Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree Review

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree Review
Testing your brain was fun on the go, but does the experience hold up from your living room?
by Matt Casamassina

June 8, 2007 - Nintendo's Brain Age and Big Brain titles have combined sold more than one-hundred ga-trillion copies on the company's dual-screened handheld. All right, a slight exaggeration, but these games were unpredictable hits, appealing to all types of buyers with mental challenges that could only loosely be described as gameplay by traditional standards. And unlike so many of the graphical powerhouses that are here Monday and gone Tuesday, these simple brain puzzles -- designed to "expand the audience," says the Big N whenever it possibly can -- have legs. Their appeal doesn't thin and disappear with age because, like Tetris, their mechanics are timeless, and as a result you may still find a DS brain game in the Top 25 best-sellers list a year after its release. Not bad for a series of projects inspired by someone at Nintendo who didn't technically work in development; he merely suggested that the publisher create something that would hold the attention of adults. Somebody give that man a raise.

The unique make-up of the DS has helped foster efforts like these. Whether you're using the stylus to simmer some food in Cooking Mama, sewing up a patient in Trauma Center, washing off your puppy in Nintendogs or frantically solving math problems in a brain game, these genre-breaking undertakings have succeeded partly because they are easy to understand and even easier to control. But what works for DS may not always translate to Wii. Trauma Center made the transition to home console with few hitches, but the same could not be said of the sloppier-controlled Cooking Mama, whose utilization of Nintendo's innovative remote felt uninspired, if not forced. Let's face reality: there are certain games that are just more suitable for a handheld, right?

Well, maybe not.


Just point and shoot the balloons with the Wii remote.At first glance, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree -- a console-ified take on the DS title of the same name -- seems like a gimmick. If you're a cynic, you'd call it a cash-in, which may not be that far off the mark. It's not as though the game really branches out from its DS predecessor, after all. You enroll in the Big Brain Academy, a virtual college complete with a very basic graphical hallway and doorways that lead to a series of challenges designed to really put your mind to the test. And if you played any of the brain titles on Nintendo's handheld, you will notice immediately a very similar presentation, not to mention puzzles and mind twisters that seem familiar in some fashion.
But Wii Degree is also unmistakably redesigned for the Big N's home system and in contrast to a game like Cooking Mama, using the Wii remote to solve the puzzles never feels awkward or clunky. Rather, it feels great -- it's incredibly tactile and responsive. In addition, Big Brain on Wii comes complete with some very engaging mental challenges (many of them completely original) and a highly enjoyable multiplayer mode -- arguably one of Wii's best, particularly if you want a Wii Sports-like experience. It only takes a few minutes with the project to discover that it's not just the DS game with a new cover, but a smart console interpretation of a winning handheld phenomenon.


Illuminate the darkness and then select which animal shows up the most.Wii Degree's interface -- we're referring to everything from the design of the college to the menus -- is intentionally designed to be ridiculously simple. You won't be booting the game up to show off its graphic prowess -- there are, frankly, very few visual accomplishments to speak of here. The main hallway of the Big Brain Academy looks like something out of an Internet Flash game -- in other words, basic to the point of being archaic. It's a strange thing to note, then, that it doesn't qualify as poor and it certainly doesn't offend. In fact, it looks very colorful and clean in the same way that Wii Sports does. The game automatically pulls your system's Mii characters and you will see them walking around the hallway in the foreground, which adds a welcomed touch of personality. As an aside, Wii Degree is compatible with WiiConnect24 and auto-imports your Wii system friend codes so that you don't have to manually implement dozens of stupid random numbers in order to re-add your buddies -- we love this and hope it's a sign of the future for all Wii titles.
The Wii game features only a disappointing handful of modes and you will inevitably learn that the title is best played with friends. If you've got none, you can still go solo and test your brain on a daily basis, which is still fun, but you'll be missing out on one of the console version's biggest advantages, which is the two-player simultaneous play or up to eight-player trade-off play, both robust and addictive. You'll begin the game with a test, which ranks your brain in five categories, from identify and visualize to compute, memorize and analyze. You're scored an initial brain size for your (hopefully stunning) performance and it's this early ranking that is used as a base for all your follow-up endeavors; the game constantly judges how you've improved over time with easy-to-follow stats. From there, you can wander the very small hallway of the academy, where you can take solo tests or go into group mode to play mind sprint, mental marathon and brain quiz, which are together the meat and potatoes of the effort.

