Its been two years since the original Brain Training came out in Europe. Since then the DS market has been flooded with ‘Brain’ games trying to cash in on Nintendo’s casual market cow, all of them failed. Now, for some reason unknown to me and you the general public, Sega have decided to take a crack at it with Brain Assist, a game designed to exercise the brain while still keeping things fun. Does the design work or is it like every other ‘Brain’ game clone?

Before I launch into my review of the game, let me first tell you about the training games. Brain Assist consists of 10 training games which are:
Pi and Thagoras: A shape is displayed on the top screen, your job is to find the same image muddled within several different shapes on the bottom screen.
Count Mania: So close to a game in Big Brain Academy on the Wii that I’m unsure why its in here. Numbered balloons appear on screen, pop them in the order specified.
Character Hunt: Probably one of the most enjoyable games on the cartridge. Match pairs of letters, symbols or shapes mixed in with others that look similar.
Match Game: Another game similar to a Big Brain Academy mini game. An image cut into pieces is shown on the top screen, find the matching image on the bottom screen.
Spot the Difference: You don’t need me to explain spot the difference do you?
Hexagonal Colours: A bit like the old Simon Says game. Watch a pattern of colours be displayed on the top screen and then match the colours on the bottom screen in the correct order.
Touch of Brilliance: This game certainly feels more challenging than the others, maybe I’m just rubbish at it. A tiled area will flash around the screen, you have to select the tiles that flashed last.
Quick Numbers: A bit like the conveyor belt on the Generation Game (an old BBC TV show) a row of numbers are scrolled across the screen. You then have the type in the sequence on the bottom screen from memory.
Twirling Cards: This is similar to odd one out. Several cards are flashed quickly in front of you and you must select the card that wasn’t displayed.
Scattered Memory: Similar to twirling cards except you must select the single correct image made up of several different symbols.

None of the games are amazing. Some in fact are just plain dull and unlike Brain Training which rewarded you for playing with unlockable games, Brain Assist has all 10 unlocked from the very beginning, making it hard to want to go back. Perhaps I’m being too hard on the training games, all of them are functional and the first few times of playing I enjoyed them. unfortunately the background music is sickeningly annoying and images flashed in the background look like they come from a 80’s trance music video.

The pace of each puzzle is unfortunately slow, this is due to some bad choices on how to access puzzles and what I can only describe as load time. Well done Sega, you are one of the only companies out there to make a cartridge game feel like its trying to load information every 10 seconds. Let me explain myself before I get hate mail, between each training game will be a screen of how to play, not just the first time you play it, EVERY time you play it you have to sit and watch it, you have no choice in the matter, Sega tapes your eyes open and says ‘YOU WILL LEARN THIS AGAIN’. once the training game is completed, be prepared to sit for another 5 seconds while you are told you have finished the training, something which you already know and once again - cant skip. After that you are booted back to the main menu and have to select 1 player again, wait for the game to get to grips with the hard process of loading another menu and then select another game. There is a real sense of lag between every single choice you make outside of the training games themselves and after 10 minutes of playing my ‘Casual’ girlfriend asked if she could give it back to me and go back to Pokemon.

After each puzzle is over, a nurse (very slowly) gives you a score in a similar way to Brain Training. Is there a leader board I hear you ask? No. Can you compare it to other peoples scores on the same cartridge? No. After the score is displayed nothing really happens, no ‘well done’, no ‘bad luck, try better next time!’ not even words of wisdom on how to improve and in honesty I’m unsure how I’m suppose to feel about this score. Theoretically it could be an awful score to the game, but I could think its brilliant. The problem is the lack of audio and visual cues to tell me if what I’m doing is good or bad, it just never lets me know.

Dr Kawashima is well known as the face of Brain Training, and what would Brain Assist be without a copy with some kind of twist? Well no need to panic, the game features four nurses! One of which the player can choose to ‘help’ you with your training. I say ‘help’ because none of them actually do anything, they just tell you that you’ve completed a mini game which is pretending to be training for something. In a similar way Ninja Reflex feels like Wii Play, Brain Assist feels like a collection of tech demos in ‘Touch Generation’ clothing.

Closing Comments
I have no idea how a giant developer like Sega can go from some amazing DS games like Sega Superstar Tennis, Sonic Rush Adventure and Mario and Sonic to games of this calibur which are (for lack of a better word) shovel-ware. the games somewhat flawed but enjoyable training games are completely ruined because of a lack of forward thinking and a bad user experience. All I can say is I’m really not sure what market this was suppose to be for, its a brain training game but with cartoonish/childish looks. What adult would buy this over Nintendo’s behemoth? and what child would want a brain game? maybe its for neither of those very broad markets but neither this ‘hardcore’ gamer nor his ‘casual’ girlfriend thought highly of it. This game is a real shame Sega, from giants like you I would expect better.

Score - 3.0

+ I guess it works….
+ Some mini games are good fun
+ Has game share…

- ….But why would you want to share this?
- Lack of actually any training
- Lag/load times ruin any fun that could have been had
- Background music and images are poor.