Dr. Ryuta Kawashima is back, making you feel stupid as ever.
The Brain Age games have been a remarkable success in Japan. The first Brain Age released here in the states last year has also been a huge success, because these games actually help by keeping your mind sharp. The first Brain Age contained several different mental exercises along with a good number of soduku puzzles, and Brain Age 2 has an entirely new set of activities complete with more soduku puzzles.
For those unfamiliar with how Brain Age works, or even what a Brain Age is, it's a measurement of your brain's health based on your age. The ideal Brain Age score is 20, which is what Dr. Kawashima believes is how old the brain is when its at its peak. The higher Brain Age score, the more out of shape your brain is. In order to determine your Brain Age, he conducts a Brain Age check. This entails a series of three activities. He'll always start out by asking you if you are able to speak freely or not. He asks, because the game utilizes voice recognition, and the starting activity requires you to speak into the DS's mic. The first activity is called Rock, Paper, Scissors, and you'll have to say what beats what based on the pictures you're given. He'll switch it up and ask you what loses against what, and that forces you to stay alert.
If you can't speak, he'll just skip that activity altogether, and give you something else to do. Such activities conducted in the Brain Age Check are Math Recall, which shows you an equation and erases a number requiring you to remember what it is to solve the problem; Serial Subtraction, which gives you a number, and then tells you to keep subtracting a given number from it; Number Memory, which has you memorizing the placement of numbers 1-25; High Number, which has you picking out the highest number from a group of numbers (made more difficult by some numbers being smaller than others, and other numbers moving around); and Symbol Match, which shows a legend of differnet symbols paired with numbers 0-9, and you write the symbol based on what number is given to you.
When the Brain Age Check is done for the day (you can keep doing the Brain Age Check, but it only saves your score once a day), there are other daily activities for you to do. The new activities are as follows: Sign Finder, which has you writing the missing symbol of an equation; Piano Player, which has you tapping piano keys in rhythm to a scrolling cursor across notes of a song (and there are a ton of different songs); Word Scramble, which has you unscramblng words from letters rotating in a circle; Memory Sprint, which has you keeping the place of a runner as he's passing and being passed by people; Change Maker, which has you calculating how much change to give back from a given amount; Word Blend, which recites more than one word at the same time and has you trying to decipher what words are being said; Calendar Count, which asks what date it would be for so many days ahead or behind, or what day a certain date would land on; Math Recall (the same from the Brain Age Check); Clock Spin, which flips and reverses analogue and digital clocks and has you telling what the time is; and Block Count, which has blocks falling in different rows that are covered up, requiring you to remember how many have fallen in what row.
The game will keep a top score of three for each activity, as well as maintaining a graph recording your progress. It will also gauge how well you did by showing you an animation based on speed of travel. For instance, if you're given an animation of a guy walking, that indicates you performed rather poorly, while an animation of a rocket taking off will indicate you performed exceptionally. You also only start off with three activities, but the more you play, the more you unlock. The game uses handwriting recognition technology to input your answers, and it's not without its flaws. If you have poor handwriting, you're going to have a lot of issues with this game, so it's best to slow down and write legibly. Even so, there may be issues based on the style of your handwriting that will require you to alternate from upper case to lower case. The voice recognition for Rock, Paper, Scissor is also hit and miss. It takes a bit of getting used to know just how far away to hold the DS, and to use just the right amount of tone and annunciation. [Editor's Note: The first Brain Age also used voice recognition, and when I played it on the old DS, it was fine, but had serious problems on a DS Lite, so this issue might be based on what mic you're using.] Sudoku, just as with the first Brain Age, is a blast to play if you like Sudoku thanks to the handwriting recognition. You simply tap what cell you want to input a number in, just write down the number and POOF! Done! This reoccuring feature of the game helps boost the game's value a great deal. Just as with the first game, you can also share this game with other DS users thanks to the Download feature. You let them play some of the activities found on your game, and if they like it enough, they can go out and buy it for themselves. You also have Quick Play, which allows other people to play your game on the DS without the need to establish a profile.
When I played the first Brain Age, I could actually feel my mind getting sharper with each bit of playing I did, and that applies to the sequel. Just keep in mind that this game is not meant to be played in long periods of time. As its motto states, "Train your brain in just minutes a day", it's meant to be played only minutes a day. This title's only 20 bucks, and there's really no reason a DS owner shouldn't add this in their collection, because it is fun, and it does work.