Wii would like to learn

Author's Rating:

Pros: Educational, great solo and multiplayer modes, lots of replay

Cons: Voice coach is annoying sometimes, too easy at times

The Bottom Line: 
A fun addictive game that makes you think. Great for all ages, easy to learn and play. A must-have for the Wii.

Author's Review
This is a sequel of sorts to the DS Big Brain game. I had wanted to play the game, but I didn't own a DS. After reading a bit on this game, I decided to buy it without ever playing it. I was very pleased with my purchase.

Story

There isn't a huge story for the game. You are a student that is being tested in various things at a school. The school is run by Dr. Lobe, a weird puppet looking thing.

Controls and gameplay

The game is easy to learn and just play, even if you don't read the instructions first. You use the remote to point and click, and that's about it. Pretty simple for any age gamer. This game takes advantage of the Mii feature, that several Wii games have. Any Mii you've made, can be used as a student for the game.

The gameplay is straight forward. You are tested in 5 ways: analyze, compute, identify, memorize and visualize. This is done in a set of mini-games, which you are graded on by correct answers and speed of answering them.

Analyze- You have to do various tests based on reason. One example is a game where you must pick which picture (or pictures) best fit the category listed.

Compute- All of these games test you on your math skills. One example is balloon popping game, where you have to pop them in order of smallest to largest number.

Identify- All of these games test how well your vision is. One example is a game where you have to guess what animal it is (based on the picture that is forming on the screen).

Memorize- These games test how well your memory is. One example is remembering which cages have birds in them, after they've been covered and shuffled around.

Visualize- These games test your logic skills. One example is guiding a train to an exit, by determining which directions it needs to go.

Each category has various mini-games to play, usually it's 3 but some of the multiplayer modes have extra mini-games to play. All games have 3 main difficulty settings: easy, medium and hard. Expert can be unlocked and played in some modes, but not all.

There is various modes in the game. For one player, there is a regular test for all 5 categories. You do all the categories in a random order, then get graded and a job title on how well (or badly) you did. The other one player mode is practice, where you can practice the mini-games and earn medals based on scores.

Multiplayer modes include: Mind Sprint, Mental Marathon and Brain Quiz.

Mind Sprint- You compete against another player, to see who can complete a set number of games in a row. This is for up to 8 players, and you can use either one remote or 2 to play.

Mental Marathon- You play to find out how many games you can beat in a row on certain difficulty levels. This is 1 to 8 players, using one remote (by handing it to the other player when needed).

Brain Quiz- You take turns picking a category and playing the game on it, the player with the most points at the end wins. There is bonus point questions, as well as expert games to play. This is 1 to 8 players, using 1 remote (in similar fashion as Mental Marathon).

For practice, test and marathon: records of your scores are kept. This is nice to have, so you can see it later on and try to beat records.


Overall, all the modes are quite fun by yourself and with friends. It gets to be a pain to switch the remote off at times. I don't see why they couldn't made all multiplayer modes work with 2 remotes. You can also trade your records with people online, to compare and compete with them using Mind Sprint mode.

Graphics and sound

The graphics are nice, but not perfect. For some games there is cartoon looking pictures, while others have actually pictures of the items (animals, plants and so on). The game doesn't suffer from graphic problems though, as this game is more about thinking than anything else.

As for sound: it's alright but gets annoying at times. During all gameplay, there is a voice coach (which is in the remote speaker itself). He or she will encourage you to do better. This is nice to have at times I suppose, however I don't think it was necessary for playing the game at all. Other than that: the sounds for games are nice and no problems there. Some games that use sound, are helpful, while a lot are just there so the game isn't without sound.You can turn the remote sound off and it wont effect gameplay much at all.