Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day
Your brain can take a rest... in Flash Focus, the eyes clearly have it.
Posted November 6, 2007
Flash Focus is another in the line of self-improvement games that Nintendo has been spearheading on their DS portable platform. What sets this game apart from its Brain Age brethren is that the game is geared more towards training the eyes and has a decided tilt towards athletics. Unlike the Brain Age games, which had more of a focus on mathematics and memory, Flash Focus claims to improve your vision in various ways. Of course, individual results may vary.
Gameplay
If you’ve played either of Nintendo’s Brain Age games, Flash Focus is going to feel familiar to you. There are various activities that become available each day that you train, and your results for each activity are recorded daily. A total of 17 different activities eventually become unlocked, separated into two categories: Core Training and Sports Training. The 10 activities on the Core Training side are rather simple, ranging from a variation on a shell game to tapping boxes on-screen before they disappear. Each of the activities attempts to strengthen your vision in one of several different areas, such as peripheral vision, hand-eye coordination, momentary vision, and so on. The 7 Sports Training exercises include simple takes on actual sports, such as baseball, soccer, volleyball, and basketball.
The sports activities try to be a bit more ambitious than the Core activities, but the results are pretty mixed. The baseball activity is set up like a Home Run Derby, but you have to tap the screen inside of the pitch zone at just the right time in order to make contact. With each consecutive successful swing, the zone enlarges, but the “sweet spot” for hitting the ball remains the same; thus increasing the possibility of missing the ball. That activity is enjoyable, but the basketball and soccer games are not. There’s no shooting in the basketball game; you simply have to identify your team member and select him with your stylus to pass. That’s it. Soccer adds a shooting element at times, but the stylus-dragging passing element isn’t great and it’s too easy to miss your target.
It’s interesting to note that Flash Focus does implement some relaxation exercises for your eyes after each day’s training, including a soothing voice and some pretty reliable techniques to calm down after exerting a fair amount of effort. In addition to these relaxation exercises, there are also some interesting side activities that the game recommends, as well as some basic information about your eyes and how certain areas of vision are essential in sports and in daily life.
Just like the Brain Age games, there’s an option to test your Age—- Eye Age, in this case—- by completing a randomized battery of activities. The final result, or Age, is determined by your cumulative results for each activity. Achieving 20, which is the best result possible, in the Age test is considerably harder in Flash Focus than in either of the Brain Age titles; this is at least partially due to the fact that these tests are more skill-based. Another interesting wrinkle to the Eye Age tests is that the next day’s test difficulty is determined by the previous test’s results. This means that if you scored a 30 one day, the next day’s tests will be at a considerably tougher difficulty than if you were to score a 45.
The Eye Age test also sets the stage for another big difference in Flash Focus. There is an option for Recommended Daily Training, which is a suggested regimen of activities to improve areas which were determined to be weak by the last test’s scores. If you are to take the game’s premise seriously, the Recommended activities are the way to go to smooth out your weaknesses; however, an option is available to select any and all activities that you wish, rather than just focusing on strengthening any weaknesses. Unfortunately, just as in the Brain Age games, results for each activity can only be recorded once per day.
This leads to what is perhaps the biggest weakness in Flash Focus, which is accessibility. You’re basically not encouraged to play this game more than about 20 minutes per day. In fact, after a few days of Eye Age tests, many players will just play an activity or two in order to see what is unlocked for that particular day. The intent isn’t necessarily bad, but locking away any unlockable content is frustrating. Sure, you can just manually advance the internal calendar that the DS has, but that requires a cycle of playing the game, turning it off, accessing the DS options, shutting down after the change, and then restarting the game. Players should be allowed to play the game at their own pace, and not a pace dictated by the game itself. It’s also a shame that there isn’t the ability to upload your best efforts to online leaderboards, at least for the individual activities. It would encourage practice, and therefore lead to advances in the player’s skill levels in all areas. Isn’t that what Nintendo is shooting for?
Aesthetics
If you’re a graphics hound, you’re not going to find any impressive visuals in Flash Focus. The Core activities use very rudimentary visuals, such as symbols and boxes. The Sports activities have a bit more eye candy, but not much. It’s important to remember that cutting-edge graphics are not essential to the mission of games like these. What visuals that Flash Focus does have get the job done. In terms of sound, there’s not a lot of it to be had. The relaxation exercises are accompanied by a soothing female voice and some new-age music, but other than that, sound is sparsely used. Flash Focus is driven more by the activities included and how they pertain to improving your vision, so aesthetics are not the focus here.
The Final Verdict
Flash Focus is a respectable game in the self-improvement genre. It’s modeled after the Brain Age games, and yet maintains its own identity by attempting to improve vision and placing the focal point on the correlation between vision and athletics. The addition of sports-related activities is a definite plus, but once you’ve mastered the activities and unlocked everything that the game has to offer, there’s not much to go back to. Thankfully, the asking price of $20 isn’t bad for a game of this ilk, and if you manage to stick to the quick-hitting suggested daily dosage of this game, it could last you several weeks before being forgotten or traded in. Flash Focus is perfect for lunch breaks, road trips, and other instances where you have a short amount of time to kill. It’s recommended because the game not only successfully emulates the already-popular Brain Age formula, but it also has enough additions and unique qualities to make it a great companion to Brain Age, rather than competition. Here’s hoping that Flash Focus 2 brings about more accessibility and fewer restrictions on daily play.
