Success breeds imitation. If a game does well, critically or commercially, or if a genre starts selling by the bucketload, then you can bet your house that within a couple of months the shops will be flooded with third rate copies. It's hardly surprising then that the DS has been inundated with intelligence training games since Dr Kawashima's oddly angled head first bobbed onto our dual screens. The latest in a long line of pretenders to the throne is Ubisoft's Brain Challenge, a game that not only tests how much of your brain you use but also how well your brainpower can cope under pressure. Is this a case of imitation being the most sincere form of flattery or a copycat trying to make a killing that it doesn't deserve? Time to pull on a thinking cap and give the old grey matter a workout.

If you've played a brain enhancing game before then almost everything in Brain Challenge is going to feel familiar - from the mini-games that rate your performance to the odd patter and banter drivelled in your direction by the 'doctor' who's 'conducting' your 'training', everything follows the successful formula of the game's predecessors. It's well presented and whilst the sound and visuals are clearly not stretching the processing power of the DS, the whole product is aesthetically acceptable. The 3D models of the psychologists who guide you through the ins and outs of the game are solid enough and the mini-games themselves, obviously the most important part of the whole package, are bright, clear and easy to understand.

Those games - the method by which the percentage of brainpower that you use is calculated - are strikingly similar to the games found in other examples of the genre; which is the heaviest, add these numbers, count these things and so on. There are some exceptions though, namely the stress training sections where orders are barked at you by authority figures or you're forced to contend with two separate tasks at once. Other than this it's very much the same old, same old. Obviously there are only so many ways that your brain can be poked and prodded to perform better, especially within the confines of the DS hardware, but paying full price for an all but identikit version of a game that you can pick up for under twenty pounds nowadays sounds ever so slightly foolish.

As mentioned above, there are some shining lights of originality in this quagmire of emulation. The Stress Training is fun and frantic; protecting cheese from hungry mice whilst trying to solve mathematical problems sounds both mundane and slightly mad, but it's a welcome change from the much simpler brain-specific exercises. Of these, the best are the bouncing ball task where you have to click whichever coloured ball bounces the highest and the maze memory game where you have to remember a set of directions and then trace them onto the touch screen with the stylus. The other games often feel more like trials than something you're doing for fun; whilst adding and deducing may be good for your brain, they're not really things you'd choose to do in your spare time.

Being so generic, it's hardly surprising that Brain Challenge suffers from the same problems that sometimes afflict its brethren. Occasionally the touch screen doesn't register a crucial click, meaning that a hundred percent that you had in the bag disappears and the DS gets a hefty shake of anger. Also, if like me you're blighted by scratchy, illegible handwriting, sometimes the game doesn't recognise a symbol you've drawn in. More than once I have screamed "that's a two not an eight you bleeping bleep faced bleep bleep!" at my handheld, but sadly it didn't change the inputted digit (now that would be a cool feature). Problems with the interface aside, the game also asks you to train with it at least once a day. I know it doesn't sound like much but I'm a busy man and being chastised for not picking up the game for a couple of days simply annoys me rather than cause me to reconsider my timetable.

The problem with brain training games is that, in the end, they're not really games at all. Sure, they have all the trappings of gamehood and they try to wear their gaming credentials on their white coat sleeves, but in actuality they're tools that allow the willing to expand their thinking ability. Now, if you're one of those people looking for such an expansion, then the chances are good that you've already picked up Brain Training or More Brain Training or Big Brain Academy or indeed one of the other knock offs that have sprung up so readily around Nintendo's handy console - and if that's the case then I can't recommend Brain Challenge, because whilst it offers a few new ideas they're not enough to change the fact that it's the same game in a slightly different guise. If you're looking for a game to while away a few minutes on the tube or the bus, then again, I can't recommend this one. There's no real fun involved and nothing that distracts you from the feeling that everything you're doing is a dull means to a pretty dull end. However, on the off chance that you're new to the brain training phenomenon and you're looking for your first taste of the self-bettering intelligence pie then this is, without a doubt, the game for you. It does everything its competitors do, plus a little more on the side, with a decent amount of polish and enough charm to keep those who want to coming back for more, day after day after day.

Reviewed by Harry Slater for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).