MLR - Brain Age

Okay, it has reached summation time.

Every day this month I've devoted ten or so minutes to Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? Proof rests below.



This game is over four years old now, has one sequel and a fair amount of spin off titles but it's a common game to find in bundle deals when buying a Nintendo DS. The age doesn't really show, there's no loading times and a slick menu leads to ease of use.

What you're encouraged to do is three of the nine activities in training mode everyday.

The first two are very similar, 'Calculations x20' and 'Calculations x100'. Simple additions, subtractions, multiplications and, if hard mode is selected, divisions, appear on the top screen for you to answer on the touch screen. 'Voice Calculation' is the last game to be unlocked and is the same as 'Calculations' but instead of writing down the answers you say them out loud. The voice recognition is passable but had trouble recognising my sixes. 'Triangle Maths; asks you to complete puzzles like this

5 7 3
+ +
_ _
+
_

5 7 3
+ +
12 10
+
_

5 7 3
+ +
12 10
+
22

In 'Reading Aloud' the aim is to read passages from classic books. You're encouraged to read the passages out loud but the game won't penalise you if your speed reflects that you read in your head. After a month the excerpts hadn't started to loop yet.
'Low to High' flashes several numbered boxes on screen for a few seconds and asks you to remember the order, as the name says, from lowest to high when they've disappeared getting progressively harder as you get more correct.
Presenting a sentence or phrase 'Syllable Count' gets you clapping out a sentence like back in little school or at the least tapping it out on you leg.
'Head Count' plays out like a little minigame as you attempt to keep track of how many figures are inside a house. More will enter and leave even through the chimney and it gets rather hard to keep up with the flow of figures.
One of the most fun but the penultimate game to unlock is 'Time Lapse'. You're shown two analogue clocks and asked to write down the time difference between the two.

Every day, if you do one activity, you get a stamp (three a day results in a bigger stamp) and by the accumulating of stamps you get rewards of new games and features and a nice visual reminder you've done your days brain training. Stamping down feels oddly reminiscent of filling in a star chart like when I was younger.

The PAL version of the game is named after Dr. Kawashima who serves as your guide in the guise of a floating pixelated head. It's a friendly image though, his banter is pleasant and welcoming as he greets you and asks occasionally if you want to do an extra task he's thought of. He's a great mascot who gives off a very neutral vibe which is what is needed. Some brain puzzle based games I've seen have snooty or uppity guides which is a put off to some people.

The flaws in brain age are few but the two main ones are that there's not enough games and after under a month days the games stops rewarding you. The first could be remedied in Brain Training 2, I'll have to find out another month.
Maybe other demographics won't be as bothered but after about 20 days everything that can be unlocked is unlocked. Even if I didn't care about the feature getting a little reward is a great way to keep people coming back to your game day after day, it just peters out a little quick.

After a month I found this self set challenge fairly easy to stick to and would thoroughly recommend dusting out a copy of this game if you never played it or gave it much of a chance. I felt better doing it so whether or not my brain is healthier, fitter, faster, or more likely, not, that's what counts.

My final brain age, 29, and that's only nearly a decade out of sync.

TGE

Super Paper Mario

Publisher - Nintendo
Developer - Intelligent Systems
Format – Nintendo Wii
Genre – Platformer (with RPG elements)

First thing first, this is the third game in the Paper Mario series but don't look at it as a sequel to Paper Mario 1 or 2, you're likely to be disappointed if you do. See it as a stand alone title with no connections to the previous two.

A bigger bad than the Bowser has come along, the monocled Count Bleck, and it's up to Mario and his gang to collect the maguffins (pure hearts in this game) and save the day, the world and yes, even the princess.

Super Paper Marios twist on the platformer genre is that when playing as Mario you have the the option to flip your view point turning the world from 2-D to 3-D, hidden blocks appear, new passages are visible, enemies weak points glare. Mario isn't the only playable character but he is the only one that can flip. Accompanying you are a band of things called pixls which all have their own skill they lend to you such as giving information on characters, enemies and surroundings, helping you expose hidden curiosities, letting you traverse spikes and there's a fair few more.

Eight worlds with four chapters each must be travelled through and a pure heart lies at the end of each, all are nicely themed and even though the art hasn't been updated much it works well enough. My only problem with the worlds is when flipped, which is a focal point of the game and you'll spend plenty of time viewing the game from this perspective, is that the worlds often look rather barren and empty.

