GDC 07: Big Brain Academy impressions
GDC's Nintendo booth has been packed over the past few days. With enough begging and pleading, I was able to shove away an elderly woman and work out my brain with the upcoming Wii rendition of Big Brain Academy. The demo on the show floor was multiplayer-only and was decidedly quite simple. You must race against your opponent to solve a series of puzzles: due to the competitive nature of the game, you'll find yourself rushing through the puzzles as quickly as possible. Each puzzle involves doing a simple task, a la Wario Ware, but the game somehow feels much less intuitive than Nintendo's fast-paced microgame collection. Maybe if I were a more careful reader, I would've noticed that I had to repeat a certain image sequence backwards, instead of spending a few minutes feeling like a complete moron.
The game feels a lot like Wario Ware in many ways: the game is short, fast-paced, and very simple--almost to a fault. The graphics certainly won't win any awards, and although they get the job done, it's still somewhat disappointing to see such an uninspired look throughout the game. Your Mii can be seen throughout the game, but they serve little more than hovering decapitated avatars. The game's not particularly great, nor is it bad. It'll certainly serve as little more than an innocent way of killing a little bit of time.
