With the recent success of Nintendo's brain training series of games for its dual-screened handheld, it's not surprising to find other brain-themed casual games appear that take advantage of the increased attention being paid to the genre. GameRival jumps on the bandwagon with its latest Flash game: Brain Buster, a game designed to give your brain some exercise while you play.
The challenge of Brain Buster is a unique mix of four (4) different mini-games strung together in a sequence. Each game tests your ability in a particular area: reflexes, music (memory), probability, and spatial recognition. Your performance for each is scored and graded with an itemized detail report delivered at the end of the game.
You may select from three (3) difficulty levels for each task with a bonus multiplier awarded for each increase in challenge. A practice option allows you to play each mini-game separately at your leisure.
Analysis: This game is both well-made and fun to play. I enjoyed the variety of the mini-games and that each seemed simultaneously fresh and familiar. I especially liked the music game since I haven't seen many games use ear-training as a basis for gameplay, and it is an idea I have been tossing around myself ever since taking Music Theory a few school terms ago. It was great that the developers added the "view as music score" option that makes it accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing players.
The difficulty levels seemed to offer a well-balanced risk vs. reward, and the creative assets, graphics and sound effects were all nicely polished and matched the game well.
Although the game was fun and moderately interesting, I didn't find the experience compelling enough to play more than a couple of times. If the game were to keep track of my progress versus my previous scores, or versus other players (give me the option to choose, perhaps?), then it would provide a reason to come back and try again. Nintendo's latest game, "Brain Age" for the DS, keeps track of the player's progress over time via a graph chart. Brain Age succeeds where this game fails in providing the player with a compelling reason to come back to play again.
Overall, a decent addition to a genre that we will no doubt be seeing more entries for in the very near future.
Jay - Fun! What a good game for the elementary schools to use. Most of their 'computer training' is ridiculous and/or non-existant. This site would be great if there was a way for a teacher to keep track of her students progress.
I like the printout at the end.
Apperantly, my brain is smarter than 1,025 cats.
And my brother is smarter than 311 hampsters.
I'm fairly certain this isn't quite an accurate calculation, but it's still fun to see what other people get!
Cute game - especially liked the form of "brain report" with funny comments. This is not really a brain tester, much depends of luck, I've played about ten times getting a wide range of scores...
But it is not important, this game is very enjoyable, worth recommending.
I love brain age. yesterday i got a perfect brain age score of 20. who here also has this game?
im smarter than 219 other people
hm..not bad as a game, but I think the scores are not too accurate to determine a person's brain abilities.
apparently i got an A- and thats smarter than 4830 unicorns
i got 0 and i am smarter than one elderly monkey i thought monkeys were smart
Fun game. I don't really like the music one though. It's slightly inaccurate. If the bottom note is supposed to be an F, the fourth note should be a tritone up from that, and it isn't. I would suggest using solfegge rather than a keyboard without the black keys.
i got to be smarter then 436 other people on first try
What dose "A Brain In The Hand Is Worth Two In A Bush" Supposed To Mean? :S Confused..x <3.
my brain is smarter than 691 other people!!!
and what does 'a brain in the hand is worth two in the bush' mean???
I can't find the game anywhere! I spent an hour on the site looking for the game, and it was no-where to be found! COuld someone post a link if they know where it is?
Link takes you to 'game rival' website with no brain buster game in sight. Add to that the multiple ads that popped up on my screen when I clicked the link. Won't be going there again.
[Edit: Thanks for reporting this. I've deactivated the links and removed all the tags. -Jay]
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