Let's face it; games like Brain Age have developers scrambling to make their own mind games. They even go and recruit comics like Fred Willard to attempt to spice things up. Unfortunately, loading times and repetitive game play without variety is all that Hot Brain has to offer.
Hot Brain is basically a small IQ test that you can blast through in about five minutes, granted the test area is timed so that’s about all the time you get. You can practice the various sections over and over again but repetitiveness will ensue. The puzzles involve picture matching, math questions, Picto-Rhymes and even sound matching. The puzzle modes themselves aren't that bad, but they offer little variety after you play the game a few times. After the tests you get a brain temperature based on how well you did, cold to hot. Like the title you want to have a hot brain, and depending the difficultly level it’s not tough to achieve.
In between modes they have a professor that will make a comment about your playing who is voiced by Fred Willard. Having a comic voice over in the game is not a bad idea by any means, but there is a problem. When you finish a puzzle the PSP has to load the video of the professor, in which you get a one-liner of some sort. It then has to load either the next puzzle or your score depending on where you are in game play. If it was instant loading it wouldn't be a problem, but the excessive load times on the PSP make it extremely annoying.
Hopefully on the PSP Slim the load times would be better, but the odds of you continue to play the game after playing it on the original PSP are going to be fairly slim. The only extended play option available is multiplayer over local network and you all have to have a copy of the game in order to play. No game sharing with this game unfortunately. Trying to find three friends that actually want to play could be an interesting task.
Overall the load times, repetitive game play really hurt Hot Brain. The puzzles at first are entertaining but there is not enough game play to keep one interested for long.
Hot Brain is rated E (Everyone) by the ESRB.
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