Brain Age: Concentration Training

Launching for $35 USD, Brain Age is a bit pricy for what it delivers. But for that price you get a variety of different games that will truly challenge your mind, record your progress, and give you a serious sense of accomplishment if you actually manage to claw your way up in terms of performance.

Aside from the useless Relaxation Mode, Brain Age: Concentration Training is a pretty solid entry in the Brain Age series. It doesn't make exceptional use of the 3DS hardware, since the 3-D effect doesn't amount to much when graphics consist of simple shapes and text.

Brain Age: Concentration Training takes Nintendo's cerebellum-enhancing series onto the 3DS in style. It boasts a wealth of content, smart presentation, and loads more charm than you'd expect from a brain-training game.

The game features a nice array of fun and challenging mental exercises that will push your working memory to its limits, and its improved presentation makes the whole experience much more personal.

If you think you’d have enough concentration to be able to endure those quirks, though, Concentration Training could very well help you overcome the many distractions in your life.

It won’t have the same impact the first Brain Training had, but it is a nice collection of mini games, and a good choice for players who enjoy challenging their minds.

This might not be a traditional game, it does include a pretty great collection of creative ways to challenge your brain.

Overall, it's a well-rounded experience that works well as an educational tool, and makes a point to appeal to a player’s mindset by constantly offering rewards for a job well done.

Funny, rich and perhaps healthy compilation of a mini-games that will pleasantly exercise your brain.

It does its job well, but it lacks Brain Training's focus and accessibility, making it a difficult recommendation compared to the past iterations.

The elaboration of exercises intended to improve brain capacities is not an easy task, but it gets even more difficult to make these fun as well with a focus on the (hard)working memory, because of the multiple distractions from our hyperconnected world. Thanks to a playful tone, an adaptive challenge and a wide selection of cleverly designed activities, Brain Age : Concentration Training successfully keeps the experience interesting, but also gratifying. Despite some persistent handwriting recognition issues and the rather large amount of recycled games, this devilish episode shall amuse our minds, an indubitable benefit, intellectual empowerment debates notwithstanding.

Dr. Kawashima returns to Europe after a long trip abroad, and it's been worth waiting as this new entry in the series is utterly good in its purpose, but is really conservative. 30 minigames and a new focus, perfect for this 3DS final life cicle.

For the most part, though, the game excels in taking mundane tasks and making these activities fun. At the same time, having to unlock everything (along with the required Devilish Calculations demo) is an awkward way to introduce players to the experience. Nintendo would be wise to remember this before releasing a sequel.

Even compared to the original Brain Age, Concentration Training is much more demanding, and players shouldn't expect to breeze through exercises and watch their training grade skyrocket.

The brain training assignments are fun to do, but the devilish missions are way too boring and repetitive to really enjoy for the long run.

It’s a fun diversion, but I think that four years on it’s a case of too little, too late and Brain Training’s lost much of its charm. If you feel that information addiction has gotten the better of you or that you need to improve your focus, Devilish Brain training may be worthwhile – but it’s both tedious and sparse.

Dr Kawashima's Devilish Brain Training does everything it sets out to do, but it doesn't try to be particularly ambitious. If you've played previous Brain Training games before, you know exactly what you're getting into, but it's not an experience for everybody.

The Brain Age series has a certain charm about it, but this installment is easily my least favorite. If Devilish Training were some unlockable throwaway mode, I’d be OK with it. As the main new concept in a series, however, it makes the experience more annoying than it is entertaining or educational.

It’s more pain than pleasure.