Buried within the five mental categories are some 15 different challenges plus a couple additional puzzlers. First off, we'd have preferred at least twice that number as most people will see and play through all 15 offerings during their initial sitting. Like any brain game, these modes won't grow boring in a matter of days -- math problems will always present a challenge and will in turn remain engaging, for example -- but given that Wii Degree revolves around these brain teasers and nothing more, a greater variety would have gone a long way. Still, all but one or two of the challenges are fun, if not intoxicating. Games include mathematical sum ups where you're shown a series of numbered balloons and you have to point with the Wii remote and pop them from lowest to highest; boards where you must lay down train track from Point A to B, figuring out exactly where the turns and straightaway pieces go; spinning blocks that must be matched to their on-screen counterpart; you'll use the Wii remote as a flashlight to illuminate animals hiding in the darkness and then select which breed is shown the most; you'll look at different pictures and determine which one is out of place; and you'll select which three of six cages are housing birds beneath their cloth covers -- a real pain in the you know what. Call them mental challenges or mini-games, the result is the same: they play well, they're engaging and they're good fun.

Wii Degree really tries to use the Wii remote's pitiful Hallmark card-quality internal speaker. We give the developer credit. There's a mini-game where you have to hold the remote up to your ear as though it were a phone. Then a voice calls out various food orders into your ear and you have to quickly point at the screen and select the items in the correct order. It is compared to all of the other entries very uninspired and it actually becomes boring after the initial novelty of listening to orders with the controller wears off.


Choose the correct railroad paths to get from Point A to B.The game is at its best when you're playing with one or more friends because fast-paced split-screen mental battles ensue. In our experience, anybody in the room will call out answers and give back seat guidance, just as people will shout and laugh as the matches grow more frenzied. Wii Degree utilizes two remotes for split-screen play and unfortunately it doesn't support four-player simultaneous action. You can, however, trade the two controllers between friends for matches that support up to eight players, even going so far as to create teams. Trading your controller between a partner as you both scramble to quickly solve puzzles before your competition can successfully up the sense of urgency that the game effortlessly spits out. On top of everything else, you can, through WiiConnect24, trade your player records with your friends, who can go into the mind sprint mode and compete against them. The process is very intuitive and works well. We're glad it's in there and at the same time we think Nintendo missed a huge opportunity by failing to deliver a full-blown online multiplayer mode for Wii Degree.

Closing Comments
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree is largely a success, which makes it -- like Wii Sports -- a surprisingly difficult project to rate. As everyone knows, the title falls into the emerging "casual" sector -- a target demographic less concerned with graphics and more concerned with accessibility, or so we're told. From that perspective, the title is great -- it is both easy to pick up and really fun to play, especially with friends.

What Wii Degree demonstrates is that Nintendo really has the magic touch when it comes to the utilization of its remote. Very few third party titles incorporate that tangible, tactile responsiveness -- the sensitive controller rumble you feel when you're navigating menus in Wii Sports, for example. Wii Degree is fun to play partly because you really feel like you're reaching out and touching the puzzles and objects in the game with Nintendo's controller. That sense of polish goes a long way. Of course, it's also fun because the puzzles themselves are smartly developed and very engaging, if not downright hard. I swear, every time I encounter the bird cages I want to pull my hair out. There is no doubt that the effort was inspired by its DS predecessor, but with new minis, a robust multiplayer mode and even WiiConnect24 support, it certainly distinguishes itself and gives Wii owners a reason to take notice.

It's not perfect, though. It's shallow, for one. It only features 15 or so activities that you'll burn through quickly, even if you'll keep coming back. A couple of challenges fall short, like those that rely on the Wii remote's internal speaker. The hallways and rooms of the Big Brain Academy are presented in 16:9 widescreen mode, but the minis themselves unfold in 4:3 for some stupid reason. And I honestly think Nintendo dropped the ball by failing to include a genuine online mode for over-a-network mental battles.

I think Wii Degree is a really strong first effort -- one that I can recommend to everybody. However, it also feels like a foundation -- the beginning of a home console franchise with a lot of room to grow. You're going to have fun here, but in three or four years we'll look back at this game and it will pale by comparison to its inevitable sequels.


