Can educational gaming be fun? Find out inside.
June 18, 2007 | 6:11 PM PSTNintendo struck gold with its brain-training DS title Brain Age, and it immediately tried to reproduce the success with a similar brain exercise endeavor, Big Brain Academy – another DS brain game that instead focused less on math and more on puzzle-esque problems.
A year after that DS game’s release, Nintendo’s at it again, this time with the cleverly named Wii-developed Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. No doubt an attempt to cash-in on the brain game success the Big N has enjoyed since 2006, Wii Degree plays just like its DS brother, but instead of utilizing touch-screen mechanics, it uses highly intuitive and fun-to-use Wii-mote pointing controls.
Immediately, Big Brain on Wii feels polished and, well, good. The controls are, as said, intuitive, and they couldn’t be easier to use. You’ll never be forced to waggle the Wii-mote or shake it. Instead, the title simply sticks to what works: pointing and clicking. The game’s presentation is very simple. Besides testing your brain and finding out what size it is, practicing and playing multiplayer, there isn’t much else to do in the game, but that’s hardly a problem. Big Brain isn’t designed to be played by yourself, although it can be surprisingly addictive when it comes to trying to increase your brain’s size by practicing and re-testing over and over and over. The game’s real treat is when it comes to multiplayer. Forget all about Mario Party, here’s a party game worth busting out.
The multiplayer mode is a blast while it lasts. Simple mind games, like trying to pop numbered balloons in the order of the smallest number to the biggest or racing to lay down track for a moving train before it flies off its rails, are super simple but manage to be timeless in the sense that we can see ourselves coming back to play Big Brain years down the road for quick multiplayer fun.
Unfortunately, the number of problems in Wii Degree is a bit lackluster. There are five different categories – identify, analysis, memorize, visualize and computer – and each category has three different problems to test your brain. The overall number of problems is 15, but within just an hour of playtime, you’ll likely wish there were two or three times as many, as repeating the same old problems over and over loses its entertainment value pretty fast. The challenges/problems here are cleverly designed – we just wish there were more.
Two-player head-to-head multiplayer by far is the best part about Wii Degree, but why not support up to four players? The more the merrier, right? The minds behind Wii Degree must not agree, though, because you can’t play simultaneously with more than two people.
Big Brain Academy is meant to be a social experience when it comes to multiplayer. Part of the fun is in fact being embarrassed that you can’t correctly add 5 and 3 while your buddy, who five seconds back accidentally identified a zebra as a monkey, can. Still, it’d be a huge bonus if there was online play and some kind of worldwide leader board. Unfortunately, there’s not. Thankfully, you can share your brain size with your friends via a friend list leader board, but that’s it.
If you’re looking for a simple but strangely addictive multiplayer Wii game, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree is it. It’s easy enough that non-gamers can play it and still entertaining enough that even the snobbiest hardcore gamers will get sucked in. The small number of problems in Wii Degree is a disappointment, and ultimately it keeps it from being something much greater (it’s the game’s biggest problem, really). Unfortunately, the entry price is a bit high considering this. But the game is a lot of fun while it lasts and is the recipe for laugh-out-loud multiplayer gaming sessions to unite non-gamers with just about any kind of gamer out there.
A year after that DS game’s release, Nintendo’s at it again, this time with the cleverly named Wii-developed Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. No doubt an attempt to cash-in on the brain game success the Big N has enjoyed since 2006, Wii Degree plays just like its DS brother, but instead of utilizing touch-screen mechanics, it uses highly intuitive and fun-to-use Wii-mote pointing controls.
Immediately, Big Brain on Wii feels polished and, well, good. The controls are, as said, intuitive, and they couldn’t be easier to use. You’ll never be forced to waggle the Wii-mote or shake it. Instead, the title simply sticks to what works: pointing and clicking. The game’s presentation is very simple. Besides testing your brain and finding out what size it is, practicing and playing multiplayer, there isn’t much else to do in the game, but that’s hardly a problem. Big Brain isn’t designed to be played by yourself, although it can be surprisingly addictive when it comes to trying to increase your brain’s size by practicing and re-testing over and over and over. The game’s real treat is when it comes to multiplayer. Forget all about Mario Party, here’s a party game worth busting out.
The multiplayer mode is a blast while it lasts. Simple mind games, like trying to pop numbered balloons in the order of the smallest number to the biggest or racing to lay down track for a moving train before it flies off its rails, are super simple but manage to be timeless in the sense that we can see ourselves coming back to play Big Brain years down the road for quick multiplayer fun.
Unfortunately, the number of problems in Wii Degree is a bit lackluster. There are five different categories – identify, analysis, memorize, visualize and computer – and each category has three different problems to test your brain. The overall number of problems is 15, but within just an hour of playtime, you’ll likely wish there were two or three times as many, as repeating the same old problems over and over loses its entertainment value pretty fast. The challenges/problems here are cleverly designed – we just wish there were more.
Two-player head-to-head multiplayer by far is the best part about Wii Degree, but why not support up to four players? The more the merrier, right? The minds behind Wii Degree must not agree, though, because you can’t play simultaneously with more than two people.
Big Brain Academy is meant to be a social experience when it comes to multiplayer. Part of the fun is in fact being embarrassed that you can’t correctly add 5 and 3 while your buddy, who five seconds back accidentally identified a zebra as a monkey, can. Still, it’d be a huge bonus if there was online play and some kind of worldwide leader board. Unfortunately, there’s not. Thankfully, you can share your brain size with your friends via a friend list leader board, but that’s it.
If you’re looking for a simple but strangely addictive multiplayer Wii game, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree is it. It’s easy enough that non-gamers can play it and still entertaining enough that even the snobbiest hardcore gamers will get sucked in. The small number of problems in Wii Degree is a disappointment, and ultimately it keeps it from being something much greater (it’s the game’s biggest problem, really). Unfortunately, the entry price is a bit high considering this. But the game is a lot of fun while it lasts and is the recipe for laugh-out-loud multiplayer gaming sessions to unite non-gamers with just about any kind of gamer out there.
