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Feb 8th, 2008 at 19:34:10 - Brain Age:Train your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS) |
Gameplay:
There are definitely some key factors that increase or decrease the enjoyment of Brain Age 2. Some of the more notable ones today involved how you play the game with other people. While I have not had a chance to play the true multiplayer on Brain Age (it allows for people on multiple DS systems to play head to head on many of the games) I have been playing on a friend's DS. Brain Age keeps track of three different people on a single DS and keeps ranking as well as publicly displaying people's "brain age." This adds a bit of a competitive element to the game, which I enjoyed when I first started.
That being said, today I quickly realized how much of a difference owning the game vs. playing your friend's makes. A game that I could beat my friend's score at four days ago I can now not come close to. This is common in most games, but the major reward structure in Brain Age revolves around you competing against yourself, and you competing against your friends' scores. A few of the games also have a limited maximum score and once you've attained it there is little motivation to ever play that minigame again. In specific, one game involves you keeping track of what place a runner is in as other runnings pass or are passed by him. There are 5 rounds and each round you are either correct or incorrect, meaning you can not do better than 5.
If I owned a DS I imagine the competitive element would be much more entertaining, but, as it stands, practice makes for a much better score than I can get.
Design:
The design of the game is very simple and clean, which is attractive at first as it seems professional and adds credibility to the assumed claim that the game is helping your brain. However, the same cleanliness of the game makes it start to feel like work after a while. There is very little visually pleasing elements to the game. The lack of a creative element makes it seem much more regimented than I, at least, like my games to be.
Another interesting design choice was the emphasis on competition. Every time you train it shows you a graph of your previous scores and comments on your 'progress.' It also will show you the other players scores so you can see how you measure up. This adds a level of challenge to the game that makes it more entertaining than simply training would be.
Another small but interesting element is it occasionally has one player make sketches in response to prompts and then will ask the other players what they think the drawings are of. There may be other interactions that I haven't seen as well.
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Feb 4th, 2008 at 23:06:13 - Brain Age:Train your Brain in Minutes a Day! (DS) |
Summary:
In Brain Age 2 you play various mini-games that revolve around mental skills. The goal of the game is to train your brain to achieve the lowest "brain age" possible (20 being the perfect age).
Gameplay:
The game is certainly entertaining. The puzzles and problems they present you with are fun to play and compete with friends at and the feedback is immediate for how you're doing. The game encourages you to play through the minigames available once per day, telling you that it will help to train your brain. Some of the minigames include: memorizing a grid with 25 numbers and then filling in the numbers, selecting the highest number among a spread of numbers of varying sizes scattered on the screen, and keeping track of what position a silhouette runner has in a race.
While the game is fun it is also limiting in a major sense. Each minigame can only be played for a score once per day, and likewise you can only earn a new 'brain age' once each day. To keep you coming back, each day you play adds another mini-game (until you have them all). This is somewhat effective, as I do want to play again, but the short duration of competitive play each day makes me likely to forget, and because it's purely a puzzle game I'm not left with a sense of wanting to know what will happen next. Also, a minor(major) annoyance is that the game recognizes a 4 as a 9 if you try to write it as a single pen stroke.
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Jan 21st, 2008 at 03:36:00 - Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES) |
Gameplay:
Continuing on the quest we meet a number of stereotypic parody characters, including the orphan who's questing to find his parents, the wise old frog that fills you in on the details (and is named Frogfucious), and a doll brought to life by a shooting star. The gameplay remains standard RPG fare, with lots of the same fight repeated so that you can level up to keep up with the enemies. The minimal equipment and character development means there isn't anything too special about finding all the treasure chests; especially since a lot of the chests contain coins and I've already found an upper limit of 999 coins that you can carry.
You do occasionally run into a minigame, which can be entertaining. Looking around I found one that involved jumping on tadpoles to play a song, and playing the correct one let you purchase new items. Another one has you riding barrels and jumping to collect coins. The minigames seem well spaced and are somewhat enjoyable.
Design:
The game seems to be aimed at a young crowd who are familiar with Mario, but may be unfamiliar with the RPG genre. To this end it seems very well designed. The characters often make self-depricating remarks about Bowser having kidnapped the princess again, the colors are bright and cartoonish, and the action is very simple and straightforward. This would have been a great game when I was seven.
The choice to simplify the gameplay to such a low level, however, make it uninteresting when thought of as an RPG. The minigames, while well spaced, are also fairly simple and after a quick read of the directions provided they require very little skill/thought to complete.
For its time and age group, Super Mario RPG is a great game. For anyone who enjoys an engaging storyline and a complex RPG system this just plays too much to the cutesy audience.
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Jan 21st, 2008 at 01:33:49 - Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES) |
Summary:
The princess has, once again, been kidnapped by Bowser. Bowser only takes about five minutes to defeat, however, and victory is all but assured until a giant, talking space-sword shows up and announces plans to conquer the world. As Mushroom Kingdom's only hope, Mario must once again battle enemies to save the princess and stop the bad guy...thing, but this time in an RPG.
Gameplay:
This game lands somewhere between the normal RPG style and the classic Mario sidescroller. While there are some very unique elements, I found much of the game to be somewhat lacking. After a few hours of gameplay I found myself getting quite bored of the simplified RPG rules (such as only having three item slots--weapon, armor, and accessory) and fairly basic character progression (one new skill every so many levels and a choice of boost to power, hp, or magic every level). Also, the story is a very simple and well-used Mario story, which works fine when the point of the game is challenging, fast-paced levels, but is somewhat lacking in a full RPG style game.
That being said, there are some very interesting elements that were added to the genre. Mario RPG borrows from its sidescroller predecessors in both its map traversal and in the way you navigate levels. Some basic jumping puzzles show up early in the game and I was even able to receive star power for a brief time (which knocks enemies away and prevents battles from taking place). The game also adds a small amount of skill into the fights, as hitting a button at the right moment will increase your attack damage or decrease the damage you take. Some spells also require you to tap a button repeatedly when casting them.
All in all, I don't think I'll be finishing the game after a second session. It has some interesting elements, but after the main storyline had me spend 30 minutes chasing a crocodile who stole a frog/tadpole's (he looks like an egg with arms and legs) money and ignoring the captured princess problem I'm not overly excited to find out what happens next.
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| KrepNatas's GameLogs |
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KrepNatas has been with GameLog for 16 years, 9 months, and 13 days |
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