A new twist on Brain Games
July 14th 2008 07:50
Signature Tune
From the Washington Times:
Author Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, certainly has the credentials, research and media appearances to back his theories on memory and aging (www.drgarysmall.com).
Brain Games 2 (Courtesy of Radica)
Last year's Brain Games, the first version of the Radica product, was less than impressive. About the size of an open Nintendo DS, it featured a 2-inch-wide, black-and-white, low-resolution LED screen and a befuddling keyboard without labels. It offered five games to help sharpen the brain and, more specifically, memory.
The latest version is an upgrade, now a hand-held personal digital assistant with a 2-inch-square touch screen and stylus. Its games are essentially the same.
Here's the bad news on the latest Brain Games: The presentation is still just terrible. The LED screen is back with limited sound effects and the outline of an encouraging professor as the most complex art element. It is not an entertaining experience.
Space Invaders Extreme (Courtesy of Square Enix)
The touch screen helps, but I actually miss the keyboard. The stylus pen is more like a thick, pointed Popsicle stick and is difficult to use with the screen direction icons hidden in the corners. The images, critical to playing half of the games, are hard to decipher due to the screen's low resolution.
The good news is the games. They may not be unique to the genre, but they're engaging enough.
The timed bunch includes Sequence (duplicate a series of numbers on a gridded board), Focus (memorize image relationships), Twist (mirror image relationships), Word Hunt (create words from a set of letters) and Recall (memorize a list of words).
Secret Agent Clank (Courtesy SCEA)
Players either practice or train daily as they work through six levels of difficulty for each challenge. Scores are stored in the device's memory.
Well, there you have it, I don't know much about this one, except what is written here.
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