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Get schooled by your Wii with ‘Brain Academy’

If earning an academic degree could be half as fun as getting a “Wii Degree,” schools would no longer have dropouts.

“Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree” is a sequel to “Big Brain Academy,” the hit 2006 Nintendo DS title that put you through brain-teasing paces. In this new version for the Nintendo Wii, you will stretch your thinking muscles with 15 new games that test your ability to identify, memorize, analyze, compute and visualize.

You can enter the Big Brain Academy alone or travel these hallowed hallways with up to seven other students. Making a return performance, Dr. Lobe, the graduation-cap-wearing moderator from the original “Big Brain Academy,” greets all incoming students. He acts as your guide, but he will also goad you into playing his brainteaser games with some amusing malarkey about building a heavier brain.

While there are solo and group modes, the game boils down to a collection of mini-games. You can play the mini-games alone to train your brain, but this game is more fun when played in a group. You can also send your training scores to others over the WiiConnect 24 service so that your friends can try to beat your scores.

Each of the mini-games is short, uses the pointer ability of the Wii remote and requires you to think. In one of the visualizing games, you are shown an incomplete version of a sample painting. Using the Wii remote, you must stamp the missing components onto the painting. A computation game requires you to pop numbered balloons in order from lowest to highest. On the easy levels, there are only a few balloons on the screen, but on the harder levels there are more and some even have negative numbers.

What sets this compilation of mini-games apart from other Wii mini-games like “WarioWare: Smooth Moves” and “Wii Play” is the intellectual challenge of the game play. These are games about thinking. And while that may seem to be a turn-off for some, the games are actually fun. Kids who tested the mini-games actually got into playing them. Others who have been intimidated by the hand-eye coordination needed to be good at video games will find this game’s simple pointer controls easy to master and will jump right in.

“Wii Degree” bridges generations, allowing kids to play with parents and grandparents and older kids to play with younger kids. Similarly, girls and boys find it equally appealing, and it is a game girls aren’t intimidated to play against boys.

But “Wii Degree” isn’t perfect. There are three areas for group play, but only one area, Mind Sprint, allows you to go head-to-head with other players in a split-screen where you vie to see who can correctly answer 12 questions. Otherwise, the multiplayer action is about taking turns with one controller, which just isn’t as much fun as all being in the action at once.

If you own a Wii and are looking for software to play in groups, especially cross-generational ones, add this game to your library. It is refreshingly different and one that levels the playing field between gamers and non-gamers.

‘Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree’

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Best for ages 8 and up

From Nintendo, www.nintendo.com, $50, Nintendo Wii.