Brain Assist

Cognitive workouts are all the range on the Nintendo DS, with numerous first party games from the masters of the genre, Nintendo, selling millions of copies it’s an obvious market to try and break into. This is what SEGA has tried to do, again, with Brain Assist on the DS and this time they have managed to do it with a fair amount of success.

If a male is playing this title it could be argued that he would be surrounded by a harem, as the title only has female characters in it. The characters are all nurses and this may be many people’s dream, but in this case it would certainly be a nightmare. The nurses are all bland in style and are essentially the same person in a different costume, aside from one gothic nurse who will appear to either heckle the player when they’re doing poorly or to turn the difficulty up a notch.

Aside from the nurses, the game itself has little else in the way of light entertainment, which is to be expected from a brain training game. In this iteration of the popular genre, Brain Assist divides your brain into two halves: the left half and the right half. Which, although arguably inaccurate, is certainly a popular psychological theory. The left hand side will deal with logic, analysis and sequences whereas the right hand side will deal predominantly with intuitiveness, perception of shapes and motions and similarities.

There are four separate options in Brain Assist: Single Player, Evaluation Mode, Compatibility and Multiplayer. The Single Player mode is the “training” area of the game. Evaluation Mode will allow you to choose from two different types of sets, which have a mixture of the Single Player mode games and will then grade the player on how well they did. Compatibility mode is for either dual cartridge play, or basic two-player mode with someone in the same room and the Multiplayer is just as it sounds. It's just the Single Player mode with more than one player.

Ultimately, the title will just consist of playing Single Player and Evaluation Mode, as the multiplayer modes really aren’t going to be useful for most players. The Multiplayer mode would have been far better suited to an online gaming arena where like-minded players could challenge each other on how quick their reactions are. Instead, Brain Assist expects other players that you may know to have the same game as you, which is unlikely the casual gaming market.

Single Player mode consists of ten different training activities, each of which will challenge the player on various elements. They’re all fairly basic: memory, spotting the difference, distinguishing characters and matching pictures to names and then to letters. It seems basic -- because it is, but that’s what all brain-training games are, which is why they’re so popular.

The biggest issue with Brain Assist has to be the awful loading times. For a Nintendo DS game the loading times should really be minimal; however, Brain Assist’s loading times are far, far too long, especially in comparison to titles such as Nintendo’s Brain Training. It shouldn’t take more than a second for a game to appear after selecting it from the menu and it certainly shouldn’t take as long to go from menu to menu. Unfortunately this is the case in all scenarios throughout the game. To casual gamers this may not be an issue, but to many gamers this is a huge stumbling block for the title.

Moreover, the graphics are poor, as well. Of course, any brain training game will not have the best graphics in the world, as it’s not expected of them. However, the graphics should at least look of a fair quality and be reasonably polished, something that Brain Assist’s menus and characters are certainly not. The character sprites look like something from an old GBA game, and the menu screens look similar as well. The graphics aren’t all bad though -- the in game graphics are good and they do not detract from the game, and everything is bright and easily viewable. It’s just a severe lack of polish that makes the overall presentation of the game fall.

The music is an entirely different kettle of fish though. The music is of a high quality and the tracks through the game sound happy. They are loud, high pitched and after prolonged play, will etch themselves into your very mind for many a year to come. For a game about concentration, the music can sometimes feel a little out of place as it can be a little distracting, but on the whole it’s of a fairly high standard.

Final Verdict - 6/10
Brain Assist is by no means a bad game; however the awful loading times and the lack of polish does not make it stand out from any other game in a highly competitive market.