Best Games of 2008

By Ian Brown

Before we enter the New Year, with the traditional sound of Big Ben bringing the UK into 2009, it’s time to reflect upon the top games that we’re going to be leaving behind from 2008. This year for UK gaming has been pretty good, with some more unique titles such as Etrian Odyssey and Baroque being licensed as well as the good old fashioned AAA games from Nintendo.

Unfortunately, the latter is so niche that it can’t possibly be included in a list of games to be remember – although I wish I could let myself do that! However, there were plenty of other fantastic games that need to be remembered and replayed in the early parts of 2009, and in no real order those games are:

Etrian Odyssey

Translated by Atlus USA and then released and distributed in the UK by none other that Nintendo UK, Etrian Odyssey is one of those games that you’ll either love or hate. It doesn’t hold your hand at all, and is the epitome of dungeon crawler to the oldest sense. With only a few save points and a lot of backtracking to get further on in the game, it’s made for gamers who have many hours to spend gaming their days away.

See our review of Etrian Odyssey here.

LostWinds

LostWinds came out very early in 2008, or at least it feels like a very long time ago now! With one of the finest uses of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck to date on any platform, this WiiWare game entered the gaming realm with much fanfare and press activity.

A short and enjoyable game where you control both the wind and the main character at the same time with the use of both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck, although it sounds hard it really isn’t. The controls are intuitive and fluid. A must have on the WiiWare.

See our review of LostWinds here.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

The first Sonic game in a long time not to be made by the internal Sonic Team at SEGA but by BioWare, which alone generated a fair bit of press for our little blue friend. Fortunately the press was all positive and rightly so.

Taking Sonic away from the super speed that we are accustomed to, Sonic became more of an RPG with turn-based battles, a large, interchangeable team and various characters from across the franchise. Sonic Chronicles was met with some criticism from the anti-Sonic factions of the world, but on the whole this was a great game. In fact, one the first few levels have been passed Sonic is a fabulous game.

See our review of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood here.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

After causing a little controversy with the multiple reviews from our US team, Super Smash Bros Brawl came out in the UK – but far too late. Even so, it managed to gather the attention of all core-gamers of the Wii in the UK and sold incredibly well.

Continuing on from previous iterations of the Smash Bros. Franchise, Super Smash Bros. Brawl contains dozens of unseen characters in the past, and for the second time in the same year did the once unforgivable – merged Sonic and Mario in one game.

See our Super Smash Bros. Brawl review here.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village

When Nintendo released Brain Age a few years ago, it was the start of the casual game influx that’s existed on all formats ever since. Professor Layton was an attempt to try and pacify core-gamers whilst maintaining the forward thinking of the casual titles. Fortunately this worked and Professor Layton combines Brain Age type puzzles in a very story rich environment with traditional goals for core-gamers.

Owing to this, it’s been marketed at core-gamers and casual gamers alike and has achieved a fair amount of success – showing a “left of centre” game can be for everyone and be good.

See our review for Professor Layton and the Curious Village here.

Opoona

Created by Koei, Opoona is a RPG that’s aimed a slightly younger audience initially. With its very unique look, addictive storyline and simple gameplay, Opoona was criticised for being “too easy” for older RPG player. Fortunately this is all erroneous as once players actually get into the game, the difficulty does increase and you’ll want to save Opoona’s sister and get them off the planet they crash-landed on.

The only negative side to this game is that it’s not been translated particularly well. However, that does not detract from its brilliant gameplay.

See our review for Opoona here.

Samba De Amigo

Kudos to SEGA for bringing back a title that was much loved on the fan-favourite Dreamcast. A game that’s entire purpose is to shake the Wii Remote and Nunchuck in time to the beat, it’s DDR with your hands. Naturally this means that it’s a lot of work involved, and people have developed exercise programs around a videogame, but that’s not what makes this game great.

The sheer fact of watching other people play this game, and the Latino music is great alone. It’s pure, unadulterated fun at it’s finest.

See our review of Samba de Amigo here.

