[Review] Big Mind Academy: Handsome Men

In 2005, Nintendo’s first Big Brain game was released, which can be played on the Nintendo DS. It quickly became a popular series in which your intelligence is tested. By solving small puzzles, the game tells you your strengths, weaknesses and sometimes even your brain age. Big Brain Academy: Handsome Men, or in English Brain vs. Brain’ is the latest title in the series and the first to be released on the Nintendo Switch. Daily Nintendo got the chance to try the game for you! Vera accepted the challenge.

test your knowledge!

Initially, there are two options to choose from: Singles or “Party”, so you can play with multiple people. To start with the safe option, I chose Solo. Creating a character is very interesting despite its simplicity: you can choose the skin tone, hairstyle, hair color and outfit that you can always change later. You collect clothes and accessories by earning coins, every 10 coins is 1 gift that contains a costume or accessory. You earn coins by enjoying the puzzles.

After choosing an individual game, choose Practice, Ghost Clash, or Quiz. When you get a gold medal everywhere during training, you get the new option “Ultra Training”: Ultra Training. Level up a little higher right away and you won’t start with too simple puzzles. There are five categories: select, save, analyze, calculate, and visualize. All categories consist of five mini games. They all offer different training. The puzzles are very interesting, some examples are “Quick focus” where the animal becomes visible slowly and you have to guess which one is as fast as possible, “Reverse hold” where you have to remember a row of numbers in reverse order, “Cubegame” where you have to count the number of cubes The visuals on the screen as fast as you can, “Balloon Burst” where you have to pop the balloons in order from the smallest number to the largest number and “Train turn” for the visualization where you have to point out what the object should look like from a different angle. All the games are very fun, although some are more difficult than others and it took me a while to get a gold medal in all of them.

When you’ve practiced enough, it’s time to test your knowledge during the exam! You get a random game from each category and at the end you can see how well you did in each area and where you can practice more.

Ghost fight in the party

Although Ghost Clash is in the single option, it is a multiplayer game. You are competing with someone on the World Wide Web, or a friend or family who has previously played the game. So you are playing against a “ghost”, because the other one has played before. This way you can challenge each other without being online at the same time!

With the party option, you can start with 2 to 4 players. With two players, it is possible to place the Nintendo Switch as a handheld device and play against each other or simply by playing with a controller (or Joy-Cons). With 3 or 4 players it is only possible to play with the buttons instead of the touch screen. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried this mode myself yet, but the choices you get revolve around a big wheel where the chance chooses one of 25 games, or you choose a game for each category. Then you choose from 1 to 5 matches, which means you will play 1 to 5 matches against each other. When you’re a little better, you can choose to increase the starting level of one or more players.

a little tacky

Although it’s a really good game, it’s a bit tacky: high pitched sounds busy in the background music, bright colors and round shapes. In fact, it is a bit childish to see it. Despite this, you’ll have hours of “party” fun if you’re a little competitive. I can imagine you’ll eventually get over that, if you know all 25 games down to the last detail.

conclusion

It is another one of the fun and exhilarating games released by Nintendo. With 25 games in total, each with the potential to be improved a lot, you’re not just done. Are you ready to play multiplayer? Then you can choose to play with up to 4 people in Party Mode. It is also possible to play against each other online in Ghost Clash mode offline at the same time, which is really cool. In short: another super fun Nintendo game for the whole family!

+ 25 mini-games to test and develop your skills

+ Record it locally with up to 4 players

+ Ghost Clash mode allows you to play against each other online and offline at the same time

– Once you master 25 head-to-toe games, there’s not much to do

DN-Score: 7,5