Brain Quest: A Review

I came home to a rather large package waiting by my front door. This spooked me more than a little because money is tight and I was terrified I had done some online Christmas shopping in my sleep. What it turned out to be was a box of products from the nice folks at Brighter Minds for me and the kids to review. I mentioned my kids ages in my profile, and they have been more than generous in their samples. Tonight was our family night, and we chose this game to play:



At first, I was a little confused by it. It's a DVD game and all the instructions say is to put the DVD in the player. The game starts immediately when you do. There seems to be no scorekeeping or any other structure involved in this games. The kids just take turns answering questions much like the would when playing with the Brain Quest booklets. I was worried they would get bored. I was wrong.

The kids absolutely loved this game. It's lack of scoring minimized the super competitive relationship between my oldest daughter and son. Instead, they sat side-by-side in front of the TV for 30 minutes answering questions and having a great time together. (And for that alone it gets two thumbs-up!) I was surprised at how much they knew! (Though on that note, the questions were probably a little too easy for my almost 9 year-old.) Both of them were sad to shut the game off and get ready for bed. I think it's a cute game and something that would work really well in my car's DVD player on a long road trip. One of the nice things about its lack of structure is that you can play for as little or as long as the kids want. The But I Digress... kids and their digressing mother give this game four out of five stars. (It misses the five because I was a little confused as to how to get started or how the game worked for the first few minutes of play.)