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer

Another game from SEGA! Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer is a title that will bemuse many people. It’s a remake of an old classic originally on the SNES, SEGA remade it for the Nintendo DS and hoped that this roguelike would sell well. Rumour has it, that the sequel will not make it to our shores for popularity reasons, so if you like roguelike games, but want something a little more forgiving than Etrian Odyssey give Shiren the Wanderer a try.

See our review of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer here.

Mario Kart Wii

The latest iteration in Nintendo’s second best selling franchise – Mario. Mario Kart Wii takes all of the good things for Mario Kart Double Dash!! Of the Gamecube, and the best of the online functions of Mario Kart DS and merges them into Mario Kart Wii. With the option of purchasing a plastic accessory to make the Wii Remote a Car Wheel, or just using the classic options, Nintendo has catered to all with this game.

It also introduced something entirely new – motorcycles. You are now able to play with motorcycles instead of karts, and they’re really easy to use. Of course the normal impossible AI remains, but it’s worth buying and playing lots.

See our review of Mario Kart Wii here.

Boom Blox

Made by Stephen Spielberg and distributed by Electronic Arts, Boom Blox had two powerful names to help sell this title to casual gamers, and it turned core-gamers off immediately by being made by EA. This stigma is starting to dissolve now, but not early enough for Boom Blox, which is a fantastic game.

A brainteaser at least, and an addictive game of skills at best Boom Blox requires the player to destroy lots of things. This is done by using the minimum amount of destructive instruments, such as bombs, or removing structural walls, but causing the maximum destruction. The fact that players are given medals encourages them to go back and try and beat their previous score, and this carrot works very well.

It’s always on sale these days, so pick it up immediately.

See our review of Boom Blox here.

Please note all images were created by me.

Football Director DS

There are so many different types of Football games these days: there’s the standard ones that you can play with a group of mates and just virtually kick a ball around -- the sort of ones which are trying to train you to think like a footballer -- and then the football management type games. Football Director DS is the final one of these genres, and what makes it unique on the DS at the moment is that it’s the only one that’s available.

Unlike its overcomplicated counterparts, Football Director DS does not require a degree in spreadsheet management, and certainly does not require an expert knowledge of football. This sort of inaccessibility has lead the Football Manager series to falter as of late. As this title is for the Nintendo DS, it’s very open and just requires the player to have some basic management skills and a little bit of cunning.

Football Director DS is only licensed for English football teams, which means if you want to play in the Scottish League it’s not possible without editing a lot of the data in game. Fortunately, there’s a very high level of customisation in Football DS, which allows the player to change almost every part of the game to suit their taste. If many hours are going to be ploughed into this title, then it’s certainly worth doing. Fortunately, there are also a lot of European teams, game reports and cups in the title, so with over 3,800 players to choose from, customisation is the key of this game.

The player will take control of the daily work of managing a successful football team, as well as taking a role on the pitch by organisation of tactics and even substitutions. Fortunately, the match-day presentation is optional, and it makes the game feel like more than just a spreadsheet. However, loyalists to this niche genre will not enjoy that element to the game. The daily work as a club director includes bidding for players on the transfer market, setting the team’s tactics for future games, working the players hard by organising grueling training sessions, as well as dealing with the matches themselves.

All the information that you require on a day-to-day basis on Football Director DS is handed to the player in the first few screens of play. Although it can take a few moments to collect ones thoughts and work out where to go next, fortunately this sort of stoppage is minimal after a few minutes of play due to the intuitive and simple interface.

Although the interface is simple, the data provided is expansive and tracks all of the players through each match and will give a comparison chart to how they’re doing match by match and in comparison to other members of the team. This allows the player to set a realistic price tag above their head when they try and sell him on.

However, it can be a little over simplistic with restrictions on fairly basic areas of play, such as not easily being able to change the football player’s positions in the tactics option. Changing players from an attacking winger or just a central midfielder is impossible, as they’re all midfielders. This limits the amount of depth and realism in play.

Fortunately, those small niggles are made up for by the very simple user interface, which makes someone who isn’t particularly interested in football games able to play and run a successful team. However, for many more advanced players, these sorts of restrictions will remind them of earlier Football Manager type games.

