Don’t let the girl at the start up menu scare you. When I played early in the morning, she asked me “morning already?” When I played outside of my regular time, she told me that I normally play at night and it’s not nighttime yet. The first couple of times that this happened it freaked me out, and to be honest, it’s still a little creepy! The game has a feature that allows the player to draw the number on the screen with their finger. However, I was having problems with this feature: the game wouldn’t recognize my numbers, and created more aggravation than it was worth. I finally switched back to the number pad. I was also unable to change the player’s name. It shows up as Julia every game. I know this is a small issue, but if I paid for the game I want to be able personalize it with my name.

You no longer have to go searching in newspapers for a Sudoku puzzle to play, all you need to do is open the Platinum Sudoku.

The arcade mode has a story line that players can follow along.  The two characters in the game are Kale and Malia, and they set out to look for sections of a treasure map of Bubble Island.  There are a total of ten sections, and as the player proceeds through the game there are 30 items to collect for the gallery.  In addition, there are different outfits that can be collected so that Kale and Malia can have a wardrobe change.  There are a total of 100 arcade levels to keep you occupied.  The final mode is Crab Fever, in which the screen keeps on filling up with bubbles and you need to pop them until you can no longer keep up.  This is probably more useful for those dull queue moments where you want a brief distraction.

Gameloft’s Brain Challenge gives your brain a workout while playing various mini-games.  The games are geared towards 5 areas of your brain (logic, math, memory, visual and focus).  The stress games also develops your stress management skills.  There are 9 “creativity” exercises that promotes your artistic side.  The difficulty level adjusts to your play history. so it’s nice that you can have up to 5 profiles saved to the game for multiple players (that is, if you trust them with your iPhone).  Figuring out how to play each game is pretty much straightforward, if not the tutorial is helpful.

I would highly recommend this game for all ages.  You are getting 43 games for the price of one, which is always a bonus.  The menus are easy to navigate through and the animations are colorful.  The touch screen allows you to answer the question much more quickly.  Especially when you are getting timed on everything.   It’s nice that the game keeps a history of your brain chart so you can compare your progress day to day.

However, there are some drawbacks to the game.  One is the screens between the games are unnecessary and time consuming.  After finishing up a game, you spend about 10 seconds for the game to wrap up before it takes you back to the main menu.  Then once you pick a game it takes about another 10 seconds to load up.  Also if  you get a phone call in the middle of a game, it interrupts the game.  Then you have to go through the whole loading process again just to get back; to be fair, this is more to do with how Apple insists third-party applications manage memory, rather than a problem with Brain Challenge, but either way it’s still frustrating.  If you get a text message, you have the option to close the message rather than leave the game.  That’s not so bad.

Unlocking all the games can be a long and tedious operation, but you are actually excercising your brain in the process.  The game is highly addictive, so beware.