Have you ever felt stupid? Ever had a hard time figuring something out that logically should have been very easy? Have you ever wondered... is your brain older than you are? Are you thinking on a level lower than you should be? Dr. Kawashima thinks so, and he's here to 'train your brain in minutes a day' with Brain Training: How Old is your Brain?

Upon starting Brain Training you're greeting by a friendly face made up of so few polygons that it makes the original Virtua Fighter look like Dead or Alive 4 (albeit this is intentional). The virtual face and brain of Dr. Kawashima will proceed to put you through a series of tests to determine your brain age. During my test I was asked to look at words, one at a time, each one the name of a colour - the catch was the text was in a different colour. My goal was to say the name of the colour of the font, not read the word. So I'm going through and the game incorrectly says I got one wrong when I didn't... I guess I didn't speak into the DS microphone clearly enough. Okay, that could be a problem, but out of all forty it only did it once, so that's fine. In all I got three incorrect out of 40, a good showing for my first attempt I thought.

Dr. Kawashima didn't think so. According to him my brain is 51 years old, yet my body is in its youthful 20's. I continued everyday, besting my score on all my tests daily, but Kawashima still assured me my brain was about as old as my good ol' Dad is. I began to think that Kawashima might not want my brain to be young; think about it, if I had the ideal brain age of 20 I wouldn't have much reason to go through Kawashima's daily tests, would I? Especially given that most are about as fun as doing 7th grade homework after class.

Don't get me wrong. I like this game, and I like the goal of it. It's a good idea for numerous standpoints and I can really see a lot of non-gamers getting involved with this. My previously mentioned Dad for example is a big tech-guy, working with video broadcasting equipment pretty much his entire adult career. He likes racing games and plays Gran Turismo 3 when he can, which isn't often; After hearing about the game he wanted to try it, and now he's hooked... but in all honestly I think he just really likes the Sudoku. Either way, Nintendo's plan to attract all people to their game systems is already in effect.

Brain Training is like many recent DS titles in the regard that you only play it so much each day - but you will end up wanting to play it everyday as you'll only play it for about 10 minutes (not counting the Sudoku mode, which is essentially an add on). You'll log on and play through a selection of quick training modes to try and beat the previous days score, and if you wish try to improve your brain age by playing through three of six specific programs designed to determine said brain age. It's all real neat, but the problem is the selection of training programs is a bit minimal, especially at first when you have to log in a certain amount of days to unlock the rest. If this isn't really a game why do we have to unlock things? It would be nice to have all the regimens from the start to prevent boredom from setting in after doing the same tests for days straight.

So what exactly will you be doing? The brain age tests have six different programs. Word Memory displays a list of 30 four letter words (no, none of those four letter words) for about three minutes, and then you need to write down as many as you can remember as fast as you can. I like the idea of this one a lot, but I ran into a great deal of trouble trying to get the game to recognise what I was writing. If I messed up the last letter I'd have to restart the entire word, and it happened far too much to the point where I didn't even bother with this one anymore. Stroop Test is the previously mentioned spoken word test, and Speed Counting is probably the lamest of the bunch. The user basically counts from 1 to 120 as fast as he can without slurring, but the game makes no attempt to use voice recognition here so it's easy to simply cheat and not count. Of course if it did use voice recognition it would probably claim you botched far more numbers than you actually did.

One of the more fun brain age tests is Connect Maze. A group of circles with numbers and letters appear on the right side of the screen (yes, you hold your DS like a book for the entirety of this game) each containing a number or letter from 1-13 or A-M, respectively. The object is to drag a marker from A-1, B-2, C-3 and so on, without touching the circles out of order. Number Cruncher is another good one: on the left hand side various coloured numbers are displayed, some even moving around and spinning. The game will ask you a batch of questions such as how many numbers are blue, how many are spinning, how many number threes are there, etc. Calculations x20 is about as fun as doing math can get, so I'll let you decide on that. The game only includes multiplication, subtraction and addition, and no number in the problem ever exceeds nine.

Now for the training programs, used to warm yourself up for the above brain age tests. Calculations x20 is included, as well as the much longer and harder Calculations x100, which introduces division into the mix. Reading Aloud is about as self explanatory as the math, but Low to High isn't. In Low to High four or more numbers are very quickly shown on the left screen in individual boxes. On the right side are empty boxes and your goal is to click on the boxes containing the lowest number to the highest. It is nowhere near as easy as it sounds. Syllable Count is exactly what it sounds like... count the amount of syllables in a sentence. Another challenging one is Head Count; a series of stick figures enter a house and exit in rapid succession as you attempt to keep track of how many are remaining inside.

Triangle Math is a lot more fun than the Calculations, in my personal opinion: In it you'll see three or four numbers on the top of the screen, with a reduced amount of spots for more numbers under it. So, for example, you have 3, 4 and 2 as your numbers, you'd do 3 + 4 or 3 - 4, whatever the game asks, and then 4 + or - 2, to get the next two numbers. You continue this until you get to the final number; a hard mode is included here which adds more numbers, and careful attention to negative numbers is very important here. In Time Lapse two analog clocks will be shown with specific times on each. You'll need to determine how much time has passed, in hours and minutes, from the first to the second. Finally, Voice Calculation is much like Calculation x20 and x100, but now you answer with your voice. Again, math fans will enjoy it.

Finally, a separate mode is included titled Sudoku. I highly doubt I'll need to explain this, but I will just in case. The ancient French puzzle game was brought to Japan sometime in the mid-80's, and seemingly at random took the world by storm last year. The aim of the puzzle is to enter a numerical digit ranging from 1 to 9 in each cell of a 9H9 grid made up of 3H3 smaller grids, or regions, starting with various digits given in some cells to get you on your feet; each row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral. I'll be honest, if I had to do this in a newspaper, or just about anywhere else like the computer I would dread it. But on the DS there's something magical about it. They've implemented it with the DS screen function perfectly, included a feature to make notes in each square if you aren't sure of the correct number, and added an easy mode that will instantly tell you if your number is wrong before you end up screwing your self later on. Brain Training includes Quick Sudoku and a series of progressively harder Sudoku Puzzles, both of which are great fun, challenge your mind, and kill a lot of time. Admittedly it's probably my favourite part of the game and the aspect that I'll be playing the longest.

If you do enjoy Brain Training, every aspect of it, the game is very good to you. It includes a feature to select the brain age tests instead of being assigned three random ones, and has day to day progression charts for each test to monitor your progress. High scores are kept and can be compared between the four different users on one card (as can the charts) and there's even multiplayer speed games for up to way more friends than you'll probably be able to gather up to do play this with.

If you're looking for something different and stimulating, something that could even, perhaps, improve your thought process, Brain Training achieves that very well and does exactly what it sets out to do. With lots of neat little quirks, including random questions such as what you had for dinner two days ago, this title is perfect for those quick sessions with your DS either when you wake up or run to the bathroom for a short while. Sudoku adds a lot of replay to the game and is one of the best, if not the best, digital versions of the game on the market right now. The biggest downfall of the game is when it incorrectly identifies a word you write or speak, and every mistake really hurts your final score. Outside of this, Brain Training is a wonderful little experiment that is actually worth trying out, just don't expect to play and enjoy it like you would a video game!

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).