One of the greatest advantages of the Switch is that two controls are already included in this package. Providing a pair of Joy-Con makes this the console of choice for people who enjoy playing in the company of others. In this way, this platform has an abundance of multiplayer titles. Only in this year did we see WarioWare: Get It Together!, a delivery that puts the cooperative component at the center of the experience. In the future, Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp will do the same. As we wait for this to happen, Nintendo has given us a product that perhaps many would not associate with the family competitiveness that one has come to expect from some Big N first party games, we mean Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain.
As part of the “Blue Ocean” initiative, in 2006 Nintendo gave us the first Big Brain Academy for the DS. This installment, and its subsequent Wii sequel, focused on offering a series of mental challenges that any type of person can understand, regardless of whether they have been playing for years, or if they have barely touched a control. While the experience it offers Brain training, the older brother of this series, can be considered more rigorous, the classes taught by Dr. Lobe are more friendly. Along with recapturing the central idea of the series, Brain vs Brain add a multiplayer component, something that creates a rivalry similar to what one might have experienced in school.
Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain is available now on Nintendo Switch. The new installment is not only positioned to be a tool that improves mental performance, but also has the potential to be a star in one of the family gatherings that characterize this era. Is Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain the best game for christmas? Will your mental ability improve with the help of this installment? Discover the answers to these and more questions in our Atomix Review.
Classes have started
Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain is focused on one thing, and one thing only: making it fun to train your mental skills. Normally, we associate learning and studying with a boring and tedious activity, when the truth is that this is not real. Like everything in life, this depends entirely on your exposure to a certain teaching, and the environment in which you find yourself. Thus, Nintendo’s new work presents us with five specific areas where we find various challenges focused on improving performance in that section.
Identity, visualization, calculation, memorization and analysis are the five classes to which this game enrolls us. The course has four challenges in total, each reinforcing its main theme. For example, in analysis we found an activity that does not offer four images, and it is our task to select the correct answer depending on the type of indication that is provided. Visualization asks us to select certain figures depending on the perspective that is presented to us. Each challenge is entertaining, and its duration of just one minute makes none of them feel heavy.
All activities start on a fairly simple difficulty, but as you answer correctly, the challenge will increase. To accompany this form of progression, Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain makes use of a scoring system that rewards you with medals depending on your performance. However, not everything lies solely in getting what is asked of you. One of the most important elements of this title is time. The faster you manage to answer the questions, the challenge will increase and the score with it.
The single player approach is pretty straightforward. Due to how fast the minigames are and the fact that everything is unlocked from the beginning, in an hour you will surely be able to see everything that this installment offers the player. However, the point is not to just finish an activity and go. You constantly have to be coming back to Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain with the aim of improving your performance in all available categories. This is an idea that is reinforced in the exam mode, where five specific challenges are presented, and at the end you are awarded a grade. Here, the score is not what is relevant, but the analysis that Dr. Lobe makes of you. Depending on your performance, there will be areas where you need to improve, and others where you don’t have to worry as much.
This is where you really get into the real game. Similar to Ring Fit Adventure, or other titles in the series, this is not something you experience a week and forget about it. To take full advantage of the experience that Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain offers, you need to perform a series of tests at least once a day to see results after weeks or months of constant study.
Sure, there are a couple of bumps with the goal of the game. The emphasis that the title places on speed makes some activities feel like races where you can advance just by memorizing previous tests. Similarly, the selection of minigames could be better in more than one section. Basically all the activities in computing feel out of place, and contain more elements from other areas than from the same area. To make matters worse, it’s never clear whether each minigame actually exercises the brain, or simply improves the skills of these particular activities. However, where the game shines is in its multiplayer aspect.
Time for the group exam
As the name of the game implies, this installment is mainly focused on the multiplayer component. A mental skill competition is something we rarely encounter today. Usually, these types of experiences have an emphasis on getting to know the mechanics of a title in detail and perfecting them. In Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain, we go back to a simpler dispute, similar to something one experienced in elementary school.
Although the multiplayer section is mainly focused on the competition between two and four people in one place, this installment also has an online mode. However, don’t expect real-time confrontations against people in another part of the world. The game constantly captures your best times in each minigame, in this way, a ghost uploads to the servers to face off against other users in a series of quick rounds focused on each of the five learning categories.
In this way, you can compete globally against the ghost of other people with the aim of climbing a world ranking, but it is also possible to fight against the best times of your friends, and even the profiles of other users of the same Switch.
The focus of this installment is the idea of a brain against a brain. The idea of competing in a series of minigames focused on reaction and mental ability is something that may not be attractive in theory, but in practice it is a lot of fun. Similar to what we see with WarioWare: Get It Together!, a maximum of up to four people can gather on a single console to take part in a series of quick challenges where anyone can easily understand the task required to win.
The funniest version is that of two people. This can be played in portable mode, turning the Switch into a kind of board game, where a couple of competitors can interact by touching the screen that is divided, something that substantially elevates the experience. By the time three or four people join in the fun, everyone is forced to use more traditional controls. Best of all, each player can choose their level of difficulty without subjecting the rest to a particular challenge, which makes this experience much more accessible.
When one puts Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe At a party or family gathering, it’s always the same people joining in the fun. But nevertheless, Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain It’s something anyone can understand, it’s mental challenges at the end of the day, so having a competitive focus on something like what the Switch is, which is built for multiplayer, sounds like the logical decision for the series, and it’s something that is sure to be a sensation this season.
And the rating is …
Do youBig Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain help improve your mental ability? With more than a week already with the game, you can say yes, but up to a point. If the Brain Training series can be related to the type of studies that we usually see in high school, Big Brain Academy is more related to the primary period. Children and seniors will take better advantage of the types of challenges and activities this new installment offers, while youngsters will have more fun with the competitive aspect.
This is not a game that you only have to try for a couple of days, it is a study regimen with which you have to be constant to improve your performance. This is something that may be difficult to do, but it is well worth it.