Big Brain Academy: Challenge of Minds | Review

Big Brain Academy

We do not know how many of you will remember Big Brain Academy, the series launched by Nintendo in 2005, designed to offer a more disengaged version of the more famous Brain Training. A particular experiment, designed to offer small intelligence tests set as the most canonical of the party games to be enjoyed on the move (in the original chapter released on DS in 2005) or in company (in the second, and last to date, episode of the series released for Wii in 2007).

Want for the excessive presence of party games on the Wii, and a large number of productions to stimulate the mind on the Nintendo DS, Big Brain Academy never really managed to conquer audiences and critics, remaining imprisoned in that limbo where all those simply good productions were stationed. Now, almost fifteen years later, Nintendo has decided to propose a new chapter of the Big Brain Academy that takes advantage of the features of the Switch to offer an experience that combines the good of the previous two chapters, expanding it further.

Welcome back to the Big Brain Academy

Perfect exponent of that Touch! Generation conceived by Nintendo back in 2005, Big Brain Academy has always been a little understood series. Conceived as a hit and run experience, to be enjoyed in the short free moments to train the brain through a purely playful formula, Big Brain Academy has found itself wrongly classified as "a version of Brain Training designed for the little ones". In reality the series is much more than this but undoubtedly the minimal artistic sector, the disengaged atmospheres and the constant irony of the few lines of dialogue present within it, can easily misrepresent the original intentions of Nintendo.

Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds does not differ from what we saw in the previous two chapters of the series, combining an atmosphere full of lightness, a minimalist play sector and a series of exercises for the mind, designed to make the users' brains work in always different ways.



After the necessary premises provided by Professor Bilancini, who, unlike the more serious Kawashima, favors a didactic approach more seasoned with images and humorous jokes, the player will be asked to create his avatar. Once you have chosen the minimalist physiognomy, and what clothing to wear, you will need to enter some information about your age, your job and so on.

Although very similar to the information requested by any exponent of the Brain Training genre, the information requested by Big Brain Academy seems to be more aimed at creating a player card, than at defining any aspect of the mental age of the player.

Once the profile has been created, everything that Big Brain Academy: Challenge of Minds has to offer the player is presented in a short tutorial lasting a few minutes. Excluding the possibility of playing together with up to four friends, an option that is proposed once the game is started, Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds offers three macro-sections, plus a secret one, in which the various game activities are divided.

In "Stretching" the twenty exercises that make up Big Brain Academy are divided: Challenge between minds. The player can devote himself to whatever he prefers with the aim of improving his previous score and aiming for one of Professor Bilancini's gold medals. These awards, obtainable by exceeding a certain score in the various exercises proposed by the game, will serve to earn useful coins to obtain cosmetic items for your avatar, as well as to unlock some secrets that we do not want to spoil the surprise.

All the exercises in Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds are divided into five "subjects", Intuition Perception Memory Analysis and Algebra, which in turn will contain four mini-games that are basically based on the speed of execution of the player. The system, although it may seem meager in terms of content, works very well since each of the proposed exercises, net of the apparent simplicity, manages to prove to be satisfying and stimulating.

Overcoming one's score day after day, with the consequent perception of improving one's reaction and reasoning times, manages to make the addictive experience the right one, prompting the player to constantly return to Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds even for just the few minutes necessary to take an exam or try to repeat an exercise in which you are less good.

Regarding the variety of exercises proposed by Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds, however, we are faced with a dualism that seems to afflict the series since its inception. On the one hand we find twenty well thought-out exercises, made in a meticulous way and with incredible attention to detail (just think of the possibility of deciding in advance whether you are going to carry out a test with touch controls or via a controller to allow the game to balance the proposed challenge); on the other hand, however, the limited number of exercises could cause players to become bored very quickly.

Don't get us wrong, the random exercise generator works perfectly and manages to never repeat the same pattern even after hours of play but the redundancy that afflicts the exercises, once you decide to do them daily, it could make you lose any urge towards Big Brain Academy: A Challenge of Minds prematurely. However, we must always keep in mind that this is a reduced-price production, designed to be enjoyed in small doses day after day but undoubtedly the time has come for Nintendo to change the "format" at the base of the series and go further, proposing a more varied and complex collection of exercises even at the cost of raising the final price of the stock.

The second macro-section in Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds is dedicated to exams, that is a test made up of five different random exercises (one for each "subject") which, once completed, will determine the player's "Brain Score", as well as giving him a vote and defining what his mind is most knowledgeable about.

The exam lasts about ten minutes at most, including the dialogues of Professor Bilancini aimed at explaining through the use of four-zero figures what should be the score attributable to those who carry out a constant exercise , and stands as a macro-exercise to be carried out methodically in order to see the progress made by one's mind and understand whether it is necessary to train it in a certain subject rather than another. In a very broad sense, the Big Brain Academy: Challenge of Minds exam covers the role of an endgame, presenting itself as that activity designed to get the title started regularly to see one's progress.

Finally we find a novelty for the series: Phantom Challenge, or the asynchronous multiplayer mode of Big Brain Academy: Challenge of minds. Through a very simple menu, the player can decide to challenge another user's "ghost" in an exercise chosen at random. The ghosts are nothing more than the recordings of the previous performances made by the players that are used to challenge the latter in an attempt to beat their score, trying to climb the global ranking of the game.

Obviously, this is not a mode capable of revolutionizing the offer proposed by Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds but, undoubtedly, it does very well its task of offering a carefully packaged online multiplayer sector and able to offer additional stimuli to the player. Being able to choose whether to challenge random players, friends or specific users (through a system of numerical codes) further expands the range of possibilities offered by Ghost Challenge which, in its simplicity, manages to expand the contents proposed by the title.

Who is it for?

One of the most common errors of assessment, as regards the Big Brain Academy series, is to consider it, as we said at the beginning, a variant of Brain Training for the little ones. The reality of the facts is substantially different because, especially in the case of Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds, we are faced with a production designed to be sold at a low price and designed to guarantee daily training usable in any age group. .

The artistic sector of the title does not present anything different from what Nintendo has always proposed to its users: timeless characters and atmospheres that act as a bridge towards playful experiences suitable for all ages. Big Brain Academy: Challenge between minds is no exception even if, undoubtedly, the genre to which it belongs already represents an important insurmountable limit for many users. Net of its limitations, however, Big Brain Academy: Challenge of Minds is carefully developed in every aspect and we are sure it will delight anyone looking for a more versatile and more playful Brain Trainer.