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Scarface Reviews

Scarface: The World is Yours Review
First you get the money, then you get the power, and then you get the game.
by Mark Bozon and Chris Roper

June 8, 2007 - Games based on licensed properties, especially films, have had a long and bad rap, though for a while it was for good reason. Not too many years ago it was extremely rare that'd you find a licensed game that even bordered on being decent, though over the past few years we've seen a surprising number of great and even excellent movie-based games. With Scarface: The World is Yours, Sierra and Radical Entertainment have not only furthered the "new" expectation of licensed titles but have created one of the best so far.

Much of Scarface is based on what we've seen in Grand Theft Auto. In fact, it's fairly obvious that Radical used said series as the blueprint and then went back and re-evaluated its shortcomings. The result is that we have a game that fixes many of GTA's problematic elements, like the targeting system or having to drive out of the way to stock up on weapons, while also retaining many of its standardized and fun aspects. The developer has also introduced a number of unique features, most of which work out quite well. The result is an experience that fans of the genre will feel right at home with while offering enough original ideas to keep it feeling fresh.




While Scarface is indeed a GTA-esque game in every respect, it does have a slight bit of a different feel than said series, and in large part that winds up being a good thing. Instead of working through a seemingly random storyline with characters that come out of nowhere, Scarface does a fantastic job of putting you into the shoes of Tony Montana and letting you have your way with the city of Miami. Almost everything you do seems connected with overtaking the city, resulting in what feels like a much more "cohesive" experience than you'll find in other open world games. There's certainly a story here, but it's based around revenge and taking back what belongs to you, so it feels a tad more like a setting rather than an always-progressing narrative. Instead of helping a random mob boss simply because the story says so, everything you do is for your benefit and obviously so. Again, it's more basic than many other games we've seen in the genre, but it works very well, makes more sense and seems much more natural.

While being based around Tony's need for revenge and power certainly helps tie the gameplay to the license, there's a lot more to the game than this that helps it really feel like a Scarface title. Instead of retelling the story of the movie, Scarface picks up at the very end during the shootout in Tony's mansion. But rather than being shot in the back, Tony escapes alive but with nothing left to his name. This sets up the mood and setting for the game in a way that simply rehashing the events of the movie never could have. One major benefit here is that the game is able to quickly jump into the world without having to do a whole lot of somewhat needless exposition, though there's enough that so long as you know the basics of the movie then you'll be able to follow along without any problems.

The absolute best thing that ties the game to the movie however is how well the character of Tony Montana is represented. Though Al Pacino wasn't able to provide the extremely large amount of spoken dialog (although he did help choose the actor), the voice work for Tony Montana is absolutely superb. From his accent to inflections to the slight but noticeable way he accentuates curse words with ease mid-sentence, his voice work is dead-on. Tony's animations are basically perfect as well, capturing his wild shoulder jerks, free use of hand gestures and constant look of discomfort. The rest of the game's cast is also very good, featuring a list of celebrity talent that is way too long to even begin to list, but Tony is clearly the highlight here. Absolutely fantastic work on this front.

While Scarface does a fantastic job of bringing the world of the movie to gamers, it wouldn't be a great experience if the actual gameplay didn't match up. Luckily, Radical has delivered on most every aspect of this.

One of the wholly original elements of gameplay ties directly into the character of Tony Montana. One of the aspects of Tony's character that Sierra and Radical wanted to allow gamers to take advantage of is his seeming invulnerability during raging shootouts, and the Balls meter is the result. By performing a number of "ballsy" moves, like driving on the wrong side of the road or threatening a passerby, you'll fill the Balls meter. The quickest and most common way to do this is in battle. By targeting certain body parts (kidney, head, arms, groin, etc.) you'll earns Balls, and taunting someone after you kill them will earn you more. This latter element means that the game has a certain rhythm to combat where you'll kill someone, tap the taunt button and then move on to the next guy.

When you've filled the Balls meter, you're able to enter Rage mode whereupon you'll fight in a first-person perspective for a short while with unlimited ammo and invulnerability. Though you're playing in first-person, the game uses a loose lock-on system where you'll target anyone close to the center of the screen, helping non-FPS fans to take maximum advantage of this.

The catch to this mode and the part that has both a good and bad side is that you'll refill a bit of health for every person you kill while on a rampage. This means that you don't need to be reliant on finding health packs and it keeps combat flowing along at a quick pace. You're also rewarded for being the right bastard that Tony inherently is, which is great.

