Brain Age (Nintendo DS)

[Dark Silver]

So I was at Wal-mart the other day, looking around the electronics department, and what did I come across, but the DS games (glee!). I'm looking through the case, studying the bounty of games for my beloved handheld. Seeing as I already bought New Super Mario Brothers a few days ago (which in and of itself was a excellent game), I decided to try out the other big craze, the Brain Games, Big Brain Academy, and Brain Age.

Well, I didn't feel like buying both, and Brain Age looked more entertaining, so I picked up Brain Age.

Best.

Choice.

Ever.

I got home, put the card into the DS, and powered it up. First thing I notice when the game loads, is that erverything is on it's side.

Weird....

Then I realiezed I was suppossed to hold my DS like a notepad.

Sweet.

So I hold it the DS on it's side, with the tough pad on the right hand side for my writing, grab my stylus, and start it up. There is the opening bits about the time, my age, my name, etc etc. Standard personalization for a game.

Next up, a test!

What the fuck!

I bought this game to entertain me! Am I back in highschool? God damn it...

So I buck up, and take the test....I go through what seems like 1000 math problems (simple addition subtraction and mutiplication, and it was more like 20), some patten recognition, quick counting, etc etc.

After the test, you figure out what the game was meant to do. Make your head hurt from thinking. Nah, I'm kidding. The game, the virtual represensation of our newly beloved Japanese Neurologist tells us, is designed to assist in the activation of and excercising of the prefrontal lobe of your brain. The "Brain Age" is the amount of activity your prefrontal lobe is.

So they give you your approximate Brain Age (mines was 60....best score is 20, man my brain is in it's senior citizen stages...), and the Daily Training is then opened up.

Daily Training is a fun little thing, you have a series of excercises (Math problems x20, Math problems x100, Syllable Count, Head Count, etc etc) all designed to help work out your prefrontal lobe and other portions of your brain, there by making your more mentally agile. Each day you go in and do the excercises, you get a stamp on the calender. The more stamps you have, the more excercises your given to work with.

So this is fun. I do my daily training, and turn off the game. I put in NSMB and MKDS and goto town for a couple hours.

Wake up the next day, throw in Brain Age again, have a conversation with the esteemed Doctor over half a grapefruit and some tea. We discuss politics, the weather, and North Korea's nuclear proliferation.

We then get to my daily training, yay! I got another stamp, I get a new excercise to work on. Syllable count.

Mother Fucker.

I always hated English class.

But, with a smile on my face, I do my best, go on. After my four daily excercises, I throw up with the Brain Age Test, to see how well I progressed in my training. New Brain Age: 50

Woot!

I made it up a while ten Brain Years! At this rate, I'll have that 20 in no time!

So that leads it up to today...I'm after my trainings, and a new test, i'm at 47....ok, so it's not a 20...hell, it's not even a 40...but it's better than I got yesterday! Tomorrow I'm shooting to make it to 45. I will improve my brain!

So yeah, get this game. It's awesome. So far one of the excercises has me reading sections of classic literature. "The Scarlett Letter", "Bram Stoker's Dracula", and "The Mystery of Dorian Grey" have been my randomly chosen selections so far....and I'm reading at just over 5 syllables per second bitches =P