Final Verdict - 7/10
This is a good throwback to Football Manager games of old, and there’s much more to come from this franchise with little wrinkles to be ironed out in future titles. A solid title, and a fun way to spend several hours: winning football matches.

Doodle Hex

Intelligence, knowledge, wit...these are all things that many gamers would like to be able to attach to their personalities, and many of them are able to do so with complete justification. However, there’s the occasional item in the world that would like to try and convince the universe otherwise. One of those items would be Doodle Hex, the latest game to be released by Tragnarion Studios.

Doodle Hex is based around a magical school were there are various students all learning how to be Wizards, Witches, or Mages. The school holds a dark secret, and that secret is that many of the teachers each hold a part of a magical rune that will allow the gathering of incredible powers. Unfortunately, the player manages to upset a teacher, and this teacher then goes and pushes the player into battling against the other teachers who control the power of the Rune pieces.

Whilst battling to gain the other parts of this rune, the player will gain more magical abilities. This is done by an extensive repertoire of ancient spells called Runes. Each Rune has a different power: some are for attack and, naturally, some are for defence. When combined, various runes can affect the enemy in various ways, not always just by hurting them, either – the correct combination will actually lead them to not being able to cast a Rune.

Runes are drawn with the Nintendo DS Stylus on the Touch Screen. There are many, many different shapes to remember, so, fortunately, all around the battle screen there are pictures of the Runes that the player has collected. Unfortunately, these pictures are not prompts for the combination attacks that actually deliver the powerful blows to the foes.

The recognition of the Runes is first class. When drawing the Runes in a rush on the stylus, as long as they are close to the actual shape the player is after, all is fine, as the system automatically recognises what it should be. However, this system is not fool proof and on various occasions a Rune entirely different to the one that was required was cast due to a mix of poor drawing skills at speed -- as well as the system’s picture recognition.

Speaking of which, being able to draw at a very high speed will make this game much easier for everyone. On the early levels it’s fine to try and draw perfect Runes, as the game advises; however, even towards the later part of the early stage of the game speed becomes very important. This is due to the fact that enemies have more advanced magical abilities than the player, and because combination attacks need to be timed just right.

Fortunately, the Single Player mode is really where this area is important, as the opponents are heart-breakingly difficult at times, verging on Gargantuan at others. When playing the Multiplayer mode, this allows players to battle against humans, who, unlike AI, have flaws. These flaws make the game much easier to play through, and won’t require the stress of turning the game off after loosing; to simply turn it straight back on again.

In terms of presentation, Doodle Hex is clearly influenced by the very popular and increasingly common anime genre, and whilst this is a western developed game, it’s tipping its hat to various anime and Avatar styling. This is no bad thing, either, as it suits the game very well; that said, a more traditionally magical world would have worked just as well. At all times the game is vibrant and bold, with great and unique character designs and decent backgrounds to each duel.

Musically, there’s a tiny amount of voice acting advising whether the player has lost or won, but most of the time it’s various compositions from various composers. The music is crystal clear and suits the atmosphere of the title.

You can see the video tutorials on how to play the game on our Veoh account here, and you can also find out Q&A session with the developers here .

Final Verdict - 8/10
For many players, the fact that the incredibly simple premise of drawing is entirely tainted by the need to spend many hours on the game may be off putting. However, for those people who have the time to put more than seven to ten hours into a game, Doodle Hex is incredibly rewarding. With a rich and fulfilling battle system, and an interesting (albeit slightly contrived) storyline, is entertaining. This title is a must for all fans of anything challenging or difficult.

Doodle Hex Q&A

Doodle Hex is the latest game to be released in the UK on the Nintendo DS by Tragnarion Studios. We were fortunate enough to get some time with a few of the staff behind Doodle Hex, and the up and coming sequel: Doodle Hex 2. The pair who answered our questions were Ricardo Carretero – Doodle Hex Lead Designer and Doodle Hex 2 Producer and Jean-Philip Rodriguez – Marketing & Public Relations Manager.

How many people worked on Doodle Hex?
The number varied quite a lot. As any project, we started with a few core people but for the full production we were 13 people working plus the QA team.

