Brain Age: Concentration Training

Genre: Puzzle / Falling Block Puzzle / Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Brain Age: Concentration Training was released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013, continuing Nintendo’s series of popular pseudo-educational Puzzle games on Nintendo’s 3D handheld. The general premise is much the same here – like prior games in the series, Brain Age: Concentration Training makes it a big point to highlight how healthy and important it is for players to “exercise their brains”, using science that is nowadays seen to be dubious at best. And to this end, players will be subjected to an assortment of flash card-style problems.

This time around, much of the focus seems to be on memorization, with the game’s central new mode, Devilish Training, highlighting this focus with various minigames that require players to remember multiple things at once. In addition, you have returning puzzles from the prior games, as well as puzzles based on card games like solitaire and mahjong.

Unfortunately, this time around Sudoku has been left out of the package. However, in its place, players will be able to play Blob Blast and Germ Buster, Match-3 and -4 Falling Block Puzzle games that were inspired by Nintendo Puzzle classics Wario’s Woods and Dr. Mario. In my opinion, these games, despite being wiped of all personality and lacking any significant options or multiplayer, are a highlight of this package, and might almost make it worth getting in and of themselves. Blob Blast in particular is a phenomenal re-imagining of how Wario’s Woods would work using a touchscreen to move blocks instead of doing it with an on-screen character.

As for the rest… it’s a mix of good and bad. On the one hand, you have some minigames here that are still “about as fun and entertaining as flash cards”, but some other minigames included here are actually genuinely fun Puzzle games, such as one where the player and AI take turns claiming rectangles on a board, each aiming to claim the most territory. Unfortunately, as the Brain Age series is often wont to do, the different game modes are parceled out over multiple play sessions, refusing to let players even try them out until they’ve invested a lengthy amount of time in the game.

In addition, the handwriting recognition here is still far from perfect, and you’re likely to have an occasional answer fail because the game misread what you wrote. The game tries to fudge this somewhat, erring in favor of reading your writing as the correct answer and delaying its judgment when it looks like you’re writing the wrong answer so you have an opportunity to erase it. Still, this issue still pops up from time to time.

As for the presentation… this is a Brain Age game, which means that once again you’re mostly looking at bland black text on white backgrounds, with maybe an occasional line drawing or color highlight. The once exception, as always, is the polygonal floating head (and hands) of series mascot Dr. Kawashima (modeled after real-life neuroscience professor Ryuta Kawashima, whose theories formed the basis of this series’ premise). This time around, Kawashima’s expressions and movements are a good deal more fluid and animated, so there’s definitely an improvement here, but it’s still all very minimal.

Concentration Training does make one major departure for the series, however, and that is in the game’s sound. For the first time, Dr. Kawashima is voiced in English, and it’s… strange. Kawashima’s traditional “Japanese salaryman” appearance just doesn’t mesh well with the clear, unaccented American English voice coming out of his mouth. Also, this game ditches the plucky synthesized music the series is known for in favor of more instrumental music. This new music does sound nicer… but is also far less memorable.

In the end, Brain Age: Concentration Training is still held back by some of the flaws inherent to the series – namely, it is far more focused on its misguided ideas about “training the brain” than it is with being an entertaining game. However, due to some of the minigames included here, it may have succeeded at being fun despite itself. However, the lack of features and options, the way content is drip-fed to players, the bland presentation, and the poor writing recognition all still hold this game back. This may well be the best game in the Brain Age series, but saying that just makes it all too clear how flawed this series as a whole has been.

tl;dr – Brain Age: Concentration Training adds a few new features to the long-running “educational” Puzzle series, including a central new “Devilish” series of minigames focused on memorization. This game still features many of the same issues inherent throughout the series, but it does have some very enjoyable Falling Block Puzzle minigames. It’s just a shame they’re lacking content and features, and that players still need to unlock content over long periods of time rather than just accessing what they want right from the start. Overall, this is possibly the best game in the series, but that’s in spite of major problems this series still has that players must tolerate.

Grade: C

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