Games for Lunch: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree

In a nutshell: Battle of the brains.
3/4/2008 6:49 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

This review includes special guest commentary from my wife, Michelle.

0:00 I convinced my wife to play this with me so we could finally see who is smarter. "Oh we knew that already," she says. "It is clearly not me."

0:01 "I thank you most heartily for choosing our academy of big brains," says an amorphous, mustachioed peanut standing on a scale. He's "Dr. Lobe." Wasn't he a Bond villain? "Get ready to work your mental muscle." Dirty! "You'll never hear me yell, 'no pain, no brain' That's for lunkheads." Lunkheads?

0:04 The doctor says something through our Wii remote, but we can't hear it because the volume is too low. We turn it up and get him to repeat it. "Work that brain," he says. That hardly seemed worth it.

0:05 You "enroll" your Miis and get a student record book. Cute touch.

0:07 Mind Sprint, Mental Marathon or Brain Quiz are the options. The selection screen is a school hallway with all sorts of Miis milling about. Click on the Miis and they hop. Michelle is having too much fun with this.

0:08 We're forced onto different teams for the Brain Quiz. Boo.

0:09 The selectable games are presented on big cards. Michelle chooses first. Frame Filler asks her to choose the correct cutout section by studying the rest of the moving image. It makes more sense when you see it.

0:10 Michelle plays alone first. The remote says things like "Nice! Correct! Good! OK!" When she's done: "Really, that's it?" She got a 4. "Not bad," says the game. "I got the record? That's sad," says Michelle.

0:11 I get a 6 on the same game. "Way to go," says the game. Michelle's turn... She picks a Pattern Puzzle.

0:12 "It's not a jumble, it's a pattern, so put the pieces in the correct order." Reminds me of IQ tests in grade school. "Oops, I wasn't paying attention," Michelle says as she messes up the very first pattern. "Oh no, too bad," the game says kind of mockingly. Her Mii looks as disgruntled as her real face.

0:13 I get a "bonus x 2" for the Medium edition of Pattern Puzzle. I don't do much better than Michelle, getting a score of 1. It's tougher than it looks! "Such a waste," the game taunts. Stupid game.

0:14 Michelle picks True View and ends up with a Hard version of the puzzle. Study the side view, then pick the arrow that sees that view. "Oh my god, I'm so screwed," Michelle says. "3-D spatial relationships are my worst thing." She messes up the first one. "I told you I couldn't do that." The game demands perfection, apparently.

0:15 I get a 2 on an Easy version of True View. That one is tough, I say sympathetically. Michelle is glaring at me. She picks another card and... it's a Hard game again. "It will be difficult, so focus," says the game. "Do you get more points for the ones that are hard?" Michelle asks. She's not exactly happy with her luck.

0:16 This game is interesting. The remote speaks a food order, then you have to remember it and pick it out on the screen. You can also read on screen, if the remote is quiet. This one lasts a lot longer than the others. The timer starts with two whole minutes. Michelle is a machine. "I think you missed your calling." I tease. She smiles. "It's harder than it looks." We'll see about that.