Mindscape's Brain Trainer (PC)

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2007-10-11 rating:
Disappointing
I have to agree with Paul's review below (08 August). I can't add much to his review other than I wish I had read it before I bought this. The scoring is poor and gives no indication as to where you should be aiming for given age etc. I haven't found this stretching and the verbal exercises of spelling and reading leave a lot to be desired. Totally disappointing.

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review by: date: 2007-08-22 rating:
Paula
I would have to agree with other users that this is not a particularly good product if you want to monitor any progress you are making.

The reading section is a waste of time as it only takes in to account the time it takes you to read a couple of paragraphs, but that is all.

The spelling section of the Daily Test does not give you words to spell so the score registers as a minus value meaning the progress graph is totally inaccurate.

If you are looking for something basic and light hearted, the practice section is OK for filling 10 minutes when you are bored - but if you are looking for something to really improve your mind and see real signs of improvement I would choose something else.

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review by: date: 2007-08-08 rating:
Shoddy product
I bought this in the hope that it would test me a bit, help me develop my mental arithmetic and give me some idea of how to train my mind.
Over all, the application looks and sounds a bit like you're running it on a handheld device you might pick up at a £1 shop. There is very little instruction, although it is all so basic that you don't really need it. There's nothing that gives you any idea of what level you should be aiming for, or how well you're doing - other than against yourself. Even then the scoring system doesn't seem to mean much.
What really shocked me about this product were the bugs/quirks, these are the ones I've found so far (having used this for two days):
1) The mathematical equations take no account of operator precedence and are always evaluated left to right, so 3 + 8 * 5 apparently equals 55 ((3 + 8) * 5), not 43 (3 + (8 * 5)). Not a good habit to get into.
2) On one 'daily test' I was given a spelling question, the question asked which version of the word was spelt correctly, but I was given no options to select. Oddly enough I didn't manage to score at all with that one.
3) There really is a reading test that just asks you to click 'done' when you've finished reading. How well am I supposed to understand the text? Would a few questions about what I'd read be asking too much?

In conclusion, this really looks as if it could have been developed by a class of primary school children. Don't waste your money, read a book and do some sums in your head instead... or just go online and put the term 'IQ test' in a search engine, you'll get it all for free.

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review by: grangeburn78 date: 2007-07-04 rating:
pretty good
Like Mr. white's previous review I am colour blind and therefore did find some of the exercises particularly difficult.

This is good fun, the best part is the graph which depicts your progress ( or lack of it) over the weeks and months. And of course if there are several players, you can look at THEIR graphs too.

The "reading test" is a bit worrying. You are presented with some tedious text from a Charles Dickens novel and you need to click "finished" when you have read and UNDERSTOOD it..... -but that's all it is, a time trial and it would be easy to cheat this part. You'd only be cheating yourself of course.

The game is quite good value- I notice it's only 14 pounds or so now. Some of the sounds are quite annoying, but presumably they're supposed to be!

I did get bored with it eventually. If you are doing it every day, it just becomes another part of the "daily grind" and you feel quite good when you DON'T do it. You actually feel better on those days when you DON'T do the tests.









review by: An Older Gamer date: 2007-06-29 rating:
Brain Trainer
This is a nice piece of software and there are some great exersizes in it ranging from short-term memeory to Visual and spatial excersizes. However, like other reviews, I found somethings a bit unclear, the presentation of the package seems a little rushed and quickly put together, with 1 or 2 code bugs (but not show stoppers) and they dont have any updates available.

A better all round brain package in my opinion is "Test & Improve your memory" by happy Neuron, which is now on the Focus software label elsewhere on amazon or in shops, which has great presentation, full colour and sound and the games are fun with code updates.

Dont get me wrong, Brain Trainer is a good program and it does what it says on the tin, its just seems a little unclear, bland presentation and not very inspiring and I cant seem to find any progress graphs or tables online to see if I am REALLY improving.

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