Natalie Brooks: Treasure of the Lost Kingdom (Nintendo DS) Review

Natalie Brooks: The Treasures of the Lost Kingdom wastes absolutely no time in throwing the player right into the action, with a brief set of still shots giving an introduction to the scene. Young Natalie Brooks is taking her grandfather a cake for his birthday and is nearly hit by a speeding van en-route, and then control is passed over as players must highlight key areas of the ransacked room to find out what disaster has fallen upon the poor elderly gentleman. This mainly involves searching for various objects dotted around, with a list on the top screen providing the names of whatever must be found and collected, with each subsequent find resulting in the name being crossed off. Upon receiving a mysterious and threatening phone call, Natalie is left with the unsavoury task of finding a map she has both never heard of before and has no idea where it could be located. Should she fail, though, her grandad will most definitely face a gruesome death...

Treasure of the Lost Kingdom definitely comes across as an adventure aimed more at the younger audience than more mature gamers, with its light-hearted, inoffensive soundtrack and the cartoon-style, hand-drawn graphical representation of characters and scenes throughout. In a certain way it looks like a cheap cash-in to milk the Hidden Object-loving crowd, with some errors found within the script. However, for every missing capital letter or lack of space following a full-stop, there are plenty of elements that actually make for a thoroughly enjoyable, if lightweight, puzzle romp.

Should you lose your way at any point, tapping ‘Y’ brings up the current goal, whilst ‘X’ draws attention to the area that should be focused on, and any of the mini-games that are faced, should they become too tough for players to overcome, can simply be skipped after a set amount of time has passed. Obviously, however, the best way to get good value from Natalie Brooks: Treasure of the Lost Kingdom is to avoid doing that, instead taking the time to persevere and crack whatever challenge is placed in your path. There are no penalties for using hints, tapping around the screen randomly or dodging any of the trickier mini-games, but where is the fun in doing that? These features have been included to ensure that younger gamers can make sufficient progress, but there is a modicum of difficulty to contend with if seasoned players can resist the temptation to ‘cheat.’

The control set-up is pretty simple, with the majority of the action being touch-screen oriented while key information appears on the top screen. The only awkward aspect is when it comes to choosing items from Miss Brooks’ inventory, since that involves having to hold down the left shoulder button and navigate around using the directional pad to highlight the item you wish to then use with the stylus. It can become a bit clumsy when there are lots of items on offer and you want to quickly grab the appropriate one, or even if you are not entirely sure what to use and go through the age-old process of elimination, with that particular process becoming rather more time-consuming than it rightly should do.

Considering the origin of Natalie Brooks: Treasure of the Lost Kingdom was PC, complete with 3D visuals throughout, the transition to the considerably smaller DS screen, especially with the system’s lower specifications in terms of power, is quite an impressive one and again goes to show that whilst some developers have in the past shoe-horned PC games onto DS without much care and attention, Treasure of the Lost Kingdom works extremely well in its handheld form. With thirteen scenarios spread over seven chapters, all of which only take no more than ten minutes to polish off, Natalie Brooks’ Nintendo DS adventure is sadly too short-lived for the majority of gamers, yet there is a definite ‘family’ feel to proceedings and there is certainly enough to keep mums, dads and their little children entertained, with an engaging story to boot.