Big Brain Academy Review

Each task lasts a minute and while there's a bit of overlap with the contents of Brain Training (sums, for example, although here you tap the answers to written questions on a number-pad rather writing the numbers) in general it's quite different, with the categories of Think, Identify, Memorise, Computer and Analyse bouncing around distinctly different areas of your noggin.

It's all about hitting those points.

For example, the 'Think' tests show you a few sets of scales with cuddly animals arranged on them, and the idea is to work out which is the heaviest and then tap his icon. There's also a test where you need to track where a dog's going to end up on a grid of squares by thinking through a sequence of prescribed movements.

'Memorise' crosses over a bit too, but is less like Word Memory aka The Generation Game and more flash cards, as you repeat sequences of sounds by tapping icons and type in strings of numbers after they appear on the top screen. 'Identify' is about responding to visuals - e.g. which of the objects on the touch-screen form the moving silhouettes on the top.

Elsewhere 'Compute' has you answering written sums or counting pictures and then trying to make the same number out of different pictures on the touch-screen, and 'Analyse' involves working out the numbers of cubes that form odd shapes (lots of length-times-breadthing, which we appreciated more when we thought "breadthing" might be a Googlewhack), and filling in missing lines on diagrams.

In Practice mode you can access each of the game's 15 tasks individually and take them on to aim for medals. Each gives you a "lobe" weight based on your skills and usually you need about 250g to achieve gold. With success, a blue blob grows to fill the "brain pentagon" on the main screen, which looks a bit like the player-skill indicators in Pro Evolution Soccer. You can also aim for platinum ratings, for which you need to achieve over 400 grams.

Pig! Pig!

All of this, of course, contributes to skills that you'll need to achieve a big brain weight on the main 'Test' mode, where speed and accuracy quickly propels you through each one-minute task until it's giving you the toughest tasks and the grams start to stack up faster.

Technically there's nothing wrong with Big Brain Academy, which is handy after all the BLUE BLUE I SAID BLUE FOR F***ING F***S SAKE of Brain Training. In other words there's no microphone usage. Meanwhile all the graphics and explanations are bright and clear. This has led some people to complain that it won't appeal to people above a certain age, but that sounds a bit spurious and anecdotal to me - and certainly doesn't gel with my gran's buying me a Lion King readalong book and tape for Christmas when I'd just turned 14.

Indeed, the only real problem I had with Big Brain Academy on a presentation level was that I had no real idea what all the US coins were worth by sight, so the task about figuring out which pile of them is worth more didn't really work to begin with. That said, I'd feel bad about withholding marks because Satoru Iwata didn't force my dad to have sex with Americans.

Nevertheless there are reasons to withhold them - for example, that the game's just too easy for people who graduated the... well, people who can spell "graduate". It took less than an hour to achieve gold medals in every task in the game, and it doesn't take somebody as doctorly as me to figure out that Twiglet-masters and counting animals probably amount to a game aimed at the younger end of the spectrum. A lack of humour and any unlockable aspects doesn't help it escape that label either.

Here you have to pick the shapes used on the top screen by tapping them.

None of that's a real reason to mark it down though. The problem's more one of structure. Without Brain Training style restrictions on the amount of time you can play, and in the absence of graphs and other amusing little ways to track progress, Big Brain Academy's exposed and harpooned its own trick - you're meant to improve your general ability to complete these sorts of tasks in everyday life by spreading the play across a few weeks, but if you can just run through them and then forget them once you've been sent off to surgery then you're not going to bother.

One thing you will bother with though is multiplayer. You can send people a demo version to encourage them to buy it, but that doesn't matter because you can also play each other using one game-card. Set it up, pick a task and a target brain-weight, and then try and respond to each task quicker than the other guy to leap a few grams ahead - with penalties for wrong answers and the responsibility for picking an activity switching player with each turn.