Games for Lunch: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
In a nutshell: Battle of the brains.
3/4/2008 6:49 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3
0:19 Michelle finishes with a score of 7. It would have been 8, but the last guy spoke too slowly. My turn! I get an Easy version. Whoo!
0:21 So despite being much easier, I tied Michelle's 7 because I mis-licked on the ravioli. Grrr. Also, now I'm hungry.
0:22 The next game involves moving clock hands. Seems more about remote dexterity than thinking. Michelle gets the rare Expert level difficulty and nearly curses. It takes her a while to master keeping the pointer on screen. She messed up moving the clock 715 minutes forward. "Apparently I miscounted when I was rolling." "That didn't help," says the game. "Thanks, coach!" Michelle says derisively.
0:23 My turn. "Yeah, Easy, that was predictable." Michelle is not amused.
0:24 While Michelle's tasks were along the lines of "spring forward 715 minutes." Mine are more like "fall back one hour." "Yeah, I can see why this was giving you trouble," I joke. "F&$% you," Michelle replies.
0:25 Next up for Michelle is an Expert Frame Filler. She loses in seconds. "I knew you were gonna win, but I didn't know it was going to be like this."
0:26 After an Easy view finder for me the final score is Kyle 25 and Michelle 12. It's a hollow victory, though, since mine were all so much simpler than hers.
0:29 We decide on Mental Marathon next. We don't want to go through all the rules, though, so we just dive in. I mess up on the second game, a Rubik's Cube matcher. Mr. Peanut tells us we "slept through the snooze button." He's sad because we haven't tested our brains yet, so we move on to the brain test.
0:31 The test is single-player only, so Michelle goes first. Counting colored balls that go in a basket. Busting balloons in numeric order. Punching out blocks to add up numbers (she gets lucky on that one, since she didn't know how it was going to work).
0:32 That was only one section. Now she's on to Memorize. Keep track of birds moving about in covered cages. Keep track of people going by. This test is serving as a nice, playable tutorial.
0:33 Quote of the moment, from Michelle: "Horse cow cat. Cat cow horse." It made sense in context, I swear.
0:34 Identify next. Whack the mole holding the assigned object. Figure out what the scrambled picture is. Count up things with a flashlight. She's getting faster as she goes, but messes up a click on an obvious picture of a zebra.
0:36 Analyze time. She plays the Rubik's Cube game that messed me up, a Tangram-style removal game, and a multiple-choice pictorial quiz that poses problems like "Fish!" and "Has no wings!"
0:38 Visualize is last! Put things in a picture. Get the train to the exit. Which is different? The final one messes Michelle up with some tough-to-find twists. "That was ridiculous!" she says.
0:39 "I hope you enjoyed your first test. 'Big fun, big brain,' that's our motto." Mr. Peanut says his brain is 1,977 grams. The average is 1,400 after a week. First-timers often get 750. Drumrollllllll -- and: 1,089 grams for Michelle. "You've done quite a job of adding muscle to your mind." She gets a C++. I guess they know she's a programmer (rim shot). "Put more oomph in your pace," the game suggests.
