Big Brain Academy [DS]

Your brain will be rated (or weighed) in five categories: think, identify, compute, analyze, and memorize. Each category has three activities to measure your aptitude, with each activity taking about one minute to complete. Thinking games tend to be the most involved; one game asks you to look at animals and objects balanced on scales and determine which one is the heaviest (which can be tougher than it looks). Other games have you matching, solving text math problems by typing in the answer on a keypad, counting 3D cube structures (not all cubes are in view, so you'll have to do some analyzing. One of the more practical games has you counting two groups of change and picking the side with the most cents.

When you're done you'll be rated on your speed and accuracy to determine your brain's "weight", and be given a brain profile. It seems that Prof. Lobe acts as a guidance counselor too, giving what could be taken as career advice. Score highly in computation and analysis and you'll be matched to an investor. Do really badly and you'll have the brain of a caveman. Well, at least you can hunt and gather with the best of them. For me though, the results weren't incredibly consistent. I've been typed as a banker one day and a master architect the next. If I play again after lunch, I might be museum curator or fashion stylist. Going for a high score I actually ended up as Sherlock Holmes, but the one that's stuck is "musician".

The individual games seem to hold up and its kind of fun to have your brain tested, but I'm not convinced that I should pick up a guitar just yet. It seems that the game only saves your highest score, so whatever your profile is attached to that lucky/skilled performance you'll be looking at every time you bring up your profile. The game is a lot of fun to pick up and play, but rather than tracking your progress like Brain Age the emphasis here seems to be on getting a high score (or weight, rather). Whether this will affect its longevity is still up in the air. I'll keep beefing up the old noodle in the mean time, so expect a smart answer to this question in our review -- or at least an answer that incorporates a couple of shamelessly bad puns.

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