Nintendo DS

Brain Boost: Beta Wave

With the brain game phenomenon kicking into high gear, it's getting harder and harder to find one that actually makes you feel like you're getting smarter. Taken as a whole, Brain Boost: Beta Wave and Brain Boost: Gamma Wave manage to do just that. Unfortunately, the decision to split things across two titles makes each game feel like an overpriced demo, proving the old adage that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

If you're going to get one of these, go for the faster-paced Beta Wave, but watch out for that nasty addition game.

The game selection in each is pretty thin at five games, and to top it off none of them are particularly entertaining. Odds are that you’ll just play through them all a couple of times and be done with it. The lack of any kind of detailed feedback or progress tracking means there’s little motivation to keep playing beyond that.

Not liking Brain Boost has nothing to do with Majesco "copying" Nintendo and has everything to do with Majesco not copying what made Nintendo's Brain games good. The Brain Boost games ride the success of Big Brain Academy and Brain Age, but fail to actually understand why they were successful to begin with. And that's just not smart.

Brain Boost feels very thrown together in general. Every aspect of the title, from the graphics to the sound to the storyline, seems poorly done. If you see Brain Boost: Beta Wave on the store shelf, pass it on by - your brain will thank you.

While neither of the Brain Boost games succeed, brain development games can be excellent, as Brain Age has shown. Makoto Shichida's "right brain development theory" is also promising. In it, Makoto Shichida argues that the right brain continues to develop throughout life and that most of the dormant abilities lie in the right brain. Brain Games and games for training and self-improvement are a great idea in what is still a relatively small genre for gaming. Hopefully, later iterations of the Brain Boost games will more fully and enjoyably represent Makoto Shichida's theories of brain development. In the meantime, players looking for fun brain games should stick with Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, or one of the free online brain games.

Also disappointing was the lack of any head-to-head or multi-player functionality; there's no unlockable content, either. The games themselves are monotonous and don't really instill you with a need to play them repeatedly. Overall, Brain Boost: Gamma and Beta Wave are decent titles that might beef up your brain, but if you're really looking for a boost in brain power, take up speed reading or chess instead.

For all I know, Brain Boost Beta Wave could turn people into super-geniuses if they played it every day for the recommended three months. If that is the case, I hope they come out with a new version that is enjoyable enough to let people play it without it feeling like an unbearable chore. In the meantime, other mental workout games are available that offer a far superior and more engaging experience. Furthermore, if someone is merely looking for some short mini-games to play from time to time, titles like New Super Mario Bros. and Mario 64 DS offer a greater variety and quality of mini-games as bonus material than Brain Boost Beta Wave serves up as its main course.

While Brain Training still clearly continues to rule the brain-boosting roost, there is no reason why a few more decent mental agility games shouldn't come along to challenge its title. Sadly, even at its budget £19.99 price, this paltry effort is just a waste of money and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Professor Kawashima's modern classic - so I won't, goodbye.

For the price you'll pay for both these games -- which is what you'll need to do if you want a half-decent selection of activities -- you could buy the far superior Brain Age. Or, for that matter, you could buy just about any of the other genuinely good games on the DS, and pass over this cash-in altogether. It's not exactly a brain-teasing conundrum.

And beyond that, Brain Boost is a bit of a nonentity. Other brain-training games are actually fun, luring people into training their brains even when they don't feel they have to. Those games are participatory, goal-oriented, and encouraging, with plenty of little goodies to keep a player's mind occupied. Brain Boost is a stark contrast, and except for some fleeting prettiness, there really won't be much to keep you. In short, the Brain Boost games are curt, emotionless, audacious, and as a tool for self-improvement, a little bit pointless.