Overview
Brain Challenge packs a punch with its exciting combination of mini-games, including logic, math, visual, focus and memory types. With its quality and depth, Brain Challenge is by far the best and most comprehensive mental challenger app that we’ve played, making it worth every penny.
Gameplay
Rapidly solving logic games and responding to memory questions about missing items are great experiences in Brain Challenge.
After gauging your level with a “Daily Test,” the game provides a challenging set of “Brain Training” exercises (they sound much more fun when we call them mini-games) that press you to quickly select answers by touching the screen.
The mini-games look great and push users with time limits and point rewards for quicker answers. As you improve, new games and modes are unlocked, including a “Stress Exercise” mode.
There have been complaints about the touch reaction of the app and I did experience a couple of frustrating point losses because I thought I had tapped something and moved on, only to find out that I was tapping out of order and incorrectly.
The graphics are excellent and the game even includes a pair of three-dimensional virtual scientists/coaches to keep you inspired. Or to ask you if you want to eat Chinese food… (these apparently random comments seem to be related to the time of day that you open the app).
Brain Challenge also tracks your progress with graphs and statistics, so you can impress your friends by telling them you use 9 percent of your brain (kind of sad).
Review
This app is incredible and, quite frankly, blows everything else in its field out of the water.
It’s fun, it’s educational, it looks great, it’s easy to play and it doesn’t get old or boring as it progresses in difficulty and depth.
There have been criticisms about the game’s unnecessary intro video (which can be easily skipped by touching the screen), its continuous sound when the iPhone is in silent mode (which is solvable through the game's settings page or by using the volume buttons to manually lower it), and its loading times (which aren’t really that extensive and are normal for games with similar graphical content).
There are legitimate concerns about phone call interruptions (which force you to completely relaunch the game)
and the inability to create multiple user profiles (in case you want to compare brain power statistics with your wife), but these issues are not major enough to diminish Brain Challenge’s overall value.
It may seem expensive for a game of its kind, but it offers a lot more than other apps of the same price and is far more impressive.
Update: Thanks to a reader comment, we've discovered that multiple user profiles are possible through the "info" page. When multiple profiles are engaged, users will be asked which of five available profile slots they'd like to use for their current session. Switching between profiles is also easy and can be done through the "info" page. This means that yes, you can indeed compare brain power statistics with your wife.
Summary
This is a very complete and engaging product. There is room for improvement, but as is, Brain Challenge is valuable and sure to keep you entertained and thinking.
