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Encleverment Experiment XBLA

Format:
XBLA

Genre:
Adventuring

Buy/Support:
Support Rowan, click to buy via us...

This brilliantly named, Encleverment Experiment, quiz-style game has hit Xbox Live Arcade with a bang, giving its players fun, engaging puzzles and challenges that'll entertain everyone. Sporting everything you could want in a puzzle game, and going further into the realms of confusion than you ever thought possible, Encleverment Experiment is one of those really really great games that'll entertain, challenge and frustrate you for hours on end.

After my third attempt at typing a ridiculously long and complicated code into Xbox Live Arcade on my Xbox, Encleverment Experiment 360 popped up onto my screen. Of course, it wasn't long before I was well into into the game, and what a game it is. Packed into Encleverment Experiment is a huge array of challenges. From pattern spotting to memory games, logical thinking to maze solving, basic math’s to complicated work rearranging, Encleverment Experiment really does have it all.

What's more, it offers multiple ways to take part in these confusing conundrums. You can take a daily test, you can go one on one against a variety of computer opponents - this is the feature that I really liked - or you can take your puzzles online, but more of that later.

After playing through Encleverment Experiment's fifteen computer players for a little while, I decided it would be a good idea to ramp up the difficulty to Hard. Big, big mistake. Suddenly, everything was twice as hard, twice as quick, twice as perplexing. It wasn't long before I found myself shouting a variety of things at my Xbox 360, mostly along the lines of: "What?! That was blatantly the right answer!" and "Come on, it was obviously blue! Blue!" This is one of the great things about Encleverment Experiment; it can be challenging where it wants to be, but also a whole lot of fun!

After carefully turning the difficulty down to something more appropriate for someone like me - easy - I decided to try out Encleverment Experiment's online feature. With a combination of pleading and bribery, I managed to get my usually first-person shooter obsessed friends to give the four-player online party a go. After some initial problems like "Should I choose a panda or a grizzly bear as my mascot", we launched into it.

Personally, I think they enjoyed it more than me. Sure, I beat them all, but there was a real sense of entertainment as we all joined together in tackling Encleverment Experiment's various perplexing problems. Yet another great feature is its wonderfully casual and fun approach towards its usually boring genre. Every puzzle has a funny name, ever challenge is preceded by a witty comment, and if you do badly in your round, you get a comment like 'Oh dear, it's like training monkeys' to make you laugh. It's this humorous approach that makes Encleverment Experiment so amazing. It's as if someone saw how good Brain Training was, and said "Ok, but it needs to be much funnier", and then used that idea to make a game.

Encleverment Experiment is what Brain Training should have been - challenging but with a huge dollop of the funnies. I especially enjoyed being able to track my intelligence levels over the past thirty games I'de played, and also being able to use the 'Home-made game' feature to hand-pick certain puzzles and challenges to include in my very own game that I could play with my friends. It's features like these that add another element to Encleverment Experiment.

I genuinely couldn't see any problems or faults with Encleverment Experiment. It all seemed so well thought out and so well made that not a minute went past without me being challenged, entertained or frustrated, but in a good way. Boredom certainly dosn't factor into this game in any way at all.

The more I played, the more the more I loved it for everything on offer. Don't view it as a chore for your underused cerebral cortex, or as a strenuous metal workout. Instead, view it as a challenge, as an opportunity to have fun and yet get your brain working at the same time. And so, after playing this game over and over again, and loving it each time, I've decided I know what Encleverment Experiment really is. Encleverment Experiment is a entertainment disguised as a brain-training game.

Written by Rowan Brown

You can support Rowan by buying Encleverment Experiment



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Rowan Brown writes the Teen Gamer column.

"I write about my favourite games from a younger person's perspective. It's often surprising how different this ends up to other more grown up reviews."

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