In Left Brain Right Brain 2 (for DS, Majesco Entertainment, $19.99) the mission is to "hone your mental skills to become truly ambidextrous." It's a lofty goal handled by a battle of minigames between right and left hand to strengthen the weaker appendage.

To get started with this ambitious exercise routine, the DS is opened sideways, in book fashion, and the player indicates whether he is left- or right-handed. A series of 20 challenges with five difficulty levels each follows, based mostly on speed and accuracy, though speed is truly the benchmark here.

As the player advances by furiously clicking away with the stylus, the game requires association, recognition, memory and strategy skills — but in the end, it's really about being fast with the stylus.

The game does have a few fun, mindless moments. I particularly liked lobbing the snowballs at the snowmen, however the games become boringly similar after awhile as each is nothing more than a series of repetitive movements that don't necessarily require skill. It is simply how many crows can you pick out of the sky before they break all the balloons, how quickly can you move the basket to catch the falling objects, how fast can you turn can the wheel to the right sequence.


Even on higher levels, the motivation is minimal and not enough to want to find all of the game variations. In fact, after three levels, it was repetitious and boring.

By the way, even though I am firmly right-handed, I managed to handle most of the virtual tasks in the game with either hand. Amazingly, for the first five levels, and with fairly consistent parity, my left and right paws fought a near equal war for superiority.

So what does that mean?

Well, I still can't cut my dinner with opposite hands holding knife and fork or button a shirt backward. So much for finely honing my noggin.