On the DS, you already have a decent choice – Brain Age, More brain training, Brain Academy – and on the Wii, there's also Brain Academy. It's a logical step that others try to correspond with the success of these games. With Hot Brain, Midway wants to serve the PSP owners. In total, there are fifteen games in five categories: logic, memory, math, language and concentration. You pick the next shape in a logical sequence, you remember the image you just saw, you search the mathematical sign to make the equation correct, you look for the word that's spelled wrong, you try to unravel woollen yarn,... All of this as soon as possible, because time is limited. The idea is that when you do exercises like this, there's more blood flowing to your brain and that makes your brain temperature raise. If you're doing excellent, you have a “red hot brain”. The maximum you can get is 55 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can play the fifteen games as much as you want in the Practice mode. There are three difficulties: easy, medium and hard. Easy really is pretty easy. No problem, then you do the medium or hard level. Well, it's not that simple, because you have to unlock the next level by getting enough achievements. After every game, you get a report of the number of calories you earned and how many you still need to reach the next achievement. However, it's a bit unhandy that you can't see these numbers when you're selecting a game. In other words, you can't avoid it, you need to play the easy level about five times before you unlock the next level.

In Test mode, you get five games, one from each category. If you're giving a lot of good answers, the difficulty level will raise after a few seconds. After the test, you get to see the results for each of the five games and based on these, they calculate your [/b]total brain temperature[/b]. This is kept in a statistics graph, so you can study your evolution.

The game also had a multiplayer mode, but then you need friends who own the game too. In Brain Race, you can play against each other to be the first to get a “red hot brain”. In Brain Tank, you can work together to fill the tank.

For us Belgians, the biggest minor is the fact that the game is not available in Dutch. Something Nintendo did think about! However, you can choose to play it in English, Italian, Spanish, French or German. For most of the categories, it's not a problem. For the language games, it is. If you get four words in a language that is not your own and you need to pick the one that is spelled wrong, it will take you longer than when these words would have been in your mother language. In the second language game, it's not so bad: you get four words and you need to put them in alphabetical order. The third game is the toughest. They show you an image and out of four words, you have to choose the one that rhymes to it. Normally, this should be easy, but if you speak Dutch - or another language that is not supported - you have to figure out which word is meant and then you have to look at the words and wonder how they sound out loud. Brain games are supposed to attract not gamers and then it's a pretty stupid move to not bring the game to them in their own language!

The games are explained by Professor Warmer. He is supposed to be the humorous element. He looks good, like the brain institute does, but you can't really talk about humour. The voice is done by actor/comedian Fred Willard, but the one-liners come back very quickly and you just want to play the games, so you'll find yourself clicking the button to skip the poor guy very soon.