Mum's Monday: Nintendo DS More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima

How Old is Your Brain?:

Although you do play this, it is ultimately a set of activities to activate and stimulate certain parts of your brain.

Missing Symbols:

This is an activity, where you have to fill in the symbols to make the numerical sum come right. There are two settings normal and hard, on the normal setting there is just one symbol, examples plus or minus, to insert, but on the hard setting you have to insert at least two symbols in to some of them. For the first activity this is not an easy one to ease you in gently like the ones further on.

Masterpiece Recital:

This needs the sound on as it is playing music. There are two settings normal and hard, on the normal you get the letters of the notes you need to play, but on the hard you don’t. so you actually have to read music to play the hard setting. It seems that on each day there is a set song or piece of music to play, so it can repeat.

Word Scramble:

This is an anagram activity, the game recognises lower case letters and upper case letters when solving the puzzles, but be careful because if you don’t quite get the letter for the game to recognise, it will see it as another letter and it could take a longer time to solve or see it as a wrong answer.

Correct change:

This is an activity where you have an amount of money shown and an amount to deduct from it and by tapping on the coins shown you select the right ones to add up to the correct change. It is simple. Also you can make up the money any way but there is a limited amount of coins allowed.

Word Blend:

Again you need the sound for this because you have to work out the words that are being said. There are normal and hard settings. On the normal it starts with one word and then to a mix of two words and the last is you have to work out a mix of three words being said.

Memory Addition:

There are two settings, normal and hard, I definitely prefer the normal this is a hard activity without trying the hard one. you have to remember the number when you see it, to add to the next after it has been blanked out. This can be tricky unless you get two numbers the same, but you don’t always.

Days and Dates:

Because the game is set around training each day, it seems natural to have a calendar activity where you have to work out the dates from the question it asks you or the days. With this you have to be careful how you write because if the game recognises your attempted right answer as a wrong answer it can be annoying, as it can take longer or give you the 20 second penalty.

Finishing Position:

With this activity you really have to concentrate, so yes great for a Brain Training game. This is like the player being a lap scorer in a race, where the athletes change position during a race.

Determine the Time:

This is a mix of a conventional clock and digital clocks, they are upside down turned at odd angles and only random numbers from a clock inserted. This can be challenging but if you sometimes turn the game you can see the time. You also have to be careful how you write the numbers as you could attempt to write the correct answer but the game can recognise it as a different number and the wrong answer is registered.

Calculate the Height:

This has two settings normal and hard. The normal one starts a bit slow but the next three are good and then the fifth one is quicker. You have to concentrate on the boxes being dropped into the container especially as the container is blanked out and some doubles go across so leaves gaps going up the towards the top.

Germ Buster:

This is a game where you can relax where you score points matching the colours of two halves of pills. You have to play at least one Brain Training activity to be able to play this. There are three settings. Easy, Normal and Hard, on the Easy just one pill is dropped on the Normal two pills are dropped after a few drops and the stack of pills already there is greater and the Hard has three pills dropped after a few drops.

Conclusion:

All these activities prepare you for doing the Brain age activity, one of the negatives about this game is the Brain age has a lower limit of age twenty. You cannot get lower than this age. The game can give you three random activities from a pre-set selection. Some are harder than others. You can get your Brain age down to a good lower age than you actually are or way above. There is also a Quick Play setting where you play like a warm up act and there are also little activities before you carry out an activity to help again warm up the brain. After you have carried out the activities above you can get a little message about how to enhance the Brain further, some of these can be weird but there must be a reason for it.

There is also a Sudoku game you can play, with settings of Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. You can choose to put the cheat mode on so although some puzzles can be a challenge it is light-hearted overall.

Another negative or positive, depending on your outlook, about this game is once you have played it for 365 days it re-sets and you lose all the data you have built up. This is disappointing if you have built up a good Brain age and a good score in the Germ Buster but if you have had a bad year then you can start again and get better results. Just be careful what you intend to write letters or numbers is what is registered.