Brain Boost: Beta Wave [DS]

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, or so we're told. If that's true, then Brain Boost, a pair of budget-priced DS games from Majesco, represent high praise for Nintendo's best-selling Brain Age title. Despite a decent interface, they're handicapped by a slim selection of over-simplified activities and Beta Wave focuses on memory while Gamma Wave concentrates on...well, concentration. Both bear the name of (apparently) famous right-brain researcher Makoto Shichida, and both are ostensibly intended to improve your right brain functions.

Each game contains five simple brain training activities. Yes, that's all. You can play them either one at a time in practice mode or in a series of increasingly difficult sets linked together with a plot of sorts -- which the game calls challenge mode. Honestly, the plot is so inane that it's likely to suck away any brainpower gains the minigames might provide.

Unlike Brain Age, the brain-training activities use a simple multiple-choice format. You just touch the answer you want with the stylus. Few of those precious brain cycles go to figuring out the interface, leaving more to devote to solving the problems, and it neatly avoids Brain Age's occasional voice and handwriting recognition glitches.

But almost without exception these minigames are pretty depressing. Many focus on memorization of simple picture sequences, color patterns or cartoon faces. One displays a set of moving dots and has you counting or estimating their number. The only one that proved stimulating rather than boring was one that made you add up a set of numbers quickly, and even that was only fun because you can game the probabilities of the multiple-choice system rather than actually playing properly. Even if these activities are developing our brains, which is questionable, we'd really rather go and read an interesting book, a pastime which is far more likely to show results.

Both Brain Boost games also come up short in the long-term value stakes. Unlike Brain Age, they don't give you any way to look at your progress over time, so even in the unlikely event that the simplistic activities are something you come back to more than a couple of times, you won't know how (or if, more to the point) they're improving the ol' grey matter.

Why are they two separate games, anyway? The advantages of combining both -- like having a single saved profile that would allow for a more integrated picture of your progress, and not having to swap cards to change to the other set of activities -- seem compelling, and given the decidedly limited number of activities on each card, the drawbacks to players of combining them seem non-existent.

For the price you'll pay for both these games -- which is what you'll need to do if you want a half-decent selection of activities -- you could buy the far superior Brain Age. Or, for that matter, you could buy just about any of the other genuinely good games on the DS, and pass over this cash-in altogether. It's not exactly a brain-teasing conundrum.