games. Check the Nintendo Channel.
Worthy download. I have Brain Training and used to own More Brain Training...still worthy IMHO
Brain age express is one of the games I would say worth the 8 dollars (or 800 yen or whatever euros are) Since I've never bought Brain Age and I love math this was a good buy for me.
alot better then the arts and letters one
@LinktotheFuture Uhm....who the heck is Tony?
@MC808
A former member who appears to have had their comment deleted.
@LinktotheFuture lol You're probably right. I apppreciate the reply.
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