Train your vision in minutes a day. Nice job!

Have you ever been sitting trying to read or keep focused on something without much success? If this is so, then maybe Touch Generations' latest addition to their personal improvement series of titles for the Nintendo DS (Brain Age, Brain Age 2) would be a useful investment. Money spent may be money earned...or perhaps not, but at least you can identify numbers that flash in front of your eyes quickly if need be.

The point behind Flash Focus, is to provide you with a personalized training regiment tailored to sharpen your focus ability. What does your focus ability entail? According to the manual, focus ability can be subdivided into 5 different areas: dynamic visual acuity, momentary vision, eye movement, peripheral vision, and hand-eye coordination. This game will design a training plan for you revolving around activities designed to test and polish these areas of your focus ability.

This personalization is possible only after you complete an Eye Age Check. This comprises a series of activities that you will complete so that the software can gauge your eyes' abilities. This quantitative value is provided to you as your eye age. The best eye age possible is 20 years old. My eye age was 31 on my first attempt (4 years older than reality). You will periodically need to do this check to allow the game to prepare an appropriate training schedule.

Once the game has designed your personalized training for the day (or series of days) based on your eye age starts off light. The activities designed to improve your focus ability include a dynamic visual acuity exercise called Box Track (AKA Modified Shell Game), a momentary vision enhancing activity called number flash, and an exercise called Box Tap, that trains your hand-eye coordination (you tap boxes progressively faster over time). As you get better, and your scores rise, new difficulty levels are offered and after awhile, new activities become available. Later Core Training activities include Letter Count (dynamic visual acuity), Circle Spot (pick the circle out of a group of randomly oriented letter C's), and Number Tap, which tests hand-eye coordination.

In addition to the Core Training exercised listed above, the game offers sports exercises as well. To start out, Baseball is offered, in which you tap the screen in the right spot at the right time to try and hit a pitched baseball. Later Boxing (you only strike a partner's punching pads, but quickly), Table Tennis, Basketball (which really has nothing to do with basketball) become accessible.

Sound underwhelming? Well, I am sure my spin on the descriptions may have played a role there. I was not too impressed by the game at first. I was expecting a bit more, but as I kept playing the point of the game became apparent. You are really competing with yourself, and over time, you do see improvements, at least judging by the scores of these mini-games. I actually feel a bit more focused when reading or watching something intently. Psychosomatic? Maybe. And though it may seem a little raw and stripped down at first, the subtle nature of the game's ability to adapt to your skill level on a given day does somehow keep it fresh. I find myself looking forward to the challenge of "training", and it ends up being quite relaxing for me.

If after a grueling 10 to 20 minute training session you feel your eyes and neck are tired, the game frequently prompts you to perform some Eye Relaxation Exercises and neck exercises to loosen up. Slow neck rolls and various eye movements (and even a blinking exercise) are the bulk of these exercises. You may or may not need it, but I guess it is nice it is offered.

The game play is actually very intuitive in Flash Focus. The touch screen is perfect for this game, and it responds very well. You are mainly performing taps and slides with the stylus, but I never really think about the actual activity of operating the game's interface. Rather you are concerned with keeping up with yourself throughout these strange, but effective mini-games.

All in all, Flash Focus for the DS is worth the $19.99 retail price. If it were to cost any more, I may not recommend it. There just might not be any overall benefit to your focus from playing the game, but the mini-games are a nice distraction and the self-competition is a nice selling point, in my opinion. It makes you feel like you got something out of it. Like the other titles in Touch Generations' catalog, Flash Focus may not be everyone's cup of tea. But for those who enjoy edu-taining titles, give it a try. This game works well in the Nintendo DS format.