Couple Gaming

So, I went out yesterday to find a new DS game with the specific point of reviewing it, since I am still not done with Touch Detective 2 1/2 (I’m truly loving it too much). While perusing Best Buy, I found 2 shelves marked for “Touchmaster”, but completely empty. I asked about it.. they said they just didn’t have any in. Interesting.. maybe it’s some great new game that I’d passed up. (I had hopes for the Professor-whatever game that is being pushed so hard lately, but had already tried out some of the games on Shockwave.com and was severely disappointed. If someone has actually tried the game, please let us know what you think.)

We went to 3 other stores looking for just the box of the game, but found it only at EBGames as a used copy, and only the actually cartridge (no box) so I was going in completely blind.

First… what a waste of gas. And, I would like to apologize to Ymiris for making him travel around the city looking for a copy. I’m deeply ashamed, and I shall slap myself repeatedly as retribution. (hawt)

Also as retribution, I post this review more as a Public Service Announcement.

STAY AWAY.

Touchmaster is yet another of Nintendo’s Compilation games. Unfortunately, this isn’t even the brand-name game (like Sorry/Battleship/etc).. these look like they were originally planned for the First-Generation game boy and the developers lost it amongst some sort of paraphernalia. That is is how this was made. The graphics are so bad, the only step below it is Ascii, although there are quite a few of them (3 genres, with about 6 games in each genre).

All of the games have a theme of “You’ve seen this before, made better. We’re putting it in one place though, so we should get a lot of credit for that.” Here’s a few examples:

Crystal Balls is somewhat original, mixing Uno with Tetris (sorta) where you have balls with a color and a number on them, and you match 3 of a kind. While it’s an interesting idea, it feels very rudimentary, and there are a million games out that have build entire kingdoms on top of it. Mahki is a lego-version of everyones favorite bubble phone game ” bubblets“, where you eliminate 2 or more legos to get a high score. The phone version is 5x more satisfying than this version, but it does do the basic job. Pairs consists of a 5×5 square of pool balls on a pool ball table.. and you had to match like numbers, as long as they were touching.

I’m sure at one time, truly bored people found these games fun. It had me wanting to gouge out my eyes with the DS Pen. I played them each twice, and then vowed to fight evil games everywhere.

And games I hadn’t seen were scary. Times Square had some dodgy directions, but it looks like someone was pointed at and told “Make up a game, or DIE.” The answer sounded something like “umm… well.. so .. umm.. we have this grid.. right.. and .. umm.. we give the people these numbers.. and they’re all worth different amounts.. so they.. umm.. have to put them in the grid. And each column is numbered 1-5, so they can only have 1 of each number in the row.. OH.. and we’ll make some rows have multipliers. yeah.” and that’s what they went with. Seriously, I wouldn’t even give this to my child to learn numbers. I’m sure some bored mathematician needs a break from Sudoku somewhere and thinks “hey, there’s some strategy in that!” only there isn’t. truly.

My favorite on the crap-scale was Wordz, a version of Wheel Of Fortune. The phrases look like they were made up by stoned hippies, or very unoriginal translators. Mine came up with “Regular or Decaf”, and “How did they do that”… and those were the ones that were spelled correctly. There’s also a Mah-Jong whose tiles are just too tiny to tell what is going on, a word search for those learning english, trivia for those that REALLY like esoteric information (what does the PJ in PJ Harvey stand for? Who sang Bottle of Wine? Why are you still playing this game?).
Really, that seems to be the general theme. Horrible graphics, bad planning… and even the music was painful (I was expecting it to be the opening for a Porn at any moment. Chicka-chicka-bow-wow).

It does have a few redeeming qualities. Artifact, which is a bit more complicated than Othello, and a lot more addicting.. they could base a game off that one, and make it for 2 players. The generic Yahtzee game for idiots (now with pictures OR dice!) isn’t too bad. There is Wifi support, though we couldn’t get it to work, nor would it connect to another DS that did not have the game (the game is practically Ascii.. why not transfer it over like MarioParty DS does?).

In summary, this game is not worth even the used $17 price tag, definitely not worth the gas to get to a game store, and not worth your time. It may be worth $5, if you find it around Christmas time next year.. but leave it at that.