Review: Challenge Me: Maths Workout

There are games that you buy yourself, ones that your parents buy you, and games that your granny buys you. Here’s a game that granny might buy for granddad.

I should be quite thankful to Oxygen for releasing Challenge Me: Maths Workout. I so didn’t want to write the review for this title that I mowed the lawn, sorted the dishwasher, found some of the missing album art on my i-tunes, and planted out some lettuce seedlings. All that’s left is to rearrange the loft, and that’s a more horrible job than trying to figure out a long way of saying don’t touch this game with someone else’s twenty foot pole.

Game? What game?

Having got quite a kick out of Kawashima’s Brain Training, I was looking forward to having a wee tinker with some maths based puzzles. Unfortunately, the Maths Workout turned out to be the physical equivalent of looking through a light pamphlet for a gym membership, deciding not to bother, and then having that seventh slice of pizza anyway.

There are two games to play on this cartridge, or two and a half if you really want to be generous, which I don’t. The presentation is trying to fit in with the pastel Nintendo look, and includes standard manga-style cute characters for you to pick as your avatar, and the usual mind-aching background chirpy dirge that you’ll kill off in seconds. One thing you don’t get are instructions for the two games, either in the manual or in the game itself, that aren’t written by someone who knows how to play but doesn’t know how to explain the rules to someone who hasn’t. In the end, you just have to jump in and work it out.

Guessing game

I’ve just watered in the lettuce seedlings. The loft is becoming increasingly attractive as an option…

Anyway.

The first game is called Hidden Logic, and is basically a guessing game. You and up to three opponents have black and white cards with numbers on them drawn from 0 to 11, or less in the easier games. You have to guess what your opponent has before they figure out what you’ve got. It’s pathetically simple and utterly dull. There’s the option to play a single-player logic game version, but it’s just a half-arsed variation on the larger game. Distracting for a moment, but you won’t be playing this more than once.

The second game is called Formulate; a sort of number-based card game. You and up to three opponents get four numbers and have to put them in order to make a correct mathematical formula. The numbers on the ‘cards’ have a math symbol in front of them (+, -, x, and so forth), with the far left numeral and the answer numeral both having their symbol covered to leave just the numeral, allowing you to create the formula. You discard cards you don’t want, grab an opponent’s discarded card if you like, or get dealt new cards. First to make a formula wins points. First to switch off and go do something else wins their life back.

Who the heck would?

I’m really confused by who this thing is aimed at. No one is going to cough up cash for two games that, to be honest, can be played with bits of paper if you have the time and inclination to make them. The option to play wirelessly really can’t save it. The brown cords, Daily (Hate) Mail crowd might like to get their kids this as an acceptable computer game, but normal humans will realise what a pathetic con it is. It’s this kind of festering crap that stands to kill off the DS and the Wii if Nintendo aren’t more careful, and that would be a crying shame.