Left Brain, Right Brain

Rating Everyone Genre puzzle Publisher Majesco External Links Official Majesco Website

Once, the Game Boy was a little-kid system, something to keep Junior quiet on cross-country trips. However, the Nintendo DS has helped spawn a whole new concept for video games and to whom those games are targeted. The idea is simple: make a system fun, easy, and accessible for people of all walks of life and success should tail closely behind. The genre they crafted was “productivity.” It's genius really; how can you be accused of wasting time when the game in the system is supposed to be developing “productivity.” Adults of all walks of life, from uncles to grandmothers, have jumped on board the DS train to funland. Grand Theft Auto only wishes they had marketing like that.

In many ways, the marketing pitch worked. I've seen adults well past their video game prime enjoying a number of titles on the DS. Games like Big Brain Academy found favor with younger kids while Brain Age actively engaged older gamers to improve their concentration and skills through repetition and charting progress. The entire idea of productivity games seems to be on the path towards a very legitimate genre.

Unfortunately, Left Brain, Right Brain doesn't really push the genre forward in the ways that some of it's predecessors so effectively did. The game has a simple premise with good potential. If the right hand can do it, why not train the left hand to do the same? Through a series of simple games, the user is supposed to turn their weaker limb into an equal of their dominant hand. A short list of pseudoscience is presented at the beginning of the game, including labeling you as a logical or creative person depending on what hand you write with. If only it was so easy!

The point is to test how ambidextrous you are initially, than work towards becoming more independent. These numbers came off as unusually high. Everyone that tried it scored high enough that their seemed to be no need for the game. Unlike “Brian Age”, which initially declared myself and others to be ancient fossils, LBRB seemed perfectly fine with how well my weaker hand functioned right out of the box. And unlike Brain Age, LBRB doesn't track data over time, so there's no way to mark improvement or changes over time other than high scores. There's also no Sudoku to keep you coming back.

These flaws hurt the LBRB agenda, but there is some fun to be had with the game. The fifteen mini-games, which claim to develop greater dexterity, have their moments. There are some tapping whack-a-mole games, mazes, and puzzles. The touch screen is well utilized and the games require some quick thinking and intuition. The system also needs to be flipped back and forth so the correct hand is in the correct position. It keeps you on your toes.

There is a problem with how the game scores the dominant hand performance versus the weak hand. The dominant hand always goes first, so some of the mini-games that take a couple seconds to figure out don't accurately reflect the good hand. When the weak hand is up, you already know how to solve the puzzle. The only struggle comes in attempting the puzzle with the irregular hand. This helps even the scores out and makes the game unnecessarily monotonous. If you are really interested in accurate scoring, each set of mini games needs to be done at least two times.

Left Brain, Right Brain has some fun in it, but it certainly doesn't compare well against other blockbuster games in the “productivity” genre. The puzzles would amuse only a young child for a short time. With no real incentive to play the game over time and chart progress, this one will probably find it's way to the bottom of the toy box pretty quick.