Brain Age

The game's aim is to help develop your brain by completing various daily excercises which have been created to help activate parts of your brain, namely the prefrontal cortex. Every day you are given three random excercises. These including simple mathematical questions, reading tests, memory tests and colour tests.The aim is to complete each of these tests in as short a time as possible while making as few errors in the process. Once the tests are completed you are given your brain age in years. The lowest is 20. Brain Age is inspired by the research of Professor Ryuta Kawashima, a prominent Japanese neuroscientist.

You are also given the choice to do some warmup tests and Sodoku puzzles each day.

Every day that you complete (a 10 minute session at the most) your performance is plotted on a chart to show your progress on each of the different lessons. You're also show your brain age progress. If you are getting better you'll see the evidence plotted on the chart. Likewise if you are getting worse you'll see it in the chart.

There are various other aspects of Brain Age which make it a fun tool to have. You can have up to 4 user accounts and compare yourself with each of the others, you can also challenge friends at lessons to see who performs the best. Also as you progress through the game, after playing for days, weeks or months various new lessons are opened up to you which then become part of your training routine, so there is some variety in the game.

It's easy to see why this game has shipped millions of copies across the globe. It's perfect for bus and train journeys, commuting to work or just when you find you have a spare 15 minutes.

The main control of the game is done using the stylus and there are voice recognition elements too. It's also unusual in that you hold the DS like a book, on its side. Sometimes the voice recognition seems to have problems interpreting the word blue. But once you adjust your pronounciation so that it recognises it this doesn't really become a problem later on.

Overall its a pretty cool game, something innovative and original which is what Nintendo has become known for. In saying that though don't expect to get hours of gameplay at a time out of it, unless you are trying the Sodoku puzzles. This game is best played in bursts of 15-20 minutes a day.