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Brain Age:Train your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS)Status: Stopped playing - Something better came alongI started playing this game on Monday 5 March, 2007 // I stopped playing this game on: Saturday 28 January, 2017 |
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| Current opinion of this game | ||
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A lot more fun than it sounds. Really!
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| April 9, 2007 04:05:38 PM | ||
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I've now trained my brain on 20 different days. This means that I've unlocked all the training things you can do. The last one was really lame because it's basically the same as the first two (simple arithmetic) but you have to speak instead of write. Pfff... What's strange about this is that I'm so nonplussed about it. I remember distinctly thinking how much better it would be if I could say the answers instead of having to write them, but then when I say them I don't think it works as smoothly as I had imagined it should. Basically, it's a problem with false positives...or false negatives. Or something like that. The character recognition isn't great in the writing, however you have a little bit of time to "realize" that it's making a mistake and correct it. In the audio version I felt no such chance. When it screws up, you're done for. Also, I found myself speaking more slowly and waiting between questions...which is a bad idea when you're supposed to plow through the questions as fast as possible. For me, the voice recognition component made me slow myself down. (the Sudoku is still great fun though! My wife is really getting a kick from it...even going so far as to see how much a DS goes for on ebay) |
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| March 18, 2007 06:07:27 PM | ||
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Rumor has it that when you first fire this game up and do the brain age check, you o reeeeeeally poorly. So much so that no matter what your real age is, you feel terribly shamed into training and improving your brain age. This was unfortunately not the case for me. I score a very healthy brain age of 21. The best you could ever hope to get is 20. Ha! Was I proud! Ha! Did I feel good about myself! Ha! You see? I keep myself intellectually fit! The big question now was, why should I keep playing? To get down to 20? Was it really worth it? Should I risk losing my oh-so-young brain age? I played for a whole week ignoring the "Check Brain Age" option. Yeah, I was worried that I would lose the badge of honor. Why so competitive about a single player game? I don't know. But it's interesting, isn't it? I was scared of playing it just because I had done so well the first time....pfff.. So I did it again. 44 years. Ouch. Again. 41 years. Still ouch. 31 years. Getting better! (that's my actual age!) By now I've worked down to 28, which is pretty good. The brain training is easier the first time you do it, if you're lucky. You only do one test and it happened to be one I'm really good at. Since then I've had to do a bunch more...and practice and get better. At least I feel my current brain age better reflects my progress. :-) |
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| March 9, 2007 10:28:17 AM | ||
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I've been playing this game every morning for the past couple of days and I'm really into it. Why? It's not a gamer's game, it doesn't have any neat graphics, interaction, story, etc. So, why would I be so into playing this? These are my hypotheses: (1) Limited playtime. While you can endlessly repeat each of the different tests, you're not really encouraged to or supposed to. Doing them once a day avoids burnout. (2) It tracks (and graphs!) your progress. Sometimes, when I've done poorly on a particular challenge, I think to myself...rats! I need to do better tomorrow to improve my score.. Can't let that graph end on a down, right? (3) Nifty meta-game aspects. The game actively encourages you to get other people to also use your cart (it can handle 4 profiles) and sometimes compares your work with other peoples. (not the challenges, but the "draw this from memory" activities). I play in the morning, and my wife is playing in the evening. We often talk about each others progress and the challenges we had to do. (we don't have the same ones available!). It's been really neat to talk about it and share our experience. (4) Guilt. This game will purportedly help keep your brain active and healthy. Everyone wants an active an healthy brain right? You want to play this because it makes you feel better about yourself. I exercise my brain, do you? |
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kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria
