	Buzz! Brain Bender
	Developer: Curve Studios Publisher: SCEE Release Date: Out Now Players: 1-6	Words By:
Why are thousands of people buying a Nintendo DS at the moment? No it’s not for Pokémon or Dragon Quest. It’s likely they are buying a DS for Brain Training, with the floating head of Kawashima. This game has taken the hand held market by storm and now Sony want a part of it. Buzz! Brain Bender is Sony’s attempt at stealing the market from Nintendo in the Brain Training category. Much like Brain Training, Buzz! Brain Bender is essentially a series of mini games which test different parts of your brain. Buzz! Brain Bender uses a series of different tests to measure how good your brain is and rates its power in relation to an object which could be powered by that power - I was told my brain was powerful enough to run a small hand fan... Gameplay-wise Buzz! Brain Bender follows the same pattern over and over. There are sixteen mini games which can be played in the Training mode where you can train to improve your brain on the Test mode. Each game can be played on easy, medium or hard difficulty, with each one only unlocked after having played the other. Only the four face buttons, circle, square, triangle and cross, are used for each mini game, and all sixteen work in a very similar fashion. After a three second countdown an image or number of objects are displayed on the left of the screen and you have to press the correct face button relating to the correct answer for that specific question. Each mini game is against the clock. There are four main categories of mini games; Analysis, Observation, Memory and Calculation. At the end of each mini game you are graded depending on your performance in that game. There are bronze, silver and gold stars up for grabs at each difficulty on each mini game. I was unable to score anything better than bronze on medium difficulty so the difficulties are definitely adequate to keep you occupied for a while. You are shown your training history for that mini game and the category in general so you can see how you are improving. Replayability is added to the game with two features. One is the addition of challenges which unlock as you earn stars in the mini games. These challenges are very hard and I still haven’t completed any even after a lot of trying. The other feature is the six-player multiplayer. This involves passing round the PSP and taking it in turns to play the mini games. I can’t see how this would last very long and it couldn’t keep many people entertained for long, but if you’re looking for a party game and space is an issue… Buzz! Brain Bender is a fun, entertaining addition to the portable puzzle genre and would be worth getting if you don’t already own Brain Training for the DS and can tolerate the annoying quizmaster. This game would have been better with game sharing so players could compete with each other at the same time but the multiplayer is alright for a while.

Best Bits
- Very simple to just “pick up and play”
- Keeps track of all your past scores

Worst Bits
- No real competitive multiplayer
- All the mini games are very similar


by: coolalien