The Life of Brain

We all worry about something. Football aside, at this time of year it's skin cancer. And so we slap wads of sunscreen on all our precious bits before we go anywhere near the outside.

It's not such a problem for us, obviously. I've been on one whole beach since I was about 15, and Pat's not allowed after the "I'ssh going for a midnhgith swsimmmss" no-sign-of-him-for-two-days incident.

But there's nothing you can do about summer worries. In fact they seem to multiply. And if there's one that's going to particularly worry us as we laze about next to the, well, kitchen door drinking Sangria by the bucket, it's whether we're getting thicker.

It really shouldn't take us a whole minute to figure out whether England will be "safe" based on two wins from a group where the other teams either lost or drew in their opening games. It shouldn't take us a whole sentence to figure out that half of you will click X in the top of the page every time we mention football.

Good then, that we need worry no longer - because now, when we're doing what all stereotypical gamers do and packing our DS when we go on holiday, we can keep that stuff in check with Brain Training. Bit of a placebo effect, maybe, but then so's the way most people apply sunscreen.

The point of all this, in case you're wondering, is that with the games industry winding down a bit over the summer before the inevitable deluge of new formats and games this Christmas, we're going to spend the sun's peak hours each day revisiting a number of recent favourites - giving you a chance to catch up on stuff you might've missed, or simply revisit an old argument with a bit of hindsight.

Where best to start our midday siesta I MEAN important attempt to educate you, then, than with a recent-decent, a game you'll want to stuff in your suitcase wherever you go and, handily, a game that finally came out in Europe last Friday? It's "Prof. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?" of course.

Known as "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!" in the US (and, for reasons best ignored - they were by our editing department - "Brain Training" throughout the review), Nintendo's noggin-nurturer was originally reviewed on April 25th and scored a hefty 9/10.

Since then we have stopped playing it, but it took over a month of daily training to find all its hidden bits, not to mention New Super Mario Bros. to scoop it out of the game-card slot. Since then it's filled the gap marked "skin cancer" in our worry-hole. Are we getting thicker? The arrival of the game's sequel Big Brain Academy this week seems to confirm it. At speed, I can't tell if a cat's heavier than an elephant.

And if you worry about things like that, and whether you can read Kipling at 10 syllables-per-second, Brain Training might be just the place to turn. We still firmly recommend it. Read our review to find out why.