Contact (Nintendo DS) Review

Well it certainly does start off as strange as you might imagine

You see Contact really is a mixed bag that will not appeal to all RPG fans out there, mainly due to its poor battle mechanic. Everything else is very pleasing indeed and the soundtrack, as just mentioned, definitely helps bolster the game's charm, but the repetitive nature of fighting and the feeling of not being in real control of actions is a major failing. Let me quickly thrown in that you can either control Terry by using the D-pad or the stylus, but the favoured set-up is probably using the directional pad control, whilst touching objects you wish to interact with using the stylus. When it comes to battling, there are no random encounters

And away you go, except you do nothing of the sort

And boy is the soundtrack uplifting-ly, heart-warming-ly and toe-wiggling-ly good (am I drilling this point home yet?). Dungeons are strewn with large treasure chests full of helpful items or money, as well as lots of hidden paths to take and secrets to uncover. With Contact only being a short game as well, the factor of the annoying battle system (which kind of takes a step back from the regular turn-based style of early Final Fantasy games!) is thankfully eased somewhat, although you will definitely have to do plenty of back-tracking and building up of levels if you want to make it through to the end, as Terry needs to have his stats boosted as much as possible. And there are no experience points, as such, so instead the more you attack, the greater chance there is of your weapon power increasing. And the same goes for aspects like defence (repeatedly being hit), speed (running around constantly) and so on. A nice little touch as well is that if you choose to attack characters or peaceful creatures, you gain bad karma as a result...So make sure you do not just run around slashing everything in your path! Finally, there is a Wi-Fi option for other gamers to get involved in proceedings, although you will probably just polish the game off on your own for the sake of ease. A very enjoyable game on the whole, but it is sad to see it dragged down by the battle system...