Sight Training (Nintendo DS) Review

The game starts up just like with Brain Training, full of soothing (what some may call 'bland') colours and peaceful music to get you in the relaxed mood, ready for some training. The key factor here is that whilst everything may appear too plain and simple to some, the actual layout is very intuitive and set up in such a way that anyone can approach it and know just what they are doing. You can start by choosing two Quick Play modes to test your skills and this works as a perfect taster for friends and family that are unsure about diving in with full commitment. The main part of the training programme, which has been supervised by Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, an expert in visual training for athletes and professor at the Aichi Institute of Technology, covers activities that test five aspects of your vision; Hand-Eye Co-ordination, Peripheral Vision, Eye Movement, Momentary Vision and Dynamic Visual Acuity.

The game initially tests you on these skills and provides you with an Eye Age Score, with the ideal age being 20 years, just like in Brain Training. Once this has been completed, the game then works out what tasks you should undertake for the day. Now, some may say that the small DS screen itself negates the whole testing of peripheral vision and so on, but whilst that point does hold a certain degree of weight, it is not showing the whole picture. People generally suffer, whether they realise or not, from tunnel vision. This is especially apparent when it comes to driving or playing sports. You will notice this when working through certain tasks in Sight Training as it will be extremely hard to look at the centre of the DS screen and notice what is happening just a few centimetres away from the central point at the same time. The 'game' definitely helps to improve that frustrating situation.

It should be noted as well that Sight Training has not only been based on the accredited work of Ishigaki-san, but is also endorsed by the likes of Gail Stephenson, Head of Orthoptics at Liverpool University, who believes that the product can indeed make your eyes work better, thus improving aspects of recreation, such as reading ability. This is not simply some Mickey Mouse attempt at cashing in on the non-gaming market, but instead a programme backed by qualified experts in the field. As a result, it does prove to be a hard product to review in a traditional manner and sadly large media sources have failed to grasp the whole point of Sight Training. Nintendo and Bandai Namco are not aiming this product at the general gaming audience, but the sector of the public that wishes to improve themselves in the five categories on offer. What the product sets out to achieve it does and guess what, it even DOES throw in some fun along the way, as well as good old challenge. My wife gets used as a guinea pig in instances like this since she finds games boring, overly complicated or both, yet took to Brain Training due to it actually having purpose. Did she grasped the idea of Sight Training quickly and easily? Yes. Did she find it useful? Definitely. In fact, she even became quite addicted to the Baseball and Table Tennis activities due to them being so intense, but enjoyable.

Giving your eyes a daily workout helps to prevent your eyes from growing tired quickly, to follow print more quickly, as well as notice things faster than before. To help understand the game a little more, below is a quick overview of what the five main aspects of the game are (excuse Nintendo's spiel, but it makes things simpler):

• Dynamic Visual Acuity: The power to see moving objects is used when doing things like playing sport of driving, shape up this are and you will see things earlier;
• Momentary Vision: Cannot see the wood for the trees? The ability to gather several bits of information at once makes looking for things around the house easier;
• Eye Movement: The ability to move your eyes quickly and accurately helps you track print on a page more easily;
• Peripheral Vision: The ability to see over a wide area helps look out for traffic and keep an eye on the kids;
• Hand-Eye Co-ordination: Impress the family when playing catch by training your ability to recognise and respond quickly and accurately.

Between the ten Focus Ability exercises (such as Box Track, where you need to find the object under the right box after three boxes have been mixed up very quickly) and eight Sports Training ones (such as the Table Tennis one, where you move a paddle with the stylus and attempt to return the ball 40 times without fail), there is definitely enough to keep you occupied and your eyes in premium condition. As for the incentive to actually come back, well, most of the options are actually locked when you first get the product. Therefore, unless you just want to cheat by messing with the DS clock and waste your money, perseverance is recommended. That way you are not only conditioning yourself to come back to Sight Training every few days (the programme states you only need to do the Eye Age test three days a week to get a fair representation of progress, but obviously training can still be done daily), but also getting a nice reward for being diligent. Remember, a more in-depth look at the actual in-game activities can be found by reading Cubed³ special Diary Feature that aimed to see just how well Sight Training really worked. The answer, by the way, was ‘very well’…