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Genre: Puzzle

Format: CD or Download

Developer: Graveck Interactive

Publisher: Freeverse Software

System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.3.9, 600MHz processor, 32MB video card (Intel GMA 950 chipsets supported), Internet connection for Net play

Review Computer: 2GHz 20" Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600

Network Feature: Yes

Processor Compatibility: Universal

Price: $29.95

ESRB Rating: N/A

Availability: Out now

Official Website: www.freeverse.com/braingames/

The truth about why I bought a Nintendo DS Lite comes down to NPR. That's the good thing about NPR, by the way; the only time most news outlets cover gaming is when some short-sighting politicians/psychologists/parents/school board/whatever want to blame video games for teen violence/overweight kids/polio/the Franco-Prussian war. NPR covers gaming when something like Brain Age is released. For those who don't know, Brain Age is a game developed by neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, and its primary purpose is to exercise your brain to get it working at the level or a 20-year-old, which is the optimum brain age, apparently. Funny, that, and a little sad, considering what must of us did with/to our brains when we were 20.

But, it's never too late to make up for lost time, so I bought the Nintendo DS Lite and Brain Age. Oh, and Super Mario 64 DS. And I've got The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on perpetual pre-order. Anyone with a 20-year-old brain will tell you you'd be an idiot to have a DS Lite and not own any Mario/Zelda titles.

Thankfully, games that exercise your brain aren't relegated to the handheld platforms. Computers have joined education with fun since well before we all explored the Oregon Trail or traveled the world searching for Carmen Sandiego. Puzzle games are continually big sellers, and Freeverse Software has taken six of the more popular and/or useful titles and brought them together in Big Bang Brain Games. Of course, they put their own spin on the games in the process. Would we have it any other way?

Built with the Unity engine and developed by Graveck Interactive, Big Bang Brain Games comprises six different games...or, do the six different games comprise Big Bang Brain Games? Hopefully, this is the kind of thing the brain games will help me keep sorted out. In the meantime, I'll let Freeverse describe them to you. From their website:

Reaction: Pop all the molecules in the fewest number of clicks. Deceptively simple, but requires clever planning.

Sudoku: Wildly popular, Sudoku is endlessly compelling. With over 50,000 puzzles included, you'll never run out of challenges.

NovaSweeper: Test your Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction with this long-time favorite. The gameplay may be familiar, but Minesweeper never looked this good!

Remembrance: Train your short-term memory with a classic game of Remembrance. Selecting the number of cards to memorize makes this game compelling for kids and adults alike.

Echo: Remembrance tests your spatial memory, now add an auditory twist. The Music of the Spheres will keep you dancing!

Fallacy: Philosophers have long emphasized logical reasoning as a means of discerning what is true. These Logical Fallacy quizzes may aid your own thinking—"Freeverse is the greatest game company on the planet. Big Bang Fallacy is made by Freeverse. Therefore Big Bang Fallacy is the greatest game on the planet!"—Right?

Most of the games above you probably know by different titles. NovaSweeper is Minesweeper, for example (but they're right; it's never looked this good). Remembrance is that game where you flip over two cards in an effort to find a match, but only realize your three-year-old kid has a better memory than you. Sudoku is better known as that game you see in little magazines at the grocery store check out line but you've never bothered to play because it looks too much like math. Echo is Simon.

Now, if you're at all like me (and admit it, you know you are), you'll end up playing a few of these in heavy rotation while rarely touching the others. This is one of the drawbacks to Big Bang Brain Games, as it'll feel as if you're paying for six games when you could've paid less for fewer titles. Yes, $29.95 is a fair price to pay for six games, considering shareware versions of many of these games are available for about $20 each, but I would've been fine with never having to install Echo, for example.

Each game is very well designed and animated, and is accompanied by either Sol, Luna or Wisdom; your typically smart-mouthed but good natured Freeverse characters. Hovering next to the game board, they'll explain the game, then offer praise, criticism and jokes as you play. They become part of the challenge, as they'll sometimes try to break your concentration. Annoying? No. The jokes are half the fun, and they'll make you forget you're playing games that are actually exercising your prefrontal cortex.

As you make progress in Big Bang Brain Games, you can track your results by seeing what percentage of your brain you've used. I'm not sure how this is calculated, and I'm not sure the developers could explain it, either, but that won't stop you from posting the results to your .mac account and sending them to your friends and family so they can continue to wish they'd never given you their e-mail address. Unfortunately, unlike with games such as Brain Age, this ability to measure your progress isn't well integrated or important to the gameplay. I'm willing to bet most will just skip this altogether and only play their favorite games.

The integration problems don't end with your ability to track your progress, as the games aren't tied together. To move from one to the other, you have to quit the application, go back to the Finder, and launch the next. I'd rather be able to just bounce from game to game from within a single interface. And speaking of interface, I had some trouble with Window Mode. When switching to this from full screen, the bottom of the Big Bang Brain Games interface would disappear below the bottom of the screen of my 20" iMac, completely hiding the menu options from me (but still showing my Dock overtop the game screen). I was unable to shrink the window further so I could pull it up. The default size was the full width of my screen, so I couldn't see or access the desktop in Window Mode. As a result, it was completely useless to me.

These issues aside, Big Bang Brain Games is a good way to keep yourself entertained for a bit without feeling you've completely wasted your evening...like you do after watching that "Are You Stupid Like A Fifth Grader" show, or whatever it's called. This is a good collection of puzzle/logic games at a great price. The games and the method of tracking your "brain use" could be better integrated, but that doesn't take away from each games itself. Like all Freeverse titles, it's a polished gaming experience that's fun, smart and fairly comical, and is a good purchase for Mac gamers; even those who aren't part of the NPR crowd.