A points meter hangs at the top of you screen and stomping goombas and collecting shrooms gets the tally rolling. Every so many points you'll level up and your HP and attack stat will increase in turn. Extra points can be earned by flicking the wiimote as you bounce off enemies but the extra points don't amount to much and you'll soon forget to do this.

The main story will last around 15 hours but there's much to collect if you so choose that that time estimate will be pushed up considerably. Most of the pixls will be acquired through the plot demanding so but there's some non essential ones to be sniffed out. Cards are a neat addition, every type of enemy has a corresponding card that can be purchased or you can try to turn one of the bad guys into a card of themselves, these both serve as collectables and for any type of bad guy you have the card of, double damage will be dealt to them when you attack, giving collecting cards a great incentive. Recipes, two pits of a hundred trials, the sammer guy challenge and some other side quests too. This game is certainly not lacking in that regard.

A big change I wish had been made is the control system, Super Paper Mario uses just the wiimote on it's side, which gets uncomfortable after a while and I see no reason the nunchuck couldn't have been used. The controls would map as well as to just the wiimote and possibly even better seen as a few instances the game requires you to point at the screen.

If you have a wii pick this game up, it's not a game that would convince anyone to buy a wii but it's a definite must have if you do have one. I'd pay up to £25 for this game and wouldn't feel let down.

Month Long Review - Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?

Publisher - Nintendo

Developer -Nintendo SDD

Format - Nintendo DS

The basic idea is every month I'll take a game like Brain Training, Cooking guide, French Coach and the likes and spend the whole month playing and reviewing it. For want of a better name I'll call these motivational games and I'd be glad to hear suggestions.

On the first of the month I'll set up the game, talk about it a little and set the parameters of what I'll play. For brain training I'll do the recommended amount of three exercises a day and also a sudoku.

At the end of the every week I'll take the brain age test and post a weekly round up and the last week of the month will be both a round up and a review.

There's two brain training games out and a multitude of similar games that have been out for ages. I'm trying to review these games a bit differently to stop the review being completely redundant, What I'm going to mainly be looking at is how the game fares in the long term, it doesn't seem like it but a month is fair chuck of time.

I hope to report on how easy Brain Training is to stick with and whether or not I feel better or rewarded by the game.

Upon starting a file you'll be prompted to do a quick test to calculate your brain age, if you choose the option that you are in a quiet place and can talk be prepared just in case the game struggles to understand your voice. It seems to be a common problem that the game can't recognise some people saying blue, and I am to be included in that party.

My first result clocks in at 20, and here lies the first problem. I got given the choice between failing completely because the game can't understand me or a task at which I'm pretty quick at. For the first reading it only asks you to do one kind of test, the one's I'll be doing at the end of the week use three tests so hopefully we'll see a different and more reliable result. I can only see my brain age going down hill from here though.

There's only three training modes on option at first. Calculations x20, calculations x100 and reading out loud. After doing one I'm rewarded with a stamp on the calender marking my progress and a new activity.

I'll keep this up and see you at the end of the week for an update.

Pokemon Link/Trozei

Publisher - Nintendo
Developers- Genius Sonority



Another spin off pokemon game rolled into game stores in 2006, Link (or Trozei for non- EU releases) is a charming little puzzler for the DS.

I'm not sure why someone would pick this game up themselves if they didn't have some interest in pokemon but knowledge of the pokemon universe isn't required to enjoy the game. I imagine it helps though.

There's a little bit of set up story, nothing wildly different from a generic 'you are the good guy, go stop the bad' explanation but I'm not really here for an engaging story. If it's a good enough puzzler it'll stand just fine without one. And it does.

Symbols representing pokemon drop down from the top of the top screen and form rows and columns that can be slid around on the bottom screen (this is a stylus only game). Your objective is to get four symbols in a horizontal or vertical row, they'll then disappear and start a link chance. This is your opportunity to clear the screen of symbols and boost your points up significantly. You have a couple of seconds to arrange a set of symbols, but only three in a row are needed this time. If you manage that then you only need to link pairs, if you can't after a moment the link chance state will wear off and you'll have to link four symbols again to get it back.

There's training levels to ease you in, and additional ones crop up throughout the game to introduce you to little tricks you might not have discovered yet.

Adventure is a little short, but is peppered with some boss fights. Various extra conditions and obstacles are thrown your way by pun named evil doers. The most common are speeding up the rate at which icons are dropped, turning the symbols into silhouettes (which can be pretty infuriating, many of the times the pokemon outlines are pretty similar to each other) which will go away if you manage to make a link and the last is them throwing a non-linkable object in. The only way to get rid of these is to connect them to a link with a ditto. Ditto acts as the wild card in this game and can link with everything.

