POSTED 20/2/11


DR KAWASHIMA'S BODY AND BRAIN EXERCISES

Namco Bandai
Xbox 360/Kinect

Batten down the hatches X-peeps, ’cos the first salvo of a Nintendo invasion has hit...

Damn, this couldn’t look more Nintendoey if Mario etherised the good Dr K and took over. “It’s a me, Dr Mario, now you worka that brain good, a-yes?” – a sentence which might demonstrate the state of our medulla oblongata following an extended Body and Brain Exercises sesh. Yep, if our thinky bits had eyes they’d now be represented by exes. Sproing!

Umm, where were we? Oh yes. Cutesy, Nintendoey, synapsey, sproingy – uh-huh, this is essentially Nintendo fave Brain Age via Kinect. But you likely worked that out already, without needing a jot of brainercise.

Apparently “over 20” exercises (we managed 19) are here, but the idea is that you pop in each day and do three that are randomly chucked at you (or are they? Dun-dun-dunnnn!) in an attempt to buff your grey matter. We won’t list them all, but they range from maths based (‘Math Jock’, where like any jock you kick balls, but to solve sums), to logic (‘Which is Bigger?’, where you make with body-sized greater than signs), and memory (‘Matchmaker’, where you become a kind of human Shape-O) to reflexes (‘Flag Frenzy’, where you go all semaphorical and pretend you’re in the video for OMD’s ‘Telegraph’).

Briefly, they’re pleasant enough diversions, and the Kinect functionality is mostly well-implemented, but it soon gets, well, tedious – which may imply that our brain’s in OK shape, thankyouverymuch. To return every day there needs to be more pull than basic mini-games and some smartypants Japanese avatar telling you that you’ve all the mental acuity of a withered eggplant.

We seriously doubt that anybody would stick with this other than the most stubborn, dogged or... dumb.

CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!