Putting Your Head To the Test
Brain Assist features ten games that focus on evaluating and training your right hemisphere. The games include challenges that will require that you concentrate, analyze, memorize, deduce — you get the idea. The action takes place at the Right Brain Research Institute. You will be trained by four nurses, all of which have their somewhat unique appearance and personality, but are really only there to teach and encourage you before, after, and in between levels of games. Speaking of the games, there are ten of them to choose from the get-go, and there are no more to unlock; they are: Pi And Thagoras, Countmania, Character Hunt, Match Game, Spot the Difference, Hexagonal Colors, Touch of Brilliance, Quick Numbers, Twirling Cards, and Scattered Memory. Next, I’ll briefly talk about each game.
Pi And Thagoras tests your analysis ability by showing you a particular shape, and then having you tap on the touch screen the corresponding shape on the lower screen. What makes this interesting is that the sample piece always looks whole, but in the actual puzzle, you must see the shapes that make up the sample shape even as they are intermixed and broken up amongst other shapes. Countmania I thought was a little goofy basically there are a bunch of multi-colored balloons of different sizes with different numbers on them. The idea is to tap each balloon in order, against a ticking timer of course. This can be exciting, but when you’re searching through thirty numbers, it gets annoying quick, and just about any of the other nine games is more fun than this one. Character Hunt will have you trying to find a single matching pair of characters amongst a grid of others; like all of these brain games, they start off easy but quickly get very tough. Match Game will have you selecting the image that results were other sample images to combine. Spot the Difference is, obviously, about spotting the difference between pictures, if there are any. Hexagonal Colors is fun; a grid of hexagons is shown with at least a couple of them highlighted in color. There are four colors, and the hexagons are often different colors. After a moment of seeing this grid, it reverts to an all white grid, and then must reproduce the sample image by selecting the colors and hexagons needed. Touch of Brilliance is all about watching the flashing white circle closely, keeping track of where it moves to on the screen; it’s kind of like the old street games you’ve seen or played; where an object is hidden in one of three cups, for example, and the cups are moved around very quickly, and the objective is to select which cup is hiding the object. Quick Numbers is a perfect example of how these games are often very easy, and then very, very difficult. The object of this game is to watch as numbers fly by, horizontally from right to left on your screen. You have to memorize them and then type out the sequence of numbers. The really hard part is when the numbers fly by at “Mach 3” instead of 120 MPH. Twirling Cards is taking a sample set of cards, say 1-2-3, and then viewing which cards are not above as they flip from front to back very quickly; it’s easy enough when there are just three cards, but when there are eight cards, it gets tougher (and harder still when letters are added in addition to numbers). Lastly, Scattered Memory is about memorizing all of the symbols on screen as they pop up and then choosing the image out of three other images that matches the sequence.
Other Thoughts
Each of these puzzling games has you pitted against some type of clock. If you select the wrong answer or don’t answer in time, you lose a heart, of which you only have four. It doesn’t take long to get to the end of a level, however; you will normally do about eight puzzles, and then a lighting bolt animation shows while Eva, the evil nurse, challenges you to Hard and then Very Hard courses. After which, your score is tallied and saved and then you are back at square one. As you play you not only affect your overall score, but you unlock other icons that can be used to change the way your entry in the Points Master list appears. As far as difficulty, I’ve touched on it somewhat earlier, but basically everything starts off easy and ramps up quickly; the Very Hard courses are indeed very difficult, but like most brain games, they can be hard to put down. I did like how the puzzles weren’t always a cinch from the beginning, that is, after I had played each game a few times. Brain Assist did seem to take into account where my skills were and so I would start off with varying difficulty challenges rather than starting off with the very easiest ones. That said, one significant problem I had with the game was that there was no way to pause or back out of a game. Once you start a game, you are in it until the end (of course, you could put your DS on standby by closing it, but it still doesn’t really pause the game). This can be a bit annoying for obvious reasons, but it’s not a deal break in and of itself.
In terms of presentation, Brain Assist is pretty bare. There isn’t much to see here, it is just a brain game after all, but the character animations and color usage for the menus and buttons weren’t very good looking or, well, perhaps interesting is a better word. The visuals got the job done, but not much more than that. In terms of audio, the tunes that play at the main menu and after a ‘training session’ were a bit jarring and fast paced for what the game was, but that’s just me.
Lastly there are a couple of multiplayer options including local area four player games, which I was not able to test at the time of review. Also included is a two player mode where two players can share the same DS to compete against each other or work together to solve the puzzles. Nothing spectacular here, but it’s good that these modes were included.