he second in a genre of “brain training” games that have become a huge sensation in Japan, Nintendo is finally bringing Big Brain Academy to our shores. Like Brain Age, this title aims to both measure and improve your mental acuity through a series of challenges that test your mathematical, analytical, and memory skills. Predictably, it improves on its predecessor in some regards, while somehow sacrificing some of the addictive qualities that made Brain Age so compelling.

On the plus side, there is a greater variety of puzzles and types of puzzles. Some of these are as (deceptively) simple as counting blocks, while others involve using the stylus to complete connect-the-dot pictures or drawing lines to move a falling character towards a goal at the bottom of the screen. As before, it’s surprisingly fun, and I particularly like the aforementioned connect-the-dots challenges’ use of the stylus.

That being said, there are a few things that seem lacking in comparison to Brain Age. For one, Academy lets you test yourself as many times a day as you’d like. I prefer the way Brain Age limits you to once per day, as that seemed to keep me more conscious of both playing for a brief period each day and also practicing frequently. In Academy, you’ll be way more prone to playing for an extended period, then to not pick it up for days at a time. Also, I miss the Stroop tests, which used the DS microphone to great effect in Brain Age. Most importantly, this lacks Brain Age’s interactive Sudoku puzzles, which for me provided that game with replay value long after I’d grown tired of testing myself. Still, this is fun and, for those of us still in the thrall of this new type of game, provides enough new content to hold us over until the next version of Brain Age.