Platform: Nintendo DS
ERSB: Everyone
Genre: Mental Training
Number of Players: 1 – 8
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 5/6/2006
Official Website
Writer:Typhoid
Big Brain Academy: Finger Painting for your Brain

Rating: 6.5

Big Brain Academy is another brain exercise game release, trying to capture the success of Brain Age. However instead of openly training your brain, it is more of an attempt to entertain you while you think you’re learning. There are three modes: practice, test and multi-player. Some of the levels are extremely creative, like figuring out where to drop a bone in a moving grid so that a dog gets a tasty snack. Less innovative but still helpful levels are like solving math problems that are spelled out instead of numeric. However most of the levels are irritating; this is possibly due to a language barrier mistaking “lame and inane” for “fun and playful.”

Graphics:
I had a really uncomfortable feeling which took a while to identify. I felt old, embarrassed and dirty at the same time… but why? This is a learning game, surely there’s nothing wrong with that. However the simple truth is that the simplified graphics and the cave drawings BBA tries to pass off as characters made me feel like I was playing a game made by a small child. All of the characters look like uncool uninspired kids’ doodles with crayons. The professor that teaches you reminds me of Mr. Hanky from “South Park,” though with less detail. That’s right; it looks like a crudely drawn steaming piece of poo.

Controls:
They couldn’t be much simpler. Tap here, tap there. Unfortunately because of all the extraneous navigation and impossibly boring ranting you have to listen to, you’re doing a lot of just that: tapping. *Tap* let me play *tap* SHUT UP! *tap* yeah I got it, I have the brain of a “musician” and the attention span of a gnat so here’s the beat! *tap tap tap!*

Sound:
I was fairly upset that some of the levels required the sound. I’d really prefer to have it off the entire time. It’s like they harnessed the powers of fingernails on chalkboards.

Flow:
In practice mode you choose which category, which game, and which level you will play it on. Once you finish your level, you have to wade through the professor droning at you for quite a long time. When you feel you’re ready you venture into Test mode where you do whatever the game throws at you. Then you listen to the professor drone on again before telling you how you did. It’s a terrible thing to get through all that your first time and then find out you have the brain of a “fashion stylist.” It took great self control to turn this game on again after that.

Fun Factor:
It looks like the game creators aimed at a much younger target audience than Brain Age, because playing this game feels like a regressive trip to kindergarten. When you do well you don’t feel particularly successful, because the game looks so elementary that you feel that you should inherently ace it. When you don’t do well you feel like an idiot, because how stupid must you be to fail at a simple children’s game?

I’ve had numerous people recoil at me in horror when I tell them that I prefer Brain Age to Big Brain Academy. Nearly every person has stated that BBA is more “fun” than BA. In a way it is true because BBA has a larger variety of tests, and because the levels in BBA are more styled like games than tests. In BA they didn’t bother hiding the fact that you were engaged in a learning activity. However I still think BA was more fun, in part because it didn’t insult my age so much that I felt dirty playing it and BA has an entirely separate Sudoku game. Besides, I vastly prefer doing calculations than trying to figure out which of five booger/yarn people is the heaviest.

Is there a female playable character:
I’m not really sure. I think some of the cave drawings were wearing dresses and had high voices, but that doesn’t prove anything.

Replay Value:
Even if you enjoy this game, it’s unlikely to have a high replay value. The tests just aren’t interesting enough to draw you in for very long. After you achieve a high enough brain score to satisfy yourself, you probably won’t play this much more.

No one’s going to really get excited playing with BBA. They might enjoy it for a while, but there’s no flair to keep you engaged. It’s not so much badly done as it is lazily done. If you’re older than twelve, eventually you’re going to want to play something that had a little more thought put into it…especially the “fun” part.