Ever since the Nintendo DS came out, a wave of brain training edutainment titles have come with it. Mega Brain Boost is the latest edutainment title from Majesco and is actually a compilation of two previous titles: Brain Boost Gamma Wave and Brain Boost Beta Wave, with five extra games added. In all there are 15 games separated into three categories: memory, concentration, and judgment. The game utilizes Makato Shichida's award winning research on the right side of the brain with the intent of training the user to activate neural paths, creating new synapses.
When first loading up the game you are greeted by a picture of a professor, a list of games, and about 15 seconds of looping music. A good example of the types of games you’ll play is ‘Remembering Faces’, which involves looking at a poorly drawn face for three seconds, the face disappears, then four poorly drawn faces pop up and you have to pick the correct mug from the line up. At first the faces look nothing alike, and then they gradually look more and more alike as the difficulty increases.
Another example is ‘Find the Goal’ which is part of the judgment training section. The idea in this one is to start at the space ship and find which one of the four choices the ship will end up at—it involves following lines down and taking a turn to the next line over as you come across each horizontal line marker. It sounds confusing but it really isn’t. In fact, all of the games are pretty easy to grasp and painfully easy to score well in. It’s really not much of a brain tease at all.
When playing all the puzzles you’ll notice many similarities. First off, the top screen is only used for timing, score, and the professor, who never seems happy no matter how well you do. All the puzzles are fairly simply in nature, and screen property just seems wasted throughout. The graphics aren't anything spectacular, and even though it isn't generally expected in this type of game, the mostly colorless screens are stale. Also, every puzzle uses the same short looped music, which gets pretty annoying and tends to create a rushed feeling. Overall the puzzles are just too simple for an ‘adult’ brain. Perhaps the kids will get more mileage out of it. The puzzles do amp up in difficulty as more and more correct answers are given, but you still have to start with the same easy ones each time. There’s no way to go into a puzzle at level 10 and just practice doing the challenging ones. In fact, you’ll zip through the games in an afternoon. After that, what’s the point?
The game claims to score brain development, but there is no baseline testing, so getting a high score at the start seems to invalidate the whole process. What are you being compared to when receiving a 100% score? In the end, this game lacks punch. Just because it’s a brain busting puzzle game doesn’t mean the puzzles need to start off so easy. A game that might work better with kids, whose brains are still developing – the grown ups should stick with more ;polished efforts such as Big Brain Academy or Brain Age.
