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 Review of More Multimedia IQ Test and Brainteasers Vol. II.

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Multimedia IQ Test Section

Product Specifications

Platform: Macintosh and Windows
Media Format: Hybrid CD-ROM

System Requirements:

Introduction

If you are one of those kinds of people who cannot resist solving a puzzle or just enjoy a good mental challenge, then IQ and Brainteasers might be for you.
Although More IQ Test and Brainteasers Vol. II comes on a Hybrid CD-ROM Disc, we only tested the Macintosh version of this program.
I tested this application on a Performa 6290CD (PowerMac, Quad CD, and 24 meg of Ram) and on a Quadra 700 with a single speed CD-ROM (Even thought it's not recommend, the single speed CD-ROM performed well enough)

Description of the product.

After the opening credits to Virtual the user will be greeted with the Menu screen. From this page you have the choice of going to the "Introduction section" , or "Take Test", or go to "Brainteasers", or check out the "Hall of Fame". If you select "Introduction" you are presented with the starting page of information about intelligence. This is where you will find information on "What is Intelligence?". On this page you have the choice of reading it yourself, or you can have the information read to you. You do this by clicking the play bottom of the standard Quicktime menu bar that is at the bottom of the page. It even turns the pages when needed.

When you are done, you can click the menu bottom to get back to the main menu.

Next, if you click "Take Test" you are presented with a screen that forms the basic layout of the test second. There is a menu bar consisting of icons at the top of the screen that give you the choices of turning the music on or off, a timer for your test, Menu button, and Start Test button. At this first screen, only the Menu, Start Test, and the previous and next buttons are active and are indicated by a hand with the index finger pointing up. The other buttons indicate that they are not accessible by a hand with no fingers up.

If you choose the next button (+) you will be presented with the first of 4 sample questions. Go through all 4 to get an idea of what the question could look like.

When you think you are ready to start the test, you just click Start Test. After selecting Start Test you are asked to enter your name and age. You also have the opportunity to select the type of music you would like to play during your test and the volume level. If you do not make a selection, no music is played. After you have made your music selection (or as in my case, I decided not to select a music track) you can click the start test button to start your test. For each test you are given 45 minutes to complete 60 questions.

At the bottom of the test window you have a paper clip and a pop-up menu that lets you jump to another question if you wish. You can click on the Paper clip to mark a question that you would like to come back to. To get back, click and hold on the pop-up menu, the questions you have marked will have a "?" next to the number.

What I Liked about the program.....

The program is mostly intuitive about how to use it. There is little to no instructions on how to use the program and rightfully so as it is not needed in my opinion. The sound quality was excellent. In its introduction section there is plenty of information about IQ tests. As mentioned before, you can have this section read to you and I thought that this was very pleasing as sometimes I have had enough of reading plain text and enjoy it when a program reads to me. Hey, I'm one of those people who has my Email read to me using text to speech, what can I say.

The review of your questions' section was very good. It not only provides the answers, but gives a really good explanation of the correct answer along with highlighting it.

I found the performance was what I would expect from such a product. When reviewing the answers, it was a little slow, but all in all the performance speed was acceptable on both of the machines that I tested.

The layout of a center window and the surrounding border that contains the main access buttons, was very pleasing to me. All of the access buttons are placed at the top of the window for easy access. There is no access to any hidden menubar and it is not needed as all the options that you need are accessible through the buttons at the top of the window.

What I didn't like about the program.....

1. There is no pause in the test. I know that there are those that say you would pause the test, go find the answer and come back. Well here are two ideas on how to solve that one.
   
   1. After choosing pause, the test would require that you finish the current question before it would blank the screen (except for a resume button) and wait on the next question.
   2. The test would be smart enough to select another question to replace the question that was being viewed at the time of the pause. The question you where on when you selected pause would be voided and not counted in the test.

