Brain Age is stylus heaven (and it's fun too)
After winning a rousing game of Scattergories yesterday evening, I was feeling pretty good. I felt accomplished, like I completed a crossword puzzle or solved a semi-difficult math problem. Scattergories has always been one of my favorite games. Actually, before I even knew it was a board game, my sisters and I would make up ghetto versions of it on long roadtrips and play it for hours. This is the kind of game that you can play for hours because it feels good to play. It's a game that asks you to search your brain, think quickly and creatively, and adds competition to the mix. I love board games like this, the kind that require you to think fast and be clever. It feels good to use those parts of your brain that don't get exercised too often. Of course, it can be tough to find enough players on a daily basis to sit down for Scattergories, Sets, Chess or Go (kids these days, all they want to do is drink and dirty dance and do the dope!). Which is where the ever gratifying DS game Brain Age comes in...
Brain Age is incredibly addictive. When Stephen left his DS in Dylan's backpack, I was all over that game. It basically consists of small brainy workouts to be completed in the quickest amount of time, like math problems, reading aloud, counting syllables in a sentence, or my personal fav, memorizing a long list of four letter words and then recalling as many of those words as you can. Based on your performance, the game then tells you your "Brain Age". Your ideal brain age is 20. Form what I've read, there's no science behind this age, it's basically just a score. The one drawback is it only allows you to do so much in a day. The idea is that you're supposed to excersise your brain a little every day, so I guess they limit how much you can do at a time, leaving you always yearning for more, more, and more Brain Age. Thus, you come back the next day. You can play unlimited Suduko, however, which is a trend I had not yet sampled the delights of until Brain Age. I see why it's so popular. And it's especially enchanting when done with the stylus (holy sweet muffins! how I love that stylus). And I find the handwriting rocognition to be pretty advanced on the DS here, especially in Soduko where it can even recognize when you're writing tiny numbers (as possible answers) or large numbers (as definite ones). The voice recognition isn't quite as sharp. The game only has to recognise four words (Black, Yellow, Red and Blue) but it has trouble understanding blue (it's always fun to hear people screaming at the DS "BLOOO...BLOOOO!!!!") It should have a part in the beginning where it records and remembers how you say the words. The element of competition is there as well, and if you've got anyone else playing on the same cartrige, you can compare your Brain Ages and think, Ha! I'm the smartest smarty in smartypants central! And you know that the next time a pal logs into Brain Age, the first thing they will see is YOUR SMARTY SMARTNESS SMARTING all up in their faces! And you know what? It smarts. HA!
(I really don't want to be this evil consumer I've been becoming, but I guess I sort of do since Brain Age is right on the verge of making me buy a DS...Damn you, stylus!!)
Karen got a 20.
Can you believe that shit?
nintendo sent George Bush one for his birthday....