DS Daily: DS, daily
by JC Fletcher 
{ Sep 26th 2007 at 9:00AM }
You may notice a little bit more swagger in our writing style-- it's the confidence that comes from having a youthful, energetic brain. Yes, we've been playing Brain Age 2, tapping on piano keys and unscrambling words One thing that bothers us a bit about Brain Age and its sequel is the daily-play design. Sometimes we like that we can fit a satisfying gaming experience into just a few minutes, but sometimes we have two hours to kill playing games, and we want to play Brain Age. While you can train all you want, you can only make so much "progress" in one day, due to artificial constraints. If one can even be said to make progress in a nontraditional game like Brain Age, that is.
What about you? Do you like it when games feed you pre-measured portions of game time? Or do you really hate running out of stuff to do?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ambient @ Sep 26th 2007 10:09AM
I played Big Brain Academy instead of Brain Age specifically because of the time contraints. I have no tolerance for games that make me mess with the system clock in order to keep playing. I hated that you could only play Nintendogs for an hour before running out of things to do, and even in Animal Crossing (during the obsessive all-day playing you do at first), you eventually run out of things to do. Running out of things to do turns me off of a game faster than anything else -- I'm usually still annoyed about it the next day and much less likely to turn the game back on.
Matdredalia @ Sep 27th 2007 11:39AM
This is actually my one big complaint with Brain Age. I really, really dislike not being able to keep making progress even when I'm still exercising my brain. As ambient mentioned, I hated the same exact thing about Nintendogs, though thankfully I never have had that problem in Animal Crossing.
Though frankly, I'd rather die in a fire than choose Big Brain Academy over Brain Age. Big Brain Academy was tedious, miserable, and seriously lacking. Brain Age rocks my frickin' socks.
sillierputty @ Sep 26th 2007 4:04PM
Maybe I just haven't unlocked this yet, but it irks me that I can only play one song with the piano each day. After I have played the new one, why can't I play any song that I have seen in the past?
Matdredalia @ Sep 27th 2007 12:21PM
sillierputty - Once you get so many stamps, a feature will be unlocked for Piano Player where, after you've played a randomly selected song, you can play again and choose any song you like. I think it's like...15 stamps or some such.