Encleverment Experiment is a mix between the thinking games made popular by games like Brain Age and Big Brain Academy and party game-show games like Buzz!. But this game isn’t as clever as its name may lead you to believe.
The game is broken up into two parts. The first being the once-day tests that will track your progress in memory, math, reaction time and patterns. The variation in the tests are pretty basic and act more like glorified flash card exercises than a mental workout. One test will have you memorizing objects as they fall onto the screen, while others will have you lead a dog on the trail to find his misplaced bone and another will have you complete basic arithmetic problems before time runs out .
The problem with the tests is the goals aren’t as intuitive like with other games like Brain Age. So, if you want to just skim over the instructions, which there are a lot of, and get right to the game you’ll end up scratching your head wondering what’s going on pretty regularly.
Another issue is the difficulty of the quizzes can vary between the ridiculously kindergarten simple to the downright pulling-your-hair-like-you-did-for-your-SATs-because-you-were-too-busy-to-go-to-the-prep-classes hard.
The best worst example is the face recognition quiz. You are shown a face for a few seconds and asked to memorize the features after which you’ll be given four faces to choose from. In back-to-back questions, the faces I was asked to choose from had no similarities what so ever–I was asked to memorize a woman’s face and I was given one that looked like a man–and then the next question had nothing but small variations in the nose and upper lip between all four choices.
The next part is the game show. Here you’ll compete in the quizzes with computer opponents, or if you can find someone else that’s willing to improve their mental abilities through the Xbox, a friend. The game show basics are all here. You and your opponent will go through the tests and compete for points so you can unlock more in-game mascots that will keep you company as you play. This section of the game some more playability because of the computer opponents you’ll face, but it’s not a big enough difference from the daily tests.
Aside from the inconsistent difficulty, Encleverment Experiment is an average thinking game with a funny and engaging presentation and with an art style and narration that seems like it’s pulled off of a Saturday morning cartoon. But the real problem with this game it missed the bus for the mental-exercise craze that was all the rage a few years ago. With other games, like Big Brain Academy, that got the degree of difficulty and playability just right then Encleverment Experiment can’t compare. But if you need a quiz game for the Xbox, this would be an OK choice.
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