Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain Review

Nintendo has been doing well for itself lately, right? Who’d have thought that after so many ups, downs and presumed “deaths” the brand would be at the top of the market in 2022. It could easily be argued that Nintendo’s success has been down to its embrace of those outside of what was once considered a “gamer,” implemented in 2004 with the release of the DS. By releasing consoles with unique and varied control schemes, Nintendo was able to appeal to different types of players; from those who wanted a bit of bing bing wahoo action to those who simply wanted to keep their brains ticking over. The

Whilst the height of more “casual” games with an emphasis on self-improvement is long gone, Nintendo has continued to revisit the most popular series’ from the DS’s peak; Brain Age – a straightforward but relaxing brain training series; and Big Brain Academy – it’s more child-friendly counterpart… In 2020, Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training brought the Brain Age series back, but many waited with bated breath for the more colourful, less clinical Big Brain Academy series to have its return. With the release of the multiplayer-focused Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain, we can finally see whether BBA still has big brain energy or if the series has finally run out of juice.

For those new to the genre, Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain is essentially a collection of 20 minigames, each designed to flex your mental muscles in a certain way. The collection is split between five vague categories; Identity, Memorize, Analyse, Compute and Visualize, which can be attempted either at-will in 60-second bursts, or as part of a longer, randomised test. The range of games is good, but some activities clearly stand out amongst the collection. I thoroughly enjoyed Flash Memory (a simple sequence remembering game,) Speed Sorting (an odd-one-out styled puzzle) and Get in Shape (a silhouetted shape-making game,) but there were also a few that either just didn’t interest me or felt off as part of the collection. Heavyweight for example asks you to judge which object is heaviest by comparing a number of scales, which feels odd as a choice for what is essentially speed-running puzzles. Each game starts at a low difficulty, but slowly ramps up. I was pleasantly surprised when initially trying the game to find that the top level of puzzles can actually be pretty difficult, especially as your clock usually is ticking low by the time you reach them. Unfortunately, having played all the games on this level I found that many games feel like the difficulty was simply ramped up through increasing the number of elements on screen, rather than actually adding complexity. Yes, this succeeds in making them harder, but diminishes the point of categorising them in the first place, and makes me question whether a high score in Shadow Shift actually represents strong Visualization skills or if it just means I can count quickly.

Fortunately, the presentation more than lives up to the legacy of the series, consisting of bright colours and simple, attractive menus. Minigames don’t clutter the screen with too much information and the overall art style is approachable and clean. I like the emphasis on simple, doodle-esque avatars and the variety of options a player has to customise their little person and I found that no matter who I introduced to the game they found the prompts and instructions easy to read. The sound design is lovely as always, with satisfying, cartoony pops and effects appearing within the minigames and a number of unintrusive musical tracks punctuating those moments where concentration is really needed. I’ve seen criticisms of the game regarding some of the louder sounds being a distraction to players, but personally, I found them to add to the experience.

For the most part, there are four gameplay modes. As previously mentioned, minigames can be practised at will, but after a while, an alternate mode opens up which starts the practice sessions at a higher level. The test mode analyses your overall ability through a random selection of five games and gives you a breakdown of your Big Brain Brawn and Brain Grade. Ghost Clash pits you against the ghosts of other players with the same exercises, tasking you with beating another player’s time on each individual puzzle, with first place in that puzzle giving the most points and longer times giving less. Once a player reaches 100 points, it’s game over. Whilst this feels like it’s supposed to be the big new addition to the game I couldn’t help but feel that beating a ghost was a hollow victory, and besides that, I would have much rather just faced another player live.  Local multiplayer also suffers a little from feeling crammed into a game that didn’t need it, as it follows the same “first to 100” format of Ghost Clash. In theory, this should be fine, but one of the game’s accessibility features fundamentally breaks it; uneven difficulty. Without sounding big-headed, I like a challenge and found that my sweet spot was Elite class, where I could enjoy the challenge but also complete puzzles quickly enough. Unfortunately, my fellow local players have a variety of confidences and abilities, so picked lower difficulty levels – even though I thought they could have handled higher. In theory, this allows players to make party mode fairer, but in practice, it leads to massive disadvantages to those on higher levels. One example that bitterly sticks is where we were memorising and repeating sequences. My wife (on advanced) received a 3-digit sequence to repeat and entered the entire sequence before the game had even given me the chance to enter a single digit of my 5-digit sequence. It would be nice if there were different scoring criteria for each difficulty, or difficulty scaling at each level, or if it were to measure the time it took to enter the number once revealed instead of just who finishes first. This encouraged lowering the difficulty for any semblance of parity, which to me goes against the central self-improvement message the rest of the game embodies.

All in all, then, does this game live up to what it says on the packet? I’d say that, despite being less compelling than previous entries of Big Brain Academy, Brain vs. Brain does deliver a fun experience even if it may lack the longevity of other titles. Whilst it clearly wants you coming back daily to unlock higher brain brawn scores, improve your ability and unlock cosmetic add-ons for your cute avatar, I think that many will play for a few days and then drop it due to many of the games feeling very similar to one another. I also think the game modes lack true variety and whilst the inclusion of multiplayer options does expand play a little, there’s not a lot of meaningful expansion, just filler. I would have much preferred the developers to have focused on a single-player BBA title with more games and reason to play instead. If you want a Brain Academy fix, you’ll like this, but for series veterans, it may be more enjoyable to just root your DS out.

Grab your copy here https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Big-Brain-Academy-Brain-vs-Brain-2034538.html

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