Challenge Me: Brain Puzzles by Oxygen Interactive, like it's siblings in the Challenge Me series, is all about honing your brain skills. And like the other entries in the series, it focuses on a small cross-section of those brain skills. While Challenge Me: Math Workout focused on math skills, this game seems to focus more on deductive logic, with half of the game being based around Sudoku. I was particularly excited about the game for this reason, as I do enjoy a good Sudoku puzzle now and again, but was curious as to how it would hold up on a gaming system.

Brain Puzzles consists of two main game types, Sudoku and a game titled "Picture Logic." Being familiar with Sudoku, I began with a bit of this logic puzzler to break the ice on Brain Puzzles. Now usually Sudoku is an enjoyable, relaxed game requiring some deep logical thought. But Brain Puzzles immediately removes the relaxed portion of that description by timing you as you work to solve your Sudoku puzzle. Time constraints generally lead to frantic, clouded thoughts, which interferes with the type of thought necessary to be successful in Sudoku. Instead of concentrating on the puzzle and deducing what numbers should belong where, I found myself repeatedly checking the clock to see if I was on pace to meet the established goal. Any simple distraction that breaks the chain of thought, in my opinion, is a bad thing for a game like this.

I would argue that due to the pressure added by the timer, Brain Puzzles has also erased the "enjoyable" descriptor from my above characterization of Sudoku. A gamer does not like to feel stressed when trying to relax. And with Sudoku being somewhat of a slow-paced game, you do expect to be able to relax with it. That said, Oxygen did do a good job with the interface, allowing easy selection of boxes and entry of numbers. Everything works smoothly and without error. Oxygen even did a surprisingly good job of allowing players to enter temporary numbers into the corners of the Sudoku squares. This is necessary on the higher difficulty puzzles because one cannot always be immediately sure of the correct number for a given square. But marking down that it is either a 7 or a 9, for example, can be very helpful. Even though Oxygen did implement this nice feature, it still feels a bit clunky when compared to playing Sudoku with a pen and paper.

The second game type in Brain Puzzles, Picture Logic, is a strange game whose set up consists of grid bordered by an x-axis and y-axis. Along the x and y axes are numbers and colors, and matching them together in the grid in the correct way will produce an image, thereby solving the puzzle. If that sounds confusing, join the club. I stared at the game for a good half an hour to no avail. I simply could not figure out what I was supposed to do to solve the puzzle. This is already a bad sign, because any game whose rules are not immediately apparent should have a tutorial to ease-in a newbie like me. There was no such thing in Brain Puzzles. There is a help Menu, and an entry for Picture Logic, but even reading through the minimal text they included for this game type, I was still unable to figure out the game. Only after another twenty minutes of staring at it was I able to figure out what you are supposed to do. By that point, however, I was so frustrated that I played one puzzle and quit. There weren't even any helpful instructions in the game manual. Definitely a poor oversight by Oxygen Interactive.

In both game types, Brain Puzzles records and keeps track of your performance. It even graphs out your current ratings in categories like Mental Power, Accuracy, Stability, Judgement, and Luck. This is a nice touch, because you can see a visual representation of your progress. It does provide some satisfaction and positive feedback to see your chart expand when your ratings increase. This rating system also serves as the explanation for that darn timer I mentioned above. It's nice to know the game uses that timer to actually provide feedback on your performance, and not just to stress you out. But I think I could still do without it.

As with other entries in the Challenge Me series, there doesn't feel like there is a whole lot to this game. With only two game types, this game barely earns the plural "s" in the title "Brain Puzzles." And with one of those types seemingly a confusing, frustrating mess, this game does not fare too well. On top of that, I really think I'd prefer a pen and paper with which to enjoy Sudoku. It's simply more enjoyable. Perhaps instead of producing a series of titles lacking content, Oxygen Interactive could think about combining content into one game. As it stands right now, the Challenge Me series provides two game types per title, when it really should be a "collection" of games. Challenge Me: Math Workout, and Challenge Me: Brain Puzzles could very easily be one title, and then at least the consumer would have four game types to choose from. Instead, being split into two titles, the value is extremely minimized. I would recommend looking elsewhere if you're interested in honing your brain skills.

Gameplay: 7.4
This is about the only thing the game does well. The selection and entry of numbers in Sudoku is very smooth and works well. There are also some nice options to customize the experience, like whether to allow a duplicate number to be entered in a section.

Graphics: 4.2
The graphics are very, very plain and simple. If you can picture a Sudoku board in a newspaper, that's basically what the graphics look like. Picture Logic is even more simplistic. Sometimes simple implies elegance, but not in this case.

Sound: 5.4
The music is satisfactory, but certainly nothing memorable. The sound effects are plain, and don't get in the way of the game. I'm glad the sound is not noticeably bad, but it would be nice if it was noticeably good.

Difficulty: Hard
I'm going to say hard, just because one half of the game is a mess and is very difficult to figure out. The other half, Sudoku, is also not an easy game unless you're playing an entry-level puzzle.

Concept: 3.5
I would venture a guess that Sudoku probably appears on at least 8-10 different DS titles. It's been done. And adding in a game that makes no sense (Picture Logic) as a counterpart to Sudoku does not make this title stand out.

Overall: 4.8
I really can't say I enjoyed my time with this game very much at all. The Sudoku portion was OK, but as I stated above, I'd much rather play the old-fashioned way - pen and paper. And my frustrating experience with Picture Logic was certainly not a plus. The fact that there are only these two game types really limits the value and appeal of Challenge Me: Brain Puzzles.