I have never been so hooked on a video game.

Author's Rating:

Pros: addicting, cheap

Cons: You will never be the best.

The Bottom Line: 
I would give Big Brain Academy two thumbs up because of the variety of games.

Author's Review
My husband bought everyone in our family a Nintendo DS for Valentine's Day. I have wanted on for awhile now, but it was never a priority. I was so excited when I received one. I have never been a big fan of video games that take a lot of skill, just because I never played that much to really get into them.

I bought Big Brain Academy at Target for $19.99 because I was a fan of the Brain Age games, and I thought that this one would be just as fun. I was wrong, I personally think this game is much better just because there are so many different activities you can choose from.

The first thing you will want to do when you turn on the game is to create a profile in which you will save all of your information. This way, you can come back as often as you would like to and everything you have done before is saved. That is another thing I like about the Nintendo DS is that you do not have to buy seperate memory cards to save your information.

After you have saved your personal data with the game you will be asked to initially test and see how much your brain weighs. The more it weighs in grams, the smarter you are. After it weighs your brain, it will give you a letter grade and tell you how your brain compares with someone. I, for instance, had a brain size of 1251g, a grade of a B-, and the brain of a doctor. I was quite impressed.

After the test it told me that I scored the lowest in the Think category. I went into the practice mode to see if I could brush up in the category, and see what the highest score I could achieve was. After a couple of hours in training mode, I went back to the test. I did horribly, only scoring a D.

The funny thing about it is that I did a lot worse in other categories. I have since practiced and trained, and also took the darn test over and over again. I have yet to beat my initial score. It has been a lot of fun though.

I think the best thing about this game compared to the Brain Age games is that there is a lot of variety of activities to choose from. Each time you test you are only given 5 out of the 15 exams, so each test is completely different. That's what makes it so fun, and keeps me playing.

I am frustrated that I cannot get a better score, but at least I know I had the brain of a doctor at one time. I also know that I will continue to strive to get a better score.

This game is geared more toward teenagers and adults as some of the test may be difficult for the little ones to understand. My three year old daughter loves to watch the games, but has no clue as to what is going on. I definately recommend that you give Big Brain Academy a try, it is really fun.