Cortex the brain training, mind tricking, maths doing game is back with new challenges for you to complete and compete with up to 6 players!
Cortex Challenge 2 introduces eight new challenge types to test your reaction time, your maths and your keen eye for spotting oddities! Presented in a lovely box perfect for fitting inside any travel bag and coloured with vivid and attractive designs you will be competing to try to win pieces of a brain. When you win a challenge you get to keep hold of the card – up to a maximum of 4, if you have more, you’re going to have to discard some. In order to gain pieces of the brain you must win two of the same challenge type, you can then trade those cards for a section of brain. Once you have a complete brain – four pieces, you’re the winner!
The beauty of Cortex Challenge 2 is in its simplicity and ease of setup – if you can even call it that, because it’s so darn quick to get going! We see a few familiar tests return in Cortex 2 like the maze and the texture test, and whilst there are some new ones they still follow a similar theme to the previous version, plus you could easily combine them to create one super version of Cortex for the ultimate test – I don’t know if this is officially true, but I don’t see why you couldn’t.
Overall the challenges aren’t exactly that… challenging, but there are a few that you will find you’re more adept at, and some that will leave you saying “How did I not see that…” but for the most part you’ll find that you’ll figure out the answers pretty quickly and it will just be a case of whether can you be quicker than your opponents – which is the entire point of the game.
I personally don’t see Cortex Challenge 2 as a target for people who already own the first one, mainly because overall it’s not that different and I think if you brought it you’d probably feel the same way. Yes there are some new challenges to play with in this version, but ultimately they’re similar to the first one, like the new version of the co-ordination test that sees you having to hold up the correct hands and fingers and… I don’t know I was rubbish at that one.
To me, Cortex is the perfect game to take away with you on long journeys or trips away – which is exactly what I did recently. But, the fact that the game can be played with up to six people also makes it a good game to bring to a party table. It’s a versatile little game in the sense that I think would entertain almost all ages.
Personally I would’ve liked to see maybe a little more variation for this version – possibly some kind of solo variant or co-op variant, just to make it stand out from the the first one and give people who own it a reason to buy Cortex 2 because I’m not sure whether a few new challenges is really enough. However, it’s a cheap addition to your collection that will be great for those rainy evenings in your caravan, or for around the table on a Sunday afternoon to help whilst you simultaneously digest your enormous roast dinner (maybe the 2nd helping wasn’t a great idea after all…) and keep any children entertained!
If you want to pick yourself up a copy then you can find one here!
-Will