Gameplay
If you’ve played either of Nintendo’s Brain Age games, Flash Focus is going to feel familiar to you. There are various activities that become available each day that you train, and your results for each activity are recorded daily. A total of 17 different activities eventually become unlocked, separated into two categories: Core Training and Sports Training. The 10 activities on the Core Training side are rather simple, ranging from a variation on a shell game to tapping boxes on-screen before they disappear. Each of the activities attempts to strengthen your vision in one of several different areas, such as peripheral vision, hand-eye coordination, momentary vision, and so on. The 7 Sports Training exercises include simple takes on actual sports, such as baseball, soccer, volleyball, and basketball.
The sports activities try to be a bit more ambitious than the Core activities, but the results are pretty mixed. The baseball activity is set up like a Home Run Derby, but you have to tap the screen inside of the pitch zone at just the right time in order to make contact. With each consecutive successful swing, the zone enlarges, but the “sweet spot” for hitting the ball remains the same; thus increasing the possibility of missing the ball. That activity is enjoyable, but the basketball and soccer games are not. There’s no shooting in the basketball game; you simply have to identify your team member and select him with your stylus to pass. That’s it. Soccer adds a shooting element at times, but the stylus-dragging passing element isn’t great and it’s too easy to miss your target.
It’s interesting to note that Flash Focus does implement some relaxation exercises for your eyes after each day’s training, including a soothing voice and some pretty reliable techniques to calm down after exerting a fair amount of effort. In addition to these relaxation exercises, there are also some interesting side activities that the game recommends, as well as some basic information about your eyes and how certain areas of vision are essential in sports and in daily life.
Just like the Brain Age games, there’s an option to test your Age—- Eye Age, in this case—- by completing a randomized battery of activities. The final result, or Age, is determined by your cumulative results for each activity. Achieving 20, which is the best result possible, in the Age test is considerably harder in Flash Focus than in either of the Brain Age titles; this is at least partially due to the fact that these tests are more skill-based. Another interesting wrinkle to the Eye Age tests is that the next day’s test difficulty is determined by the previous test’s results. This means that if you scored a 30 one day, the next day’s tests will be at a considerably tougher difficulty than if you were to score a 45.
The Eye Age test also sets the stage for another big difference in Flash Focus. There is an option for Recommended Daily Training, which is a suggested regimen of activities to improve areas which were determined to be weak by the last test’s scores. If you are to take the game’s premise seriously, the Recommended activities are the way to go to smooth out your weaknesses; however, an option is available to select any and all activities that you wish, rather than just focusing on strengthening any weaknesses. Unfortunately, just as in the Brain Age games, results for each activity can only be recorded once per day.
This leads to what is perhaps the biggest weakness in Flash Focus, which is accessibility. You’re basically not encouraged to play this game more than about 20 minutes per day. In fact, after a few days of Eye Age tests, many players will just play an activity or two in order to see what is unlocked for that particular day. The intent isn’t necessarily bad, but locking away any unlockable content is frustrating. Sure, you can just manually advance the internal calendar that the DS has, but that requires a cycle of playing the game, turning it off, accessing the DS options, shutting down after the change, and then restarting the game. Players should be allowed to play the game at their own pace, and not a pace dictated by the game itself. It’s also a shame that there isn’t the ability to upload your best efforts to online leaderboards, at least for the individual activities. It would encourage practice, and therefore lead to advances in the player’s skill levels in all areas. Isn’t that what Nintendo is shooting for?
Aesthetics
If you’re a graphics hound, you’re not going to find any impressive visuals in Flash Focus. The Core activities use very rudimentary visuals, such as symbols and boxes. The Sports activities have a bit more eye candy, but not much. It’s important to remember that cutting-edge graphics are not essential to the mission of games like these. What visuals that Flash Focus does have get the job done. In terms of sound, there’s not a lot of it to be had. The relaxation exercises are accompanied by a soothing female voice and some new-age music, but other than that, sound is sparsely used. Flash Focus is driven more by the activities included and how they pertain to improving your vision, so aesthetics are not the focus here.
The Final Verdict
Flash Focus is a respectable game in the self-improvement genre. It’s modeled after the Brain Age games, and yet maintains its own identity by attempting to improve vision and placing the focal point on the correlation between vision and athletics. The addition of sports-related activities is a definite plus, but once you’ve mastered the activities and unlocked everything that the game has to offer, there’s not much to go back to. Thankfully, the asking price of $20 isn’t bad for a game of this ilk, and if you manage to stick to the quick-hitting suggested daily dosage of this game, it could last you several weeks before being forgotten or traded in. Flash Focus is perfect for lunch breaks, road trips, and other instances where you have a short amount of time to kill. It’s recommended because the game not only successfully emulates the already-popular Brain Age formula, but it also has enough additions and unique qualities to make it a great companion to Brain Age, rather than competition. Here’s hoping that Flash Focus 2 brings about more accessibility and fewer restrictions on daily play.