Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day (Nintendo DS, 2007)

BRAIN AGE 2 for Nintendo DS is a wonderful game!

It's a lot of fun (and work) in one little package.

It is less of a video-game per se, and more of an intellect-challenging, neuron-firing gamut of puzzles...math problems, word puzzles and other mental challenges.

Designed to stimulate both Left brain and Right brain, you can literally get your fix in just a few minutes a day,. or spend considerably longer with it.

Just want to try it out? Try "Quick Play"...you get right started...no need to fill out any background info. Great for friends and family to try it out.

Want to practice? Go to "Daily Training" where you will find a mix of games to stimulate your thinking...math challenges such as 'Serial Subtraction' (where you constantly subtract a particular number from a sum...you have to know the right answer, plus remember what the last number was) or 'Change Maker' (excellent every-day application...where you receive a total and you have to figure out how much change you should get...get good at this and you'll never get ripped off at the cash register again).

Mathematics not your forte? How about 'Word Scramble' (which is like a word jumble puzzle...figure out what word the letters make) or 'Calendar Count' (what day was 2 days before yesterday? What was the date 4 days ago?). Looking for a bit more? You'll love 'Piano Player'...whether you read music or not, you'll be catching the rhythm in no time!

Additional fun includes the ocassional 'extras' they give to you, such as 'connect the dots' or 'picture drawing'...they're like little extras and they're wonderful! And there's even a mental cool-down game of 'Dr.Mario' (which they call 'Virus Buster').

Oh, and you Sudoku fans won't be disappointed...there's even pages and pages of games for you...at all levels (and with tutorials) so players of all experiences, from novice to advanced, can play!

Personally, I play this every morning as a way to wake up my brain and get started on the day. It really has helped my concentration, and now I am aceing the games that at first, I failed miserably on. Everyone has room for improvement in their lives, all it takes is motivation and stimulation! Try this game and you'll see how fun learning can be!

If you never played the first one, this one has a tutorial that helps you get started. What's really cool is it tells you what part of your brain is being sharpened, and explains what that part of the brain does.It also gives you tips on how to get better scores. As you do more activities on more than one day you unlock other areas of the game like a relaxation and unwinding game. I do not like holding the game console on it's side to play the game. And sometimes it misunderstands what you write for an answer so you get it wrong and get a bad score if you don't write exactly how the game wants you to. But that just made me work harder on having better writing skills. Other than those two things about the game I really love it. It is fun for me and my family to compare our scores because you can save multiple names and games on it. You can even have the game make a graph showing the different scores of all the players on the game to compare how you rank among each other. I really love that you have to work at completeing the game in order to have access to all of the games on it, certain parts must be done correctly in order for you to proceed to the next new game.

Brain Age 2's subtitle tells you almost everything you need to know about Nintendo's new mind-flexing sequel. It's "more training in minutes a day." The structure and presentation of Brain Age 2 is functionally identical to the previous game, but this time around, you'll see different training minigames. This means it's perfect for people who played the first game and are looking for more.

The games in Brain Age 2 are more advanced than the previous game, which had you doing basic math problems half the time. Now, those math problems have twists, such as one game where you continually add numbers, but one number is removed from the screen after a second or so, which forces you to use your memory to remember numbers and solve the problem. Another puts the keys of a piano on the touch screen and has you follow along with some sheet music to play a tune. Another has voices say two or three words at the same time, and you need to pick apart the garbled speech then write down the words you hear. All in all, the different games are satisfyingly different from what was in the first game and make for a solid companion piece.


The minigames in Brain Age 2 get a little more involved than most of the stuff in the first game.
The structure of Brain Age remains the same. You can train away on the different games, but the main test gives you three tests and uses your performance to calculate how "old" your brain is, which is the brain age check. The lower the score, the more nimble the game claims your brain is, all the way down to the best possible score of age 20. While there's a doctor's name on the box, the jury is still out on just how scientifically proven this stuff is, but that hardly matters. It'll make you think just as much as any newspaper brain teaser, if not more so, and it still has a great collection of sudoku puzzles too. Unfortunately, the game also has some of the same problems that the previous game did because the speech and handwriting recognition can occasionally get sketchy. It's very frustrating to know all the answers only to have the game score you with a mistake because you didn't speak clearly enough for it to pick out your words.

On top of the brain training and sudoku, you can play the game with up to 16 players in all, using only one copy of the game. Competing on some of the games can be fun, though you get a lot of that by having multiple players play the single-player training games on one DS as well. The game also has a very basic touch-screen version of Dr. Mario hidden in it, which is kind of neat.

Brain Age 2 is solid fun and available at a bargain price. But it can only be recommended to players who have already exhausted all of the excitement out of the original Brain Age and want a slightly more advanced course. If you haven't played the original, you should start there and work your way onto the sequel.

The game itself is explained very well. You have a tutorial that helps you learn how to play as you go along. It also gives you tips on how to get better scores. As you do more activities on more than one day you unlock other areas of the game like a relaxation and unwinding game. It also explains what part of the brain you are working on, and what that part of the brain does, and other at home activities you can do to improve that part of the brain. I do not like holding the game console on it's side to play the game. And sometimes it misunderstands what you write for an answer so you get it wrong and get a bad score if you don't write exactly how the game wants you to. But that just made me work harder on having better writting skills. Other than those two things about the game I really love it. It is fun for me andmy daughters to compare our scores because you can save multiple names and games on it. You can even have the game make a graph showing the different scores of all the players on the game to compare how you rank among each other. I really love that you have to work at completeing the game in order to have access to all of the games on it, certain parts must be done correctly in order for you to proceed to the next new game. It is very interesting.

I never thought I would have this much fun with a puzzle game.
Don't get me wrong. I love puzzle games and RPG's anyway.
But this particullar game makes me feel that I am usefully getting somewhere instead of wasting my day. Like I am getting something accomplished for Myself in real life vs the gaming world.
The game claims to help with memory. And after playing this one for a few weeks.. i do believe they are right. Ever since i started playing.. I find that my memory is actually getting better. and I tend to think a lil bit more clearly now than what I have been recently.

The other neat feature that I love is that you can save up to 4 different files. So if you have family members - each member can save a file of there very own. And the other cool thing is that the game will compare each file to one another with the use of charts. I have found this to be alot of fun.

This game is so NEAT. You have to try it!!!!