Junior Brain Trainer (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

If you've been playing games as long as I have then you'll be well aware that every hit genre has a handful of games that simply adopt the format hoping to achieve the same level of success. There was Tetris and its many puzzle-based clones, Lemmings and the DS itself has had its fair share of Brain Training titles. Most of these, of course, are aimed at the more mature gamer but there's growing evidence that parents also want this type of thing for their children and this is where Junior Brain Trainer comes in.

Gameplay

Like the adult-based Dr Kawashima, gamers are encouraged to use this title on a daily basis and progress is only saved each day. It presents you with five tasks ranging from filling in missing words and letters to memory and maths games. These change every day but there's actually no way you can fail at these because the game lets you keep trying until you get it right, meaning that the whole exercise could be completed using simple guesswork.

There are rewards for completing these daily activities and success automatically unlocks one of the many games or other activities. These include quizzes, stories and even hangman but it's the arcade games that are likely to appeal more to the target audience. These are all based on classics like Snake, where you guide a snake around a course whilst collecting food or Breakout, which is the age-old bat and ball game.

Controls

Because you unlock mini-games, in addition to the main activities, you'll also have to use the d-pad and buttons. This was a wise move by the developers and while they could have easily kept everything touch-screen, some of the games just work better with the more traditional controls.

Graphics

The visuals here are functional rather than anything spectacular and for the most part this works very well. This is especially noticeable with some of the text and number based games where clarity is obviously far more important that cutting edge graphics. Unfortunately this also extends to the various arcade games, which could all do with a little makeover given that more impressive versions of these can now be downloaded to a mobile phone.

Sound

The soundtrack is straight out of the 'Kids TV' music library but it does become incredibly repetitive after the first week of playing.

Dual screen

While most of the game involves simply tapping areas and dragging words into the correct place, thanks to the bonus games there are also some more involved uses for your stylus. The best of these is where you have to trace various letters of the alphabet, although this is only likely to appeal to very young gamers. Elsewhere, in the reading section, you can blow into the microphone in order to turn the page but you'll find it much simpler just to tap it with your stylus.

Final comments

If you are hoping that allowing your children to play Brain Trainer Junior every day is going to improve their grades in some way, then you are probably in for something of a disappointment. Its main problem is that, unlike Dr Kwashima, it doesn't actually track your progress in any real way so most gamers will play it just to unlock the extra arcade games. Its other problem is with the age range although this is meant to be aimed at six to eleven years olds it's more than likely that the older demographic will find the game very dull and unrewarding. If you are still interested in a Brain Trainer then Big Brain Academy is a far safer bet.

Pro: Lots of Mini-Games to Unlock
Con: Uninspiring Presentation
Final score: 5.2

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