Much as we’d love to be just a shade smarter, we’re not about to start reading a dictionary or poring over an algebra textbook for kicks. While American Mensa Academy makes an admirable attempt to inject some whimsy into what’s basically recreational test-taking, it offers little that’d meet even a mathlete’s definition of fun.
Each of the five basic disciplines — language, numeracy, logic, visual, and memory — comes with a collection of 20 increasingly hard quizzes, each composed of 10 “puzzles” with varying goals and requirements. You’ll carefully select words in alphabetical order, fill in missing numerals and shapes in equations and logical series, memorize a face and rebuild it from parts, pick out a cartoon suspect from a lineup based on simple visual clues, and more.
Such bite-sized tests fly by at first, chiefly because you have to plow through a whole mess of grade school–level nonsense before you get to the more challenging fare. But while later puzzles eventually become reasonably taxing, and thus offer some satisfaction to steadfast players, it’d take more than quivering cardboard cutouts and jaunty music to conjure up actual entertainment value.
You can tackle what looks like a proper Mensa exam (right down to the deadly dull ink-on-paper presentation), or suck the life out of any party by challenging local pals to tepid, speed-focused split-screen multiplayer contests. But all the crayons and glitter in the world can’t disguise the fact that this game is really just an animated examination booklet with a price tag.
PUBLISHER: Square Enix • DEVELOPER: Silverball Studios • ESRB: Everyone • MULTIPLAYER: 4 in split-screen mode • ACHIEVEMENTS: Onerous • COST: 800 Microsoft Points ($10) • RELEASE DATE: December 12, 2012
+ Categorized quiz series offer hundreds of reasonably varied puzzles that eventually require considerable effort.
– Too much busywork filler before you reach anything that’d challenge an adult.
– Dull multiplayer that relies on the simplest questions; game amounts to a dressed-up standardized test.
? Why can’t we adjust the difficulty for multiplayer matches?