The other two single player features are endless mode and forever mode. The names kinda sum them up, the game goes on till the screen completely fills up causing a game over. Clearing so many symbols puts you up a level and the pokemon change every level. In forever mode there are more columns but you have to link five pokemon to start up link chance.

After completing the story mode there are still plenty of aims left to complete. Every level has rare symbols that are difficult to link due to them either disappearing quickly or not wanting to show up much at all and if you exceed the point highscore for the stage you'll get a coin which buys you time in a special stage full of uncommon pokemon.

All these are mini goals stack towards finishing the big one, completing the pokedex. This is a pokemon game, it'd be a strange thing if it didn't encourage us to catch, or in this case link, them all.
Link came out before Diamond and Pearl were released so the pokedex caps out at 386, which is still plenty enough.

Multiplayer in the game is pretty fun, two carts aren't needed but lets you play the better options. You can send demo versions to other DS which is a feature I really do like.

What's the chance you'll stick it out though and finish everything? Honestly it's not high, after story mode is over it's not long till you're likely to start losing interest, but like Meteos and Tetris it's a game you'll pick up and play again in bouts and bursts.
This is a great game to pick up if you've got a bit of travel time coming up. Obsessively playing for a short amount of time when you get it then forgetting about it until you re-find it months later is likely to be the relationship most people would have with this game.


All in all this is a great little puzzler but it won't last you long till you put it away. This game wouldn't be half as interesting without the pokemon element which is treated as an integral part of game play and not as a gimmick. I paid £7 for this game and wasn't disappointed. It's worth at least £15/$20 but it's old DS game (been out for four years) and I imagine it can be found cheaply if you snoop around.

Time Hollow

Publisher - Konami

Developer – Tenky

Format - Nintendo DS

I've been trying to track down this game for a while, I enjoy point and click games on the DS (think Hotel Dusk and the Ace Attorney games), but they all tend to suffer from a similar problem. They struggle to justify their retail price. Time hollow takes between five and six hours to finish; most of which are full of gripping story but the point and click genres nemesis rears it head aplenty. Wandering about because you missed a tiny detail is frequent and slows things down to the pace of a three legged spider limping about it's web.

Playing as Ethan Kairos (this is one of the subtler names in the whole game, every character is named with a time based pun in mind, even the pet cat) you inherit the hollow pen which allows you to open up portals back in time if certain circumstances are fulfilled. The overarching story concerns returning reality back to how the main character remembers it before obtaining the pen. Soon discovering the dangers of changing the past Ethan is over-run changing this and that to avoid that pesky thing called consequence.

The game is pretty much completely linear. Occasionally you can complete one objective before another but that's it. Calling this a game could very well be where my problem lies. This isn't a game. This is a story, an interactive story. So lets judge it as one.

The length suits it. Ethan's reality is constantly changing and at some points it can get somewhat overwhelming to keep track of it all and towards the end thinking about the amount of parallel worlds that must have been spawned as a result of changing time starts to make your brain feel like a chocolate rabbit that's lounging next to an open fire.

This is where I don't quite know what to think. It's short which suits it, but I want more for my money. This game never deserved a full retail price of £30/$40. It has good points but as many ones that drag it down.

The character design is great but the music is terrible. After listening to the same few loops of sounds over and over again I felt like I'd rather be listening to whales getting harpooned, it'd be less repetitive for one. After say the first chapter turn the volume off and just listen to your own music, Time Hollows doesn't change, hell yours might even set a better mood.

The games interface is fine, I'd have liked for it to have been tweaked and somethings smoothed out but it works without hassle.

I paid £14/$20 for this game and I struggle to say it was worth it. The puzzles are minimal, this isn't Hotel Dusk where you are guiding the protagonist around actively and feel like you're a necessary cog in the process of solving the mysteries going on. In time Hollow you feel like a spectator following Ethan around, a passive observer at best.

If you see this game for say £8/$12 or under, pick it up. It's enthralling while it lasts.

Price Verdict - £8/£12

Ways it could have been pushed up – Lengthening this game by adding to the story would only bore the people playing it. But maybe if they had adapted a choose your own adventure gimmick (multiple endings) where upon once most of the endings are unlocked you activate the true ending could have added to both the length of the game and it's re-playability.