In medieval times, the intelligence of a man was judged by the weight of his brain. Often, when a man proved himself to be particularly smart, the top of his head would be sliced off and his brain severed, removed and weighed. Heavy brains would be returned to their skull. Smaller brains would be collected, glued together and squeezed into the empty head of a simpleton. Several hundred years later and this family activity is being returned to the living rooms of households from here to Japan in the form of Big Brain Academy for the Wii.
With games like Brain Training and Big Brain Academy suddenly being big business in the casual video game market, it seems that the old fashioned concept of simple ‘IQ’ is passé. Put your winks away, Anne Robinson, and lock up that little hobbit who replaced Philip Schofield – the 21st Century is the time of Brain Age and Brain Weight. I know, I don’t get it either, but apparently, if you want to be smart, you want a low Brain Age and a high Brain Weight. So, I guess the ideal of human intelligence in Nintendo’s eyes is a toddler with a nine stone head.
That’s ridiculous. No wonder the Mario characters look like such freaks.
Brain Training took care of your Brain Age, so now it’s time for Big Brain Academy to weigh you up. Because they like judging you and your life, Nintendo set you 15 activities in Big Brain Academy. They are split up into 5 categories – Think, Memorise, Analyse, Compute and Identify – with three games per category. Each of these games is supposed to test you on a certain mental skill in a fun and fast-paced manner – for example, in one you are called upon to put a train track together in super-quick time so the train gets from A to B without crashing in your face, and in another game you are asked to memorise someone's take-away order.
There are the usual memory tests and basic maths exercises, but Big Brain Academy eschews the black-and-grey approach to mental challenges that Brain Training presented us with, and exchanges them for bright, colourful graphics, smiling faces and parrots. It’s basically a more party-orientated intelligence test, or at least it attempts to be. The games are fun logic puzzles – you’d be kidding yourself if you thought these were actually going to improve your intelligence in some way, but they do stretch you a bit.
Once you are done with the fifteen games, your overall Brain Weight is presented to you. This lists your weaknesses and strengths, and areas you should really think about developing. Once your Weight is established, you can practise on the mini-games to your heart’s content, and when you're ready, you can take them all on again. What a treat.
Big Brain Academy tries to sell itself on its multiplayer aspects, but unfortunately this is one of its weakest points. For a start – and this is a huge factor, even in the early stages of the Wii – the game does not support more than one Wii Remote. I know, it’s shocking. This results in a lot of passing the remote around, which is awkward, unnatural and slow. It’s fine if you’re only got one remote, but anyone with a Wii and any sense will have at least two by now, and having to sacrifice the benefits the extra controls give you will not make one happy.
Multiplayer mode, then. You can take on an opponent in one-on-one mini-game challenges, which creates the illusion that Big Brain Academy is a traditional style of game and not just a series of puzzles, and battle each other in a Marathon mode. If I’m going to be honest, there’s not really much going on here. Going through the game modes will keep you and your fam happy for a little while, but once you’ve done it once, it’s unlikely you’ll think about returning.
Even though they mascarade as life-changing experiences, Brain Training and Big Brain Academy are simple, uninspired mini-games disguised as training exercises. The better you get at the mini-games and the quicker you cotton on to how they work, the higher your Brain Weight will soar. Just like regular scores from all other regular games. So if we ignore all of this ‘intelligence’ guff, light-hearted or not, what we have here is a sequence of short, impulsive games that you have to play over and over again until you’re really good. Stripped down to this, what separates this Wii title from the more enjoyable WarioWare: Smooth Moves or Mario Party 8? Both of those have far better mini-games that tax more than just your ability to add up a string of numbers.
Big Brain Academy is good for a few hours, possibly a couple of evenings, but very little else. Being able to post your accomplishments online might keep some score-hungry power-gamers interested for a while, but for most this game will fall at the first hurdle. The multiplayer modes are flawed (using just the one remote and text-only presentation are mistakes that many Wii games make) and pretty soon you’ll give up the pretence and move over to something that offers you mini-games that are more involving and entertaining. It’s good for a blast of impulse gaming, but don’t expect this to keep you and your family warm this winter.