The concept for Doodle Hex is very unique, what inspired you to think of this title?
I have always played role playing games of all genres. Magic was always something cool to me and warlock’s duels seemed a cool idea to take into a videogame. I wanted this magician’s duel to happen in a cool way, not the normal “press A to cast a fireball” and then the drawing came to my mind, as it is something that everyone likes, at least to “doodle” in a notebook or a pad. So basically I had the two main concepts for the game “magicians duel – drawing runes” and everything evolved in the way you can see in Doodle Hex.

Had you never considered the PC instead of the DS for Doodle Hex?
Well, to be honest, the first prototype video was for PC, but then we saw that the Nintendo DS was a better platform to develop Doodle Hex and we went for it.

The music is all very unique and very catchy, who is responsible for the tunes?
Several people participated in the composition (Andres Ballinas, Rob Blake, Guillermo and Jorge Badolato) everyone contributed with one song or another.

Was the use of a magical school in Doodle Hex limiting when it came to writing the storyline?
Not really. We needed a boundary, some limit to work inside. We needed some place in which all these magician duels happens, and this actually helps to shape the story line. If you don’t have limitations, you can go really crazy with the story so I think the school was a good thing to keep us working within limits.

How did the concept of using runes instead of say a tapping motion come around?
I was looking for something different with the gameplay. I wanted the magic battles to be more than “Fireball – Lightning Ball – etc”. Drawing is something that everyone can do, at least at a basic level. And it is something that everyone enjoys to do or did in their childhood. It is also something that people can easily associate with magic. Runes were powerful and mystical symbols used a long time ago by many different cultures. Then we also saw how Nintendo really wants the developers to use these cool features they offer and we went for it.

There's a fine line between defense and offence in Doodle Hex, how hard was it to find the balance between the two?
Actually, it was quite hard. We soon recognized that the best defense was to be offensive! Characters and players that constantly attack are more difficult to defeat because they allow you little time to implement your tactics. The good thing is that it also works the other way around! We encourage players to not defend all the time. If you do that, it’s impossible to win. In early prototypes (and I’m talking really early pencil written card game) I also realized that people just enjoy attacking more than defending so, if players want it, I want to give it to them.

It would appear that Doodle Hex has a strong influence from eastern animation, what caused you to choose the anime style over traditional western designs?
Our art team was really strong with this style and it also fit really well with the Nintendo DS capabilities so we went in that direction.

The characters are all very unique, which was the hardest character to come up with and why?
I think probably the hardest one was the final boss of the game, Hyperion. It´s always a tricky task to come up with an exciting and cool looking bad guy, but the original thing here was that the bad guy wasn´t actually that bad, as you get to know by the great back story the character has (you´ll have to play the game in full to know what I mean).

Doodle Hex is surprisingly difficult; it catches you unawares, what part of Doodle Hex surprises you now?
People’s reaction... Everyone plays differently, feels differently. It’s a really different game and genre and it’s cool to see how people react to that. Some of the forum commentaries are just surprising.

It would seem that the process of drawing the Runes would be the hardest part of programming this game, is that true?
Nintendo offers a set of patterns recognition tools that we modified to implement into the game.

When designing the combo system, how did you come up with the scheduled system around the outer circle of the playing field?
We needed to give the players two different type of info: what to do and when to do it.

What? Draw a rune.

When? When the previous one reaches the circle.

It can be a little tricky as it is something completely new, but once you’ve got it, it becomes a really clear and simple way to communicate combos to the players.

What's your proudest achievement with Doodle Hex?
For good or for bad, it is unique and appeals to a wide audience.

I'd like to thank Jean-Philip and Ricardo for taking the time out to answer our questions.

Boing! Docomodake DS

It doesn’t take much to become an icon in Japan -- if something appears on Television enough and it becomes a little bit popular, the mass consumerist in many Japanese comes out in full force and elevates that person into an icon. In this case it appears that it’s not a person, but a mascot. Boing! Docomodake DS is actually based around the popular telecommunications giant NTT docomo’s mascot: Docomodake. Immediately alarm bells start to ring as all product to game tie-ins tend to be very poor; fortunately, this title doesn’t suffer from this curse.