The downside is that missions are either much easier or much more difficult depending on how many Balls you have at the start. For example, one mission has you get dropped off at an ambush with no weapons. You need to kill a couple guys with machetes and then take out a slew of armed soldiers. The first time we tried this we had a full Balls meter and were easily able to recover from our unarmed beating at the beginning. Due to a mistake on our part at the end, we needed to retry the mission. Unfortunately, the game reset the Balls meter to nil and made the mission much more difficult than before. While picking up health packs isn't as natural to the gameplay as this, at least the designer would be able to perfectly plan a mission's layout. With the Balls meter, it's impossible for them to tell how full it'll be when you enter, which can be the difference between either walking through everyone or dying in seconds.





One of the ways that Radical has drastically improved upon most open world games is in terms of the aiming system. The controls work in a freelook manner, much like Max Payne or other third-person shooters, allowing you to freely aim and take out enemies. You'll actually earn more Balls for doing things this way, so you're rewarded for skill. If you want to use the lock-on system however, which most folks probably will, you simply need to aim near an enemy and press the appropriate button. This means that you don't need to tap the lock button and then hope it finds someone relevant. If you want to shoot at a specific soldier, simply aim in his general direction and then hit the button - it's simple and works very well. Once you've targeted an enemy, the aim controls then move your reticule inside the lock-on area, allowing you to target specific body parts for more Balls or a headshot or what have you. It's a great system that works almost flawlessly.

Where Scarface rises above most of its competition is in its elements beyond the core action. You're able to buy properties and turn them into fronts for selling drugs, take over warehouses and then go on dispersion missions to collect your loot, hire goons to protect your fronts and more. All of this is manageable via a nicely set up phone menu (which is far more advanced than what we remember from the '80s).



This whole system gives weight to buying properties. Rather than simply owning them to act as safe houses or to increase your ownership of the land (which they also do), you're directly rewarded for the areas that you take over. Each front also has drug demand and price stats for the area, so you'll want to make sure you drop off your stash at these areas first. If they're overrun with drugs however, you won't get as much. It's a pretty cool system that works great with the setting.

Another element that works somewhat well is the Heat system. You have separate Heat levels for both gangs and the police, and the "hotter" you are, the more likely you are to be found and/or shot at. You can pay them down instantly via your phone, but this takes away from your bottom line.

One issue that we have that relates to this is the police and how they're set up to chase you. When the police are on your tail, you have two meters to watch out for. One is their area of influence of such, which shows how far they're able to track you. When you attempt to escape from them, you need to leave this radius, both for the area and each cop chasing you, in order to actually escape. This works perfectly fine and makes sense.

The other meter is a white line that surrounds the map that shows how hot the cops are on your tail. When the white meter surrounds the map, it'll start filling up with a red bar. You need to escape the police before this fills up or you'll automatically be screwed. That is, the game is essentially over, but you're still allowed to run just for the fun of it. The problem with this is that it can happen mid-mission and commonly happens when you're taking out gangs on the street, especially if you're not careful to keep your cop Heat down. In other words, you can successfully fight off both a gang and the police and be perfectly in one piece, but if you take too long, you automatically fail. This is a rather annoying concept that we wish wasn't present.

The last, and sadly a little disappointing, thing that we'll talk about is that game's world, or specifically its layout. While there are a number of cool places to visit taken directly from the movie, along with a number of other original locales to drive and fight around, the actual roadways aren't laid out very well. Being that this is an open world game, you might expect to just be able to go "that way towards the target" and eventually get there, but that often isn't the case, at least when you don't use a boat. Many streets and city sections are connected only via one road, meaning that you have to take a specific turn to move to the next area. This means that until you've memorized exactly how things go, you'll constantly have to refer to the map to see which street you need to take. This certainly doesn't kill the game's overall experience, but it's not as "freeing" as we'd hoped.

Bringing it to Wii
So with the main formalities out of the way, the real question comes into play: How does Scarface: The World is Yours feel on the Wii?



Great. The game feels great. When dealing with any "Wii-make" titles such as Scarface, it's always a balancing act of both good and bad. In this case, the title is late out the gate, and it's a matter of taking the Wii control (and what the game can provide to the available list of titles on Wii thus far), and evaluating just how impressive it is on the system despite being a late arrival. Regardless, Scarface is a very impressive game, and while there isn't a ton of Wii-specific additions to the package, everything that was added makes a big difference. Players will take the role of Tony Montana in all his F-bomb dropping goodness, strap on the Wii remote, and take over the streets of Miami with IR control and a bit of Wii waggle.

