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Thursday 6 March, 2008
“Brain Boost: Gamma Wave” (Nintendo DS)
Gamelog entry #2:
GAMEPLAY
After playing through the five games in Training mode, I tried Challenge mode. This is essentially the same as Training mode with three primary differences: there is a juvenile narrative involving the lost memory bank of Dino (who, it turns out, has a soy sauce-flavored rice cracker instead of a memory disk) which the player (Mickey) must recover by journeying across four continents of the planet Ronnoc; the minimum clearance is 60% of the 20 problems on each of the five games; and there is no point total.
I managed to complete Level 1, Clifford Continent, and four out of the five games of Level 2, Patrick Continent. Which of the five games was I struggling with? You guessed it, Remember Images.
In the course of playing "Brain Boost: Gamma Wave," I have found some techniques that have helped me to succeed. The first, which applies to several of the mini-games, but most specifically to Numbers, involves a cheat in a way--if I am presented with an 8-digit number, I disregard the first several digits and concentrate on the last four or five. This is because in the game, the choices with which I am presented exhibit little variation in the end of the number, so that only one choice exhibits the correct last group of digits. Thus, I exploit a limitation in the game to my own advantage.
The other, more useful technique, which the manual explicitly references, involves the ability for the right brain to recall images almost like a photograph (this is how some people are able to speed read). In Remember Circumstances, instead of my eye roaming about the screen from tile to tile in an impossible attempt to quickly memorize the images before they disappear, I have found that simply staring straight ahead in the center of the grid, eyes still, I am able to gain a better mental "image" of the whole layout, and it is easier and more intuitive to then select the tile that doesn't belong. So, I am making progress!
DESIGN
If I have a criticism of "Brain Boost: Gamma Wave," it is two-fold: there is not quite enough variation in the game to make it compelling to play for longer periods of time than an hour or so (fatigue quickly sets in); the weakest element of the game is the narrative, which is perfunctory and merely distracting. Still, it is "cute," and does provide younger players with more of a "motivation," if you will, to play.
The lack of variation--the entire game is essentially the five mini-games, is perhaps what was intended, because it does make the game easier to pick up and play for forty minutes a day. I note that the manual says that in order to develop new neural pathways in my right brain, I must train daily for at least three months. In this sense, "Brain Boost: Gamma Wave" is more of a daily mental exercise tool than a traditional video game. This is not a bad thing, as it demonstrates that video games are at least diverse in their utility in the practice of everyday life. Now, if I could only remember all my Internet passwords...
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