The basic premise of this title is that Docomodake is in search for ingredients and coins to make sure that it's able to feed the family, and just because it likes collecting money. There are seven different worlds that Docomodake must traverse in search of other family members, along with the food and money that’s required from the first level. Inside each of the seven worlds there are numerous different levels, each of which are fairly structured and follow the tried and tested formula of this genre.

In terms of puzzles, Boing! Docomodake DS requires a fair amount of foresight as one wrong move could mean missing out on a good 25% of the coins that could have been collected. The Docomodake is able to shrink down into smaller versions of himself called Minis, and these Minis are fully movable by using the DS stylus. When the Minis are selected, Docomodake shrinks down to roughly the same size as the other Minis -- the amount of Minis varies depending where you are in the game, and they are used as weapons to take down the enemies as well as climbing frames. They can be used to stack on top of one another to reach higher places, and they can also be held in mid-air where a block should have been allowing the Docomodake to walk over them. The usage of the Minis is a crucial part of the game, as without them Docomodake would be unable to reach most areas in the title, and they are used to reach higher areas that are out of view where more coins and treasures boxes lay.

The controls throughout the game are fairly basic, with the very helpful tutorial level detailing all elements of gameplay very well. The player uses the D-pad to go left, right, to dig, to jump, to climb -- almost everything. The buttons are used for the same things, as well. The L and the R button are used to turn Docomodake from the full version of himself into the Minis; this is done extremely well and feels entirely natural at all times. The DS Stylus and the Touch Screen are used to control the Minis: as touched upon earlier, the Minis are all placed by the stylus; however, they are all turned back into the full sized Docomodake by double tapping on the hand above him. This is very sensitive and at no time is more than two taps needed, fortunately.

After each level, the game grades the player’s performance, and after every world the game then grades the performance for that world. This ranking is really what keeps players coming back to the title, as the initial playthrough can’t be more than about 7 or 8 hours. However, getting that grade A from a B is very hard, as it’s all judged on the number of coins and treasures the player unlocks, as well as the time it’s taken them to complete the level. For getting top grades, the player is treated to a few unlockable items, such as special artwork and in-game music options. These extra options are a great addition, but in reality, grading up is more for self-gratification than anything else.

In-keeping with Docomodake’s character, the game is full of very bright, colourful and bold visuals that compliment the style of game and are a distinct throwback to early Kirby games. In fact, a lot of the title feels like early Kirby games on the NES and SNES -- fortunately, they are great games and that enjoyment factor has transferred well across to Boing! Docomodake DS. Musically, there’s not a great deal worth remembering. At all times the background music feels natural and in keeping with the look of the title, but ultimately there’s nothing memorable.

Final Verdict - 7/10
Boing! Docomodake DS is a solid puzzle/platforming title which has just been let down by the fact it’s painfully short. With a great premise and a good grading system, it keeps the player's interest for a decent amount of time; however, without an online multiplayer mode or a longer single player, it’s ultimately let itself down. That being said, it’s a great title and is well worth getting for puzzle/platforming fans.

Prey the Stars Gabu Gabu Planet

Thirty years ago a company was formed in Hiyoshi, an area of Yokohama in Japan. This company was formed from the collapse of a rural dyestuffs business, and the company that was formed has now become a worldwide success, known for medieval games and fighting games. This company is Koei. To celebrate this, Koei have released a new game titled Prey the Stars: Gabu Gabu Planet.

The basic premise of this strangely titled game is that the in a world similar to ours, dog-like aliens have crashed landed into earth, and these Gabus are hungry. The Gabu will eat everything and anything in their way, and the objective of the game is to make sure that the player’s Gabu manages to get the most points from eating random objects from apples to globes. On the circuit where the Gabus are eating, the player is able to rid themselves of other Gabus by either attacking them, or knocking them off the side of the playing field.

