"Kirsch", "assiduous", "fishwife", "silage", and "exigent" are just a few of the words I now understand for the first time, and it's all thanks to My Word Coach. This DS game is clearly an attempt to jump on the brain training craze initiated by Nintendo's own Brain Age series. The difference is that while Brain Age has you completing various exercises with only vague promises of the healthy benefits, My Word Coach focuses on a concrete goal —learning new words— with easily verifiable results. I've played Brain Age for weeks straight, and I still can't say for sure whether it made me smarter or able to think faster, but I can demonstrably show that My Word Coach has expanded my vocabulary in just a few days. In that sense, Ubisoft's edutainment experiment is successful.

The interface is simple because quick play and creating a new file are cleverly combined into one mode. If you've never played the game before, it gives you a few minutes to try the word-based mini-games before asking you whether you want to create your own profile to track daily progress. If you do, your progress up to that point will be counted towards your first day of training. This is a great idea that simplifies the menu choices for new players and avoids bogging them down with a lot of profile creation tools until after they've had a chance to play the game.

Instead of a Brain Age or Eye Age, this game uses Expression Potential as the criterion of value to describe your progress. Your Expression Potential is a percentage that is initially determined by a strange test in which you are shown a long series of words and asked simply whether you recognize each one. It would be easy to lie and just say "yes" to all of them, but some of the words are intentionally misspelled or are completely made up, so the game forces at least partial honesty on the process. After you receive the starting value for your Expression Potential, it can be increased 1% per day by completing a barrage of vocabulary exercises that make up the bulk of the game.

There are several exercises with varying methods of introducing new words and reinforcing ones you may have seen but still don't fully understand. Some of these mini-games focus more on spelling, while others ask you to match words with their definitions. There's even a Tetris-style falling blocks game in which you tap on letter blocks to spell out new words. These tasks range from thirty seconds to a couple of minutes each, and they all end with a chance to review the words and their meanings at your leisure. The game also keeps a unified glossary of every word you've ever seen in the exercises, so you can always go back and look up something you can't quite remember. The definitions come from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, so you can feel confident about the game's accuracy. Every day, you'll be shown how many words you must correctly identify across all the different mini-games to increment your Expression Potential.

That's where my main criticism comes in. The daily quota of words grows large very quickly, on the order of 150 words, and that means you are expected to play for about thirty minutes before getting credit for your work. Thirty minutes is quite a long session compared to other brain training games, and it will probably have to be completed in two or three bursts if you're fairly busy. I'm all for these games allowing longer play sessions, but it should be optional. My Word Coach requires these lengthy sessions just to make progress and satisfy the basic training requirements. It also can't back up these huge word quotas with a sufficient number and variety of mini-games. Passing 150 words means that you will have to play every mini-game twice or even three times, and some of these exercises are heavily redundant in the first place. The result is that My Word Coach, while initially fresh and fun, starts to feel like work after only a few days of routine playing.

There is little else to say about My Word Coach; it's a simple game with a simple purpose. It does succeed at what it claims to do, and if that's your only concern, I can recommend it as an effective product. It is not, however, a particularly fun game in the long run, mainly due to the limited number of mini-games and the mountainous requirements for daily progress. This is a classic case of a good idea with lackluster execution, making My Word Coach the kind of game that I'd like to see followed up with an expanded and improved sequel.