➤ Brain Training by Dr. Kawashima, the review 🎮

This review of Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch it was written by four hands, two by the signer and two by the mother, a skilled tester of the only software that in recent days has managed to distract her from household chores. The question of the day is the following: how complex is it to involve parents who are no longer adolescents and make them feel part of a structured entertainment path? While we were opening the packaged - inside a stylus light years ahead of those tested on DS and 3DS - we often asked ourselves, now far from the era of casual gaming but mindful of the crosses and delights of a strange phase of this industry. The answer is that it is complex, really: children of a daily passion, we think that gaming is an activity for everyone, that it is easy to take a pad in hand, to command the action on the screen with coldness and coordination, that the most scripted are democratic, but none of this is true. Mom has her own little skill in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe but it ends there, so after a few tracks she looks at me and wants to go back to sudoku, additions, memory games and, only in those moments when she is exalted, speed games and reflections. Brain Training, today, is a great reminder of the times that were but, unlike the DS periods, it is more structured to remain and sink its roots over time, day after day bringing within a high and also very high demographic target, not used to spending time in front of a screen.

Horizontal sensors

Simple, intuitive, immediate: Nintendo has built the entry into the new world of Brain Training in the fastest and painless way possible, rattling off notions of Dr. Kawashima and clarifying the new multiplayer soul of the software from the beginning. It remains the backbone of daily training, made up of randomly chosen exercise tests and targeted training, but this time Nintendo is implementing a party-game factor in its multi-million dollar franchise. We want to start from here because the Quick Training, playable in landscape mode, best embodies the most divisive aspect of this Brain Training: the use of IR sensor.

Brain Training by Dr. Kawashima, the review

Owning a "Fat" Switch, the possibility of detaching the Joy-Con and exploiting the IR of the right gives new emotions in Kawashima sauce: Chinese Morra, Digital Calculation and Digital Training are a sort of tutorial, while Contauccelli, Alzabandiere and Contacubi are the actual minigames to challenge with a friend. Fun and functional, what is proposed convinces in the short and medium, keeping the interest bar at a good level in returning to pick up the console to challenge someone to play with your fingers in front of the infrared sensor or count quickly by pressing the triggers of Joy-Con. What is out of place is the impossibility of playing properly on Nintendo Switch Lite: the inability to detach the Joy-Con forces a greater weight in vertical gaming, while the absence of IR inevitably cuts out some minigames. A sin of gluttony, of course, since development will certainly have started before the conception of the Lite version, but also a paradox, since Brain Training is one of those completely portable products. We are sure Nintendo, before releasing the title, has asked this question countless times and is living very well with the answers since the core of the experience remains daily training, perfectly manageable on both models, and a market that is different today than to the explosion of casual products 15 years ago, therefore even more informed and ready for any technological cuts than a Lite version. Apart from this, the party cut gives that touch of novelty to a well-established park of expectations, providing some additional elements to bring in, precisely, the mother and make her play Chinese morra or hand-eye coordination exercises. Little is not.

I subtract, you add, he remembers

Training the brain with Brain Training is a known operation: Kawashima came many years ago to tell us that our brain mass was almost beyond the point of no return, therefore today as then the curiosity to find out how old we are. Thanks also to a more attractive price than the average, Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training provides, in the middle of the Switch life cycle, that mood casual taken from Ring Fit Adventure and rightly carried forward for completeness of offer. Although no more aura of novelty or virality, the software remains a valid example of Nintendian craftsmanship: coherent, precise, studied in detail, engaging and rewarding, Brain Training is today a more mature experience, no longer new but more aware and capable. to declare herself without overdoing it, simply doing what she always wanted to do: alongside everyday use, keeping the brain trained through play. Its minigames, unlocked gradually, are a mix of known and new activities, a fusion of math, logic and memory that takes back old habits - no tutorials that teaches how to write the figures, sometimes causing frustration in the software not receiving it that we wanted to write - and projects them into a title that meets those needs there, in full expression of its heritage.

There are available to train 13 mini-games including Sudoku, an evergreen that everyone likes a little, even those around who didn't know there was Brain Training but who magically find themselves picking up the stylus and writing numbers. Up to now, after a few days of use, it has amused us to unplug from more busy products for a moment, lie down even more on the sofa, take the Switch vertically and do a bit of testing, thanks to an aura of nostalgia and desire to remember what it meant, many years ago, to carry around Nintendo DS to try brain training software for people who even less than today knew consoles or video games. The casual gaming, in short, the humble one, who has no microtransactions but who, with a well-kept showcase and good content, manages to take those who don't chew this world by the hand. The equipment is completed by the inclusion of a future competitive online mode, certainly an interesting addition but currently awaiting a dedicated update.

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Price 26.99 € Resources4Gaming.com

Readers (11)

6.9

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Smartphones have somewhat revolutionized the perception of casual video games, but Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training remains a unique product, capable of carving out its own space and positioning itself in a democratic, transversal, usable and light platform offer. Today, contrary to when the franchise was new, it is a little more complex to establish a target, but so on the spot we are told that it is higher than in the past. Thanks to the aging of that band born with the first episode, it comes naturally to us to think of Brain Training as a perfect product to engage parents, young or old, and partners not very accustomed to gaming. We could have expected more minigames, yes, but for around 27 € in digital and 35 € for the packaged with the bundled style, we feel like saying that the equation leads and is not unbalanced in one or another part. It may have less grip than it used to be, but this is probably one of those franchises that could exist indefinitely. The next episode? We would not be surprised to see it mobile.