Who says you need muscles or fancy moves to amaze your friends? In fact, the brain is just as important in leaving a lasting impression. It’s great that games today are giving opportunity for players to challenge their intellect and improve on their cognitive abilities. With Brain Age for the Nintendo DS and Brain Challenge for the XBLA and PSN, it seems that brain teasers are one of the current ways to get entertainment. Thus, it should not be surprising that the Playstation Vita now has Smart As—another brain-exercising game that will potentially turn you into a smart ass!
There are four types of challenges that will work on different parts of the brain. You have the logic aspect which will test your problem-solving skills, observation which tests your memory, math which tests your arithmetic abilities, and finally language which consists of challenges pertaining to words. The game first greets you with the daily challenge which is made up of these four areas. You will then be evaluated based on speed and accuracy, accompanied by a narration that gives you either praise when you do well or some snide comment when you perform poorly. It can be annoying but you’ll soon be able to tune him out. When in doubt, there’s always the volume control.
In the beginning, you won’t have that much variety in terms of the different puzzles you’ll come across. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t much content packed in this Vita game. On the contrary, there are load of puzzles waiting to be unlocked, which can be accomplished whenever you earn a three-star rating. In fact, there are 20 different games that will keep you entertained as well as intellectually stimulated. That being said, your ability to unlock new puzzles is limited to the daily challenges. Hence, it will take some time, probably a couple weeks, to gain access to a majority of the puzzles.
The great thing about Smart As is that it really takes advantage of the Playstation Vita’s features. A majority of the puzzles make use of the touch screen and rear touch pad. But there are also others that use the gyroscope. Specifically in Roller Blocks, you’ll be shifting your Vita around in order to move the blocks within the puzzle field. And if you take a photo using the camera, Smart As will break it up into jigsaw pieces for you to put back together.
Each of challenges does get progressively more difficult. For example, in Turbo Tap, the puzzle starts of easy and slow with the simple touches that you must make on either the touch screen or the rear touchpad. But as you perform better, there will be added elements to the puzzle, which in this case, you’ll have to press other buttons. So you may start off cocky thinking that the puzzles presented before you are just child’s play. But also very quickly, you’ll realize that your mind is going on a roller coaster ride as the difficulty gets ramped up according to how you perform.
One very noticeable feature with Smart As is your ability to compare your results with friends and people online. There are leaderboards that showcases the scores achieved worldwide on every puzzle for each of its difficulty levels.  On top of that, each time you complete a challenge, you have the option to share you score via Twitter or Facebook. Such integration makes this game a wonderful addition to the Playstation Vita library.
Smart As is best enjoyed for quick, casual sessions. Therefore, if you’re looking to play long sessions in order to completely unlock all the game has to offer in just a few sessions, then you’re out of luck. However, Smart As does have plenty of challenges that will keep you hooked and addicted. The $29.99 price may be a stretch for some players to pay. But if your brain is craving for some mind exercises, then Smart As is the way to go!
