An Examination of a Game for Unfortunate BuyersAn Examination of a Game for Unfortunate Buyers
Playing it for the first time since 2010, I replayed through it and enjoyed its concepts. Since it’s an educational game, I’ll treat it as such.
I’ll provide critical analysis to help you decide whether it’s the right game for you.
I have very few memories of playing this game, so I’ll also examine why I ended up stopping.
Released in 2008,
Left Brain, Right Brain 2 provides a quick-to-play experience that allows you to test whether you’re ambidextrous and centers on training both sides of the brain. DS download play allows you to play with friends who do not own the game.
So without further ado, let’s jump in!
Graphics: 7 / 10 -- Does the presentation facilitate learning?
While the graphics and animation look like they were created by an amateur, they do remain simple, which helps you focus on the game at hand.
They don’t provide a natural environment for learning. In fact, the colorful games with non-professional fonts for text emphasize the video game nature of the game.
However, as a video game, the graphics would rate 1 / 10. Most of the buttons could be created with five minutes of GIMP. The hand guiding figure does an expressionless, repeated back and forth motion, and only interacts when giving results or at the start of a mini-game.
As a learning tool, the graphics rate 7 / 10.
Sound / Music: 2 / 10 -- Does the sound effects / music facilitate learning?
The music hurts concentration and distracts from the mini-games. The music at the main menu comes closest to the peaceful music that education games are expected to have. In games, you’ll hear arcade-like music; Clearly, the game’s priorities are different from training your hands and brain like it says on the back of the box.
Sound effects aren’t excessive, but they are loud compared to the music. While some provide an educational atmosphere to the game, others are simply low quality video game music.
Optimally, the music would have complemented concentration and have appropriate sound effects that play softly.
Needless to say, music / sound was a weakness.
2 / 10.
Addictiveness: 2 / 10 -- Does the educational game incentivize repeated play?
While there are many mini-games to play, they are short and unfulfilling. I admit, the first time of clicking as many times as I can, it was fun. After three similar games that were all based on speed clicking, I was bored.
While many games have an initial excitement, that only lasts five minutes with this game. Worse than basic flash games online, the mini-games are harder to play through than bad flash games.
It’s likely that you’re not going to get addicted and after you’ve basically played everything that the game offers, you won’t want to play it again.
Multiplayer may incentivize a few minutes of extra gameplay with friends, but you’ll both end up switching games.
Other than the unbacked claim to help you become ambidextrous, the game does not effectively incentivize returning daily.
With little addictiveness from the start, this category rates 2 / 10.
Story: N / A
Without a story, the game is merely a compilation of mini-games that require quick hand movement. Clearly, the designers wanted to capitalize on buyers who want helpful games. By making the game educational, they didn’t think they would have to worry about graphics, music, story,or addictiveness.
In other words, the designers may have only spent a week to create the entire game.
Depth: 3 / 10 -- Is there a lot to do?
With 20 minigames, left vs right hand, ambidexterity check, and multiplayer play, the game has depth. However, the different options are clever maneuvers to use the same 20 games. For the different hand exercises, all the game does is switch the orientation of the screen.
When you play the mini-games, you’ll quickly realize how simple and pointless most of them are. They require little understanding and last less than a minute each.
With very little to do besides playing the pointless mini-games, the depth scores 3 / 10.
Difficulty: 2 / 10 -- Are the challenges hard?
Playing the mini-games require a lot of clicking and little thinking. This makes your limit based on how fast your eyes perceive the screen. Thus, the only difficulty is the music, which distracts.
Controls are stylus-based, so they’re really easy to learn. The first time you play a minigame, you play with your dominant hand. Since you don’t know the game very well, it’s likely that you’ll not play to the best of your abilities, then your weaker hand goes next.
Because of this, I got 100% on the first time that I took the ambixterity test. So, there was really no point of playing the game for more than the first three minutes, since there was nothing that I could improve.
When you’re competing in multiplayer, you’ll have more difficult games, but the difficulty will come from how tired your hands feel at that point.
With such a lack of difficulty, the high scores come down to how fast you can perceive the screen.
With little to improve with the game after a high ambidexterity score, there’s no doubt about it; For this category, the game scores 2 / 10.
Overall: 3.6 / 10
Graphics : 7 * 20% = 1.4
Sound / Music : 2 * 20% = 0.4
Addictiveness : 2 * 25% = 0.5
Story : N/A * 0% = 0
Depth : 3 * 35% = 1.05
Difficulty : 2 * 10% = 0.2
Sum = Overall Score = 3.55 / 10
This mathematical comparison of important categories leads to a terrible overall score of 3.6 / 10.
Basically, the game underperformed in each area. Only under the guise of an “educational game” did it do well in the graphics / presentation section, since the graphics were terrible. Here’s one great example of a game that’s meant to cheat you; For the sake of high sales, it pretends to helps your mind. Instead, it’s a worthless compilation of 30 second arcade games.
I really would not recommend buying it. For any purpose. Even for fun, you’re just giving money to the creators, who might then decide to create another version.
If you’ve had experiences with this game, please share! I love second opinions, especially on games where my analysis leads to extreme scores.
Any comments are appreciated, too!
Thank you for reading!
Graphics
7 Sound
2 Addictive
2 Depth
3 Difficulty
2
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