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The instructor in the game, who is too chatty for my liking, also says things like "This activity will activate the pre-frontal cortex of your brain" which is geared towards 10+ ages.Brain Academy on the other hand has a slightly easier format and most can be played by ages 6-adult. I prefer the Brain Academy method of scoring which takes your strongest score on each activity. Once you know them all it can get boring. I bought this game as a gift for my 10 year old but I find I play with it more often than she does. You get awarded bronze, silver or gold medals for your efforts, a brain of 250g or more gets you the gold medal.
There are 15 activities (or mini games) divided in 5 groups - Think, Compute, Analyze, Memory, Logic. "Both Brain Age and Big Brain Academy have too few games. My 5th grader can beat me on this one more easily than she can on Brain Age 2 as the activities are not too hard, you just need to pick up speed by practicing them regularly.I think my kid summarized it correctly and I am paraphrasing for her here. When you feel ready you can take the test after which the game will tell you your grade. She prefers games like Guitar Hero DS and Pokemon Diamond to this game.This game makes a great companion to the Brain Age 2 game. I'm not much of a gamer but enjoy playing the word games and "brain" games on the DS. which are designed to activate different areas of your brain.
Brain Age 2 has the strict teacher who makes you feel like you're just learning." Although I like both games I sort of agree with her opinion. Brain Age 2 gives you certain activities like unscrambling words, guess the right mathematical sign, counting change, memory sprint, play a song on keyboard etc. In BA2 your score for each activity gets recorded only once a day and if you do that activity again on the same day with better results it does not register the results.On Brain Academy you can also organize play offs with your friends who have a DS using only one game. I would not recommend that game for children under 9 years old as some activities will be too hard. As you go on, the game fills in your Brain Pentagon graph (for the 5 areas) to tell you where you may need more practice.
There are 3 activities in each group in which you can choose the level Easy, Medium or Hard. Some are more challenging than others and you unlock more activities as you go further in your training. You begin by practicing each activity and your performance is measured in "brain weight". However, Big Brain Academy has more games than Brain Age 2 and when you play it you feel like you're having fun while learning.
Over all this is a wonderful game. If that is what you bought it for in the first place. To keep your brain active and functioning into old age it is best to try novel tasks, so obviously putting it to the side for a few weeks every now and then will help your brain functioning. It gets a little tedious at times and from a psychological stand point it is only good until you learn the game. By this I mean, once you are oriented and able to do the games at an A or B rating you should put it to the side for a while. I still stand by it as a great game, best for the mind in sporadic doses.
Simply put I have the Brain Age Games and prefer this one as it has 15 total games with 3 levels on each one.The 5 areas mean you get to see what areas you need more training in and really get some specifics on what you can do to improve your performance. Test scores can be really varied as you can get a different mix of test types and you will find you are better at some than others.One annoyance and why it's didn't get a 5 is the 4 to 6 steps they have built in to the end of every single game. If they removed this I would have given it a 5.Last point, my 5 and 6 year olds love many of the games and are doing great at training their brains.
Some of my other cartridges always offer some new and interesting twists all the time and always seem new. This cartridge is not one of my favorites. The information repeats over and over, and the game-play can become rather boring very quickly. This particular cartridge gets real old real fast.
The Brain Age games are still faves. I've wanted this game since I first got my DS almost a year ago. Keep in mind this keeps track of your progress and trains your brain in a totally different way. There are 5 areas of your brain to improve, and 3 levels of difficulty per mini-game (about 3 each area) to keep you busy. It is similar to the Brain Age games, but approaches training in a totally different way. The games are interesting and unusual, and I'll keep at'em until my brain is really big. Don't expect BA3, but do expect to have fun.
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