Customer Reviews:
 Very enjoyable August 14, 2006
reversecooper (In bed)
110 out of 111 found this review helpful
I disagree with the previous reviewer who thinks that this game is more suitable for under 10s and not for adults. I recently bought a DS to take on holiday with a group of mates (all in our twenties and thirties) and this game proved to be a massive winner with everyone. There are five categories (think, identify, memorise, calculate and analyse) and each category has three individual and varied challange games. The games are good because they don't only rely on mathematics but require a variety of skills and an all round intelligence is required togain a good overall score. The games may appear simple at first but get deceptively tricky as you get deeper into the game and the time limit makes even the coolest heads panic. Getting a top score requires patience, practice and no little skill and getting a good score allows significant bragging rights to fellow gamers. Getting a poor score can be humiliating and lead to a burning need to play again and prove to everyone that you're not as stupid as the game implies.
 great fun for everyone July 16, 2006
Mrs. Rebecca Thorn (Belgium)
87 out of 89 found this review helpful
i finally agreed to let my son have a DS for educational purposes (i knew i would cave in at some point and this was a very handy excuse). We bought the Brain Trainer and the Big brain academy at the same time. Both games are great but the Big Brain academy attracts the children straight away.
The bright colours and pictures sucker them into learning without them realising it and suddenly they are very eager to find out who has the heaviest brain amongst friends and family. As a parent you can see them improving every time they use it and they take pride in every gram of brain weight. An added bonus for us was that it is multi-lingual, so my son can practice in both of his languages and also in the French that he is learning at school.
But its not just for the children. We bought the DS and the first day of our holidays and by the end of it we were all hooked! A great buy that the children will love to try and beat you at.
More fun than you'd think. September 12, 2006
G. Winward (MK, UK)
87 out of 88 found this review helpful
I greatly enjoyed Brain Training for the DS but was concerned that this would be more of the same. I've had it on import for a few months now and it is truly a great game. It's a lot more fun and less serious than Brain Training. You are spurred on to play more and more to get bronze, silver and gold medals (you can then try for the extremely-hard-to-get platinum medals). This is not a game you'd play for hours on end like New Super Mario Bros. or Castlevania, it is for short bursts of play when you get the urge to test your brain or beat your friends/family.
Multiplayer is just brilliant - a real laugh playing with just 2 or 3 people - it can only be better with up to 8!
Seriously, if I could only have one game for the DS, it would be Big Brain Academy.
Great Potential but Not Enough Games November 29, 2006
michael myers
70 out of 77 found this review helpful
Big Brain Academy for the Nintendo DS is a lot like Brain Age. It's a collection of puzzles designed to test and stimulate your intellect.
While we enjoy Brain Age, it has numerous issues. You only get 'scored' on each game once a day. The number of games is REALLY limited and many of them can get maxed out within weeks of playing. How much fun is it to get straight 5s on Head Count hard, with no chance of ever improving? I was really happy, then, when Big Brain Academy came along. While it still doesn't have nearly as many games in it as it should have, at least it has a wider selection.
In Big Brain Academy, you're not fighting for a low brain age (which I always found to be an EXTREMELY questionable goal). Insead, you're working towards a "big" brain which is much better. There are puzzles split up into five areas - thinking, memorizing, analyzing, computing and identifying. Each area has 3 games, with multiple difficulty levels. So that's 15 games total. You're already far ahead of Brain Age with that quantity, plus the difficulty levels too.
You can practice as much as you want, aiming for a gold medal in each game at each difficulty level. As you go, you fill up a 'brain graph' - a pentagon that shows which areas you're best at. When you're ready, you do the actual test.
The test randomly chooses a game from each of the 5 areas and sets you at them. It's on a timer, so you do as well as you can within that time limit. At the end, your total brain weight is calculated. This isn't of course "real" - it is more a general scale to show how well you're doing. It also gives you a "type" of brain you have based on what you did well in. Someone who does really well in computing is called a "calculator" - while someone who's great at memorizing and thinking is a "museum curator".
The puzzles are simple but fun. They're the type of puzzles that young kids would enjoy but that adults would find entertaining as well. Traditional things such as memory games, box counting, shape recognition and more are the norm here.
Just like Brain Age, this game shares the problem of INCESSANT CHATTER from the "helper". You have to go paging through numerous completely meaningless messages to get through some areas. They really need to get a handle on that for future releases.
I'm still baffled why they can't have 6 games per area, instead of 3. At least this is a huge step up from Brain Age in that area, but still, there should really be far more games included in the set. It would really help to make this an excellent game, instead of a fun game that has a limited lifetime of enjoyability.
good, but not great July 13, 2006
Bob (Nowhere, south Yorkshire)
47 out of 50 found this review helpful
Like the title says this game is good but not great. There are 15 mini games on it in which you test your ability to: Think, Analyse, compute, memorise and identify. Sadly, there are only 15 mini-games (3 for each category.) As you could imagine this therefore brings the playability of it down. Don't get me wrong though, it is a great game and worth 15 because the games on there are fun and you are constantly attempting to better yourself. The only problem is it get's old quite quick, so if you do get it don't overplay one day, you'll just be sick of it the next day.
Overall, i'd say that this is a good game but there are not enough games to it, so instead of this i would say go for brain training.
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