Review

When you've got a winner, you run with it. Gameloft's Brain Challenge, a mental exercise design sharing several similarities with Nintendo's Brain Age and Big Brain Academy titles, first arrived on mobile phones over a year ago. Its welcome reception there encouraged the company to pursue other platforms, and so it was brought to the Nintendo DS this past January. Then to Xbox Live Arcade in March, the N-Gage 2.0 distribution platform in April and, somewhere along the way, the iPhone App Store. Gameloft saw that it had a winner, so it ran with it as far as it could. And now it's run to WiiWare.

Brain Challenge launched for the Wii's downloadable games service this past Monday, and has arrived in solid form. Though you'd be right to be worried about the faithfulness of translation for a game that first started out on portable platforms and only later came to consoles, those worries will quickly be banished when you boot up this version -- its presentation is smooth and attractive, adapted primarily from this past spring's Xbox Live Arcade edition but also updated with Wii-exclusive features like Mii support.

Realistically rendered, too-attractive-to-actually-be-doctors doctors welcome you into the game, taking on the same role of encouragement and instruction as Brain Age's floating head, Dr. Kawashima. They offer brief explanations for the activities you'll be engaging in, and then the action is underway -- you're off to the races, pointing and clicking icons on the screen with your Wii Remote as fast as your brain can tell your hand and thumb to do so.


Your ability to respond quickly is one of the methods of measure employed to determine how smart you are in Brain Challenge, while the other is the accuracy of your answers. You'll be quizzed to respond correctly in games separated into five categories -- Logic, Math, Memory, Visual and Focus.

Logic assesses your critical reasoning skills by offering up activities like Balance, where you determine which one of the multiple objects pictured weighs the most based on their relationships to one another on a set of scales. Math turns you into a temporary calculator, giving you games that ask you to complete simple algebraic equations.

Memory gives you a glance at a set of objects, does something to make them disappear, then asks if you remember what it asked you to remember. Visual plays out a little like Nintendo's lesser-known optical exam game Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day from the DS, and, not to be confused with the game just mentioned, Brain Challenge's Focus mode taxes your concentration as you, for example, select which among a set of bouncing balls bounces the highest.

The five categories, and the multiple different mini-games contained within them, offer a significant variety and good value for your money here -- you can play them all individually, or, like Brain Age, participate in a Daily Test that runs the gamut of every one to measure your increasing (or decreasing) brain capacity over an extended period of days, weeks or months.

That's all pretty well in line with what Nintendo's brain training games have done in the past, though, so it's good to see that Brain Challenge doesn't stop there. A separate Stress Test mode remixes all of the earlier mini-games and adds in extra distracting factors to try to throw you off your game -- bugs that crawl across the screen, or static that obscures answer choices. There's even a couple of modes where you have to constantly shake the Wii Remote around to keep a cartoon animal alive on the screen, while simultaneously continuing to solve the brainteasers displayed below. Crazy stuff. "Challenging," even.

A set of multiplayer modes and a wealth of unlockables rounds out the experience, ensuring both that the Brain Challenge channel will be one you'll want to revisit again and again and that you won't always have to exercise your mind by yourself.

Closing Comments

Overall, Brain Challenge on WiiWare is a faithful translation of a game that was already solid and fun on the DS and Xbox Live Arcade, among its many other editions. And Gameloft's port of the project to Wii isn't a quick and thoughtless job, either -- it's polished, works perfectly well with the new Wii Remote pointer controls and intregrates your Mii characters in a more natural way than many other WiiWare titles have. It's surprising that Nintendo didn't capitalize on this idea itself, bringing out a WiiWare version of either its Brain Age or Big Brain Academy franchises -- but Gameloft beat the Big N to the punch, so if you're a fan of either of those series, check it out for 1000 Wii Points.

Ratings

Presentation : 7.5
Slick menus and navigation, inviting doctor characters and Mii support that is integrated surprisingly well.

Graphics : 7.0
Adapted primarily from the Xbox Live Arcade release, Brain Challenge's vibrant visuals look nice running in widescreen on Wii.

Sound : 6.5
A fair soundtrack and effects that audibly highlight how well (or poorly) you're doing. Each of the five game categories has its own musical theme.

Gameplay : 7.0
A well done take on the brain training genre that Nintendo itself first introduced.

Lasting Appeal : 7.5
A solid variety of unlockable modes, multiplayer options and the potentially addictive Daily Test mode all make this a WiiWare channel you're sure to click on more than once.

Final Score : 7.5


Review by IGN