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Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 13
Date: July 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

With the hype surrounding this release, I had expected a higher-quality product. Although the Wii is not known for its graphics, Big Brain Academy falls so far below the graphics standard that (excluding the motion controls) this could have been an early 90s release. The areas within the game do become progressively harder...challenging even for adults. However, thinking of the potential this game could have had and that it is not a first generation release, I wouldn't recommend purchasing this product. You will have much more fun with Wii Play or Mario Party 8 if these types of games are up your alley.

Amazon STINKS!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 159
Date: June 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I preordered this game from Amazon THREE WEEKS before the release date and I receive the game a WEEK after the release date! WTF is the point of preordering something weeks in advance if you get it late?

Not impressed with Big Brain!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 78
Date: June 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The thought behind the game was with good intention I am sure. The fact that the children are being graded and reminded that their brains haven't grown since their last "test" I believe to be terrible. I am really glad we rented the game instead of buying it. I have three very competitive children and for them to be graded and compare themseleves against each other (reminder:it is only a game!) does not quite create positive self esteem and harmony in our home. Fun educational games presented in a very poor manner!

Big on quantity of games. Little on quality and fun.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: February 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This DVD has 15 games but most of them are more suitable for kids or teens than for adults. Also, some of them have appeared in other games like Wii play. It looks like the game producer just tried to cram as many activies as possible into this DVD. Then they used it as a selling point. That tactic fails beause most of the games are not entertaining at all.

I'm glad I borrowed it from my friend.

Kind of boring after awhile

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: July 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

About 15 different games to test your brain. After awhile it gets kind of tedious. Not worth $50 bucks.

Yawn

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: November 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This was fun for a while but it really is a one note game. It goes no where.

Not Fun

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game was not very fun, it was kinda boring and too much reading. If you want a fun game that is similar to Movie Scene It, get Smarty Pants!

Not Enough Variety

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun, but it lacks enough multiplayer activities, there's only one mode that allows the use of two remotes. There are only 15 minigames to play and none are really that great. For a DS game this might be acceptable, but on the Wii, for $50 I would expect much more variety in the minigames. There isn't really much to do in this game, but it's cool how it ranks your brain in 5 different categories. Overall, I would not suggest it because there is not enough to keep you occupied.

Not worth it for adults

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Huge downfall to the game is its lack of minigames. 15-20 for this game, versus over 60 when mario party 2 came out. Really disappointing

My GF and I, both mid 20's, thought the brain age series was worth a try. I had played a ds version in a store and liked it. This game is no better than the ds version. We also bought it to be used as a bonding experience.

This game made bonding worse. It relies more on the speed of your clicking icons/answers than it does using your brain. I dominated her because of my experience with the wiimote versus her first experience with a console system. Everytime I beat her in a game that measures your intelligence made me feel more guilty when i won because it seemed to lower her self esteem with each win. Not to mention the 2 player games require you to pass the controller around instead of using your own.

rent this and you prolly wont buy it.

So much potential - such poor implementation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 109 / 131
Date: June 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

With all the research coming out about an active brain staying sharp, it's no surprise that the Wii now sports a brain training game of its very own. Unfortunately, it's just not as great as it should be.

Let me first explain that we own all the DS brain-training games and play them fairly frequently. We definitely believe in the use-it-or-lose-it theory of brain health. The makers of Big Brain Academy on the Wii already had volumes of feedback from the DS game to know what works and doesn't work. They had plenty of time to create a truly spectacular game for the Wii platform.

I acknowledge that they did some things well here. They have fun multiplayer modes. You can cooperatively work as a team to try to get the maximum score. You can compete against each other in a time trial, attempting to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. You can also play in a board game style of situation, where you choose tasks that you know you're good at, trying to get the most total points.

For solo play, they have the standard training and test modes. They break your tasks up into five areas - analyze, compute, identify, memorize and visualize. Each area only has three game types. Unlike the other, DS games, where at least some of the games were enjoyable, I really didn't find any of these to be "fun". Some were downright annoying. For example, in one game they zoom super-close in on a photograph. They slowly un-zoom and you have to guess what it is. Is it a sheep? A grasshopper? This really isn't a test of anything - it's all a matter of when the picture shows something identifiable. Other games like "count the number of red balls and blue balls that go into a bucket, and say which was larger" at least have some sense behind them. There are the face-matching games, the pattern-seeking games, the tetris-like games, and so on. We've seen these all before in other mini-game sets. Usually, though, they are innately fun to play and there are a wide variety of them. Both are lacking here.

You can earn medals while doing the practice games, up through platinum level. If there are multiple accounts in the game, you can also get a ranking - first, second, and so on. However, nowhere in the game does it show any summary of those rankings! In fact, you only see that you earned a ranking at the end of a given game. It doesn't even show it on the game's listing. So if you go through and get 1st place in all the games, and then your friend goes in and gets first place, you'd never know it. To even see the medal listing you have to go into a "book" for your profile, to see what you've earned. There's no way to easily compare one person against another - or to engage in friendly competition to try to one-up each other.

They do have a single listing page where they show the "current test score" for each person. This is the one-number total of a person's test score. This is a nice thing to compare, but for example, say you have two parents in a household with three kids. The kids can't really compete on the whole test against a parent! They don't have the training yet. They COULD try to compete in the "easy level" of a given test. But there's no way to compare that. This was a giant opportunity that the game designers missed out on.

There was also still a bit too much inane chatter that you have to page through to get to the results. There really should be an option to turn that off. It's cute the first time. After the 20th time of the exact same dialogue, it gets very annoying.

I really expected much more from the Wii version of this game. A nice attempt, but they should have learned far more from the DS feedback and been able to resolve many of these issues before shipping.

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