Review: Brain Training
Score: 64
See also my review of More Brain Training, which is far, far better!
You'll grasp the idea of Brain Training in about 30 seconds but will be bored with it within a month.
The idea is to present half a dozen different puzzle types (from Low to High to Head Count to Syllable Count to Time Lapse to the stroop test - saying the colour of a word rather than reading it), timing how quickly you can complete them and thus working out your 'brain age'.
In each case the puzzles themselves are nothing special but are pitched in fast and furious fashion so that it's the forcing yourself to complete them faster and faster which betters your score. The graphics throughout are basic, to say the least, with almost no use of bitmaps whatsoever.
Casual gamers (and children) will, sad to say, get bored easily once each puzzle type has been tackled several times. Those serious about improving their cognitive skills will last longer but even then I'd only give it a month before disuse sets in.
One gem in the package is a set of 100 Sudoku puzzles, so this may well sway Sudoku fans as a way of getting their addiction on the DS Lite...
A nice idea, but the implementation is fairly rudimentary throughout and there are minor issues with voice and stylus recognition which cause occasional frustration and the often misleading score.