And though you can use a few quick motions to dispatch enemies in hand-to-hand fighting (or chainsaw-to-hand, if you're so inclined) the IR is the main attraction. Offering four sensitivity options and an extremely natural feel, players can use Wii's pixel-perfect aiming to dispatch enemy gangs, firing in a free-aim mode or combining IR with a lock-on to target specific areas of the body. No matter what your style is, it's amazingly easy to target enemies and blow off specific body parts in the process.

When your "balls meter" is full, just crank on the nunchuk (also your taunt motion) to engage the first-person rage mode - another high point in the game's IR control. Rage mode feels about on par with games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, having your selected sensitivity decide how far you need to move the cursor to turn, and the fact that it lasts about 25 seconds at a time makes it quick and easy to transition in and out of. An entire first-person Scarface game would have had some control issues, but for quick blood-fest excursions Scarface's rage mode is one of the best first-person experiences we've had on Wii. It's fast, responsive, and just feels right; a true testament to the game's control.

The advantage of IR continues when transitioning to vehicle combat, as direct cursor control (that doesn't require your right thumb) is exactly what was needed to streamline the driving/shooting experience. The idea is to steer with the analog stick, accelerate with the A button, lock on to enemies with the Z trigger, manipulate the handbrake with C, and pull off shots with the B trigger. On the console versions you'd also need to manipulate the right thumb stick, but with the IR it's a hands-free control situation, so you can keep your digits on the buttons where they belong, and attack enemies in a much more intuitive manner. It's the little things that change with Scarface Wii, but those little things make it an extremely impressive package.

Aside from the minor Wii-specific changes, you'll still get the same brutal Scarface package as on the other consoles. We're impressed at the amount of business management, strategy, and overall "smart gameplay" that Scarface embraces, and the fact that the game is a GTA clone is actually a great fit for the Wii, as we're GTA-less in Nintendo Land. It's important to note, though, that the game is amazingly violent, and a bit too over-the-top with language. At first Tony's constant swearing was entertaining (the language is worse than any GTA game we've played), but after a while it wore thin, and we got sick of turning down the game just to get away from the overly-vulgar feel of it. We get it, the game is edgy. We love Scarface the movie too, but the videogame often comes off as a middle school student who just learned that "swearing is cool," and really gives the game a more unintelligent feel than it deserves. Still, the list of smart decisions (to put it simply) in Scarface could go on for pages alone. The game has amazing voice acting, a great phone-in system, tons of mansion customization and economy control, an intuitive waypoint system for maps (complete with turn icons when driving to specific destinations), a solid bonus system based on specific kill shots, and huge soundtrack complete with customization options and the entire original movie album, and so much more. If you can get over the language - and violence, should you be a bit squeamish - Scarface is an intelligent, high-budget, astonishingly impressive game.


Closing Comments
Scarface: The World is Yours was an impressive game on previous consoles, and it’s just as entertaining and immersive on Wii as ever before. IR control gives the game a more streamlined feel, and Wii owners that fit in the hardcore crowd will absolutely eat this one up, as it’s currently one of the deepest and most entertaining experiences on the system. And while the package is essentially GTA: Vice City with the Scarface license coated over it, we’ve actually had more fun exploring Miami than Vice City, as there’s more to do, better vehicle, weapon, and asset management, and nearly every hotspot from the movie is created brick for brick. When you explore Montana’s mansion, you’re in the mansion from the movie. When you head over to the beach-side club, the bartender recognizes you from the beginning of the first movie (the oh-so-famous “lizard tongue” scene, to be exact). Everything in Scarface fits with the movie, and while it suffers from the same open-world issues as GTA and the like – characters and items fade in, AI isn’t always the sharpest, and the world has a somewhat “unpolished” look to it – the control, immersion, and overall soul of the game is there. Scarface is a deep, engaging, mature title on Wii, and widely recommended to anyone who can handle its vulgar nature. Vice City, eat your heart out.

Another Take
from Chris Roper
There are a whole lot of little things about Scarface: The World is Yours that make it fun, but it’s the sum of its parts that make it the overall great game that it is. It does a whole lot to fix many of the problems with other games in the genre, and it does an absolutely fantastic job of bring the world of Scarface to gamers. While it isn't quite perfect, we won't hesitate for a second to recommend it to action fans everywhere.


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