I am Sisyphus. Doomed to push a rock up a hill for all eternity, watch it fall and roll it back up. My rock is the Dual Brain series of games. I review one, scrambling to hit a word count whilst describing six simple mini games. Then they release a new one, and I go again, trying to find something new to say. Trying to find an angle. Oh, Dual Brain. My rock.
If you’ve read reviews or played the first two Dual Brain games, you know how this goes. It’s basically Patting Your Head and Rubbing Your Belly: The Game. You’re asked to complete a Brain Training-esqe maths or logic puzzle whilst a timer at the bottom of the screen ticks down. If you ignore the timer, it will halt your progress and mess up your score. However, if you press L or R before as the timer is about to run out, you gain extra time.
You can score points and move up levels, but the levels don’t do anything. Something as simple as a virtual sticker album would help contribute to some sort of progression. As it is, it feels pointless.
In fact, I struggle to see why these games even exist. After playing each mini game once for this review, I was forth in the world for cumulative score. I guess if you want to be top of the world in something, this is your chance.
It’s a shame, because the mini games this time around are a bit better. There’s one where you must identify which shape has been removed from a grid, which could be a corker of a puzzle if it were printed in a book and you could attack it at your leisure. Here, with time against you it just feels annoying. Like it’s getting in the way of the puzzles instead of enhancing it.
There’s another nice puzzle where you must count the number of blocks. It’s hard, as you have to try to model the shape in your head, but again the timer gets in the way.
Out of all the Dual Brain games, this one has come the closest to recapturing memories of Dr. Kawashima. But be warned – it’s the best of a bad bunch.
On to Dual Brain Vol. 4, I guess.