Gameloft’s Brain Challenge recently became available for download on the Xbox 360 Arcade. A small download, it is a compendium of over twenty different games based on memory, visual skill, logic, math, and focus. At the start of each game you are subjected to a series of questions from the five categories.  Each category has its own time limit and your answers are graded for being right or wrong and fast or slow.  At the end of the test it will calculate your answers and give you your total brain usage. It’s not really designed to be scientifically valid, but it’s still fun to battle friends and see where your noodle measures up.

Brain Challenge is going to set you back 800 MSP. It’s a little steep but the game does have a lot to offer.  It has online versus and offline multiplayer modes, many unlocks for new minigames, a training room which allows you to play all the minigames within each category, a stress mode to test how close to going postal you really are, a personal trainer that is supposed to help you learn to focus rather than mindlessly surf the web all day, and daily charts to help keep track of your overall progress. If you’re totally full of yourself you can post your score to the online leaderboard to see where you measure up.

This game can be a fun for a single player but I would highly recommend it for parties or large groups of friends.  If you have a massive ego and think all of your friends ride the short bus and lick the windows then you will very likely find this to be entertaining.