      Why would you want a pause you might say. My wife gave the perfect example. Since the test times are 45 min's in length there is a god chance (At least in my household) that you will be interrupted by the phone, or in my case, by your kids. You will not want to start the test over, but you do want to complete the test instead of just exiting. This would give you a fair comparison when comparing scores in the hall of fame.

      If you just ended the test in the middle, you would get a score, but that would not reflect your true score as you have to take the entire test to get a true score.

2. Speaking of the Hall of Fame. I do not like where the hall of fame file is stored and what is called.

   IQ places a File called results.txt one level above the folder that contains the program on your hard drive. The file type is of type TEXT, thus giving you no indication which program this file belongs to. Also, since the file ends in a .txt extension, you would figure that you could open this with any text editor to see what it is, Wrong. I know this not the purpose of this file (to open it and view it with a text editor) but when you have a file that you have no clue as to whom or what it belongs to you are tempted to open the file to try and figure out what it is. In my case, I found out what it was when I trashed the file and then noticed that IQ no longer had any hall of fame entries. Now for some people, the little matter of this unknown file on their hard drive wouldn't bother them, but for others like myself who like to keep of what is what on my hard drive, it will bother.

   My recommendations to Virtual to solve this.

   1. Put it in the preferences folder of the System folder where other programs put there "Hall of Fame" file, or
      
   2. Make the file invisible if it is to be stored in any other location other than the system folder or the fold the application is in. For those thinking that you can just move the file where you would like and have it still recognized by IQ, don't do it. IQ will only read the information in this file if it is on the top level of your hard drive where it place the file.

   If this annoys you like it did me, then there is an easy fix. Hide it using Res-edit by making the file invisible. That way, it stays where it is placed on your hard drive, but you don't see it. Granted this does require some knowledge of ResEdit and may not be for everyone.

3. Even though the music quality is very good, I did find it distracting during the test but you do have the option to turn it off and I did.
   
4. In the three runs that I did, I received many of the same questions that I had in the first two attempts. I'm not sure how many questions are in the pool that the program chooses from, but either there isn't enough or the program does a bad job of making the next run different from the first.
   
5. Their should be a menu of names of those who have already played the game come up when you start the test instead of having to type your name in each time. If you accidentally hit return or add a space, then your considered a different person to the program.

Brainteasers Section Review.

Introduction:

Brainteasers are 4 different puzzles that test your reasoning skills.

What I Liked about the program.....

They are challenging and get progressively harder as you complete each puzzle. There are five puzzles in all called Shattered Puzzle, Safe Combo Puzzle, Tower, Folding Squares Puzzle, and Scales Puzzle.

What I didn't like about the program.....

Shattered Puzzle

On the shattered puzzle you had to be very exact as to the placement of the puzzle pieces, Many a time I would try to get the last puzzle piece into place and find that the game would not permit me even thought it was obvious that the piece belonged there. I would have to rearrange the entire puzzle to get each piece EXACTLY where it belonged before I could place the last piece into place.

The other puzzle

I had not found any problems with the other puzzles. Like the Shattered Puzzle, each one would get more difficult as you completed each one. The other four puzzles are called Safe Combo Puzzle, Tower, Folding Squares Puzzle, and Scales Puzzle.

Ratings

(Rated on a scale from 1 Dome to 5 Domes. 5 Domes being excellent and 1 Dome being not worthy)

Entertainment Value [3] ;
Value for the Money [3]
Usability [4]
Repeat use [2]

Even thought I was quite critical on the many problems of the IQ test, I still think this is a worthwhile product. It is one that I have found myself showing to my neighbor's and having them take the test. You get the most value out of the test the first or second time you take it. Repeating it after that may be a bit of a bore due to the repeating questions, etc. It is at this point that I recommend that you go to the Brainteasers and tease your brain for awhile until you forget about the test question, only then maybe you will repeat the test and get the same feeling of taking it for the first time.

Contact information

IQ is made by Virtual Entertainment of Mass.

Write to them at

Virtual Entertainment
200 Highland Ave, Ma 02194

or call 617-449-7567

Their Web site is http://www.virtent.com/