Towards the start of the game, the Gabu is only very small and struggles to eat eggs, radios and drinking cans. The more levels and items that are collected, the larger the Gabu becomes until they can start eating things that are ridiculously sized – such as houses, stadiums and ponds. Whilst these new items become available to eat, the Gabu must also make sure that their spirit metre is full. Eating the same kind of item three times in a row does this, and once three things have been eaten a special ability will become available. These special abilities vary from being able to eat faster to shocking the other players.

Although not all food is available to eat immediately, most items of food are considerably larger than the Gabu, but some things are just too large for them to eat immediately and they need to eat special cakes that increase the player’s size and ability to eat. Eating is not the only part of the game; there are other elements such as protection. The player has to protect themselves by collecting different elements such as water or fire, and then using the X button to attack the enemy.

Throughout the majority of the time, the player will be concentrating on one screen which is controlled by the D-pad. The controls themselves are very simple, forwards, backwards, left and right. Press the A button to eat the food, and the X button to defend. This basic control scheme makes the title very accessible and easy to use; however, to add a little diversity, Gabu Gabu Panic occasionally occurs. This utilizes both screens by having a map on the bottom screen and the action on the top screen. This isn’t really that great as it doesn’t actually use the touchscreen very well, although there were various ways that it could be improved.

There are multiplayer challenges, which are along the same line as the actual game itself. One of the best things about Prey the Stars is that the multiplayer actually has online play access. This is a seeming rarity across many DS games that have come out recently, and this online access increases the game’s appeal greatly.

The graphics are top notch and everything has a fairly comicbook/Japanese style look to it despite being created in Canada. The graphics are all sharp, colourful and rich looking. At no point do the characters blend into the backgrounds, none of which feel like they are repeating. There’s a lot of detail on the food as well, to the point where one can actually see countries on the globe. Audibly, the game sounds great: lots of good sound effects, and some great music that will burn its way into memory.

Final Verdict - 7/10
Prey the Stars: Gabu Gabu Planet is a great platforming game that is simple to pick up, looks great and plays well. It does feel a little repetitive after lengthy play, but with online options and multiplayer options the game can be picked up at any time for a quick laugh.

Dinosaur King

Spin-offs from Japanese TV shows have pretty much become the norm, with Pokémon, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh all having ridiculously successful TV shows in Japan, then in the United States and Europe. Then the card games appear and then the fateful games turn up, as well. In some cases the games are actually better than the card games and TV shows, and in other cases they aren’t.

SEGA’s latest TV show to videogame is Dinosaur King. The title is loosely plotted around the card game and TV show, and shows the two heroes Max and Rex as assistants at a Dinosaur Research Laboratory, the D-Lab. During this time as helpers a major discovery occurs and humans are now able to reanimate the dinosaur kingdom. A special instrument called the Dinoshot allows the Dinosaurs to be cloned from their fossils and into a card. Like with all kids TV, an evil genius turns up and manages to steal one of the cards and Dinoshots, and with that causes a lot of problems for the unexpected heroes. The leader of this gang, called the Alpha Gang, is lead by Dr. Z, and he’s planning to take over the world.

At this point the title splits into two areas: the first will allow the player to explore the main world and start to develop friendships in various towns. During this time the Alpha Gang make a consistent appearance and require a lot of battles to rid them from each town. Whilst at said towns, the player has to analyse any fossils in the local D-lab, and gather information from the assistants there.

The other half of the game has more of a Pokémonesque feel to it. The player has to explore the various towns and the world around and battle other wandering Dinoshot users to try and level up the party, whilst battling random dinosaurs and getting as much experience as possible.

By doing this, more dinosaur fossils are collected, and these need to be taken back to the D-Lab and placed in an archaeological mini-game, where the player has to try and pick away the fossil from a load of mud using the DS stylus. Running the stylus backwards and forwards doesn’t work -- the player has to be careful and choose their strokes carefully. By blowing into the microphone the dust created is blown off of the screen.

This is arguably the best and worst part of the title; it’s intuitive, sensitive and works really well. Unfortunately, as the basis for a large part of the game it’s also very dull, long and unenjoyable in large amounts. The same could be said about the rather questionable battle system. When battling an enemy or a dinosaur the battle options consist of choosing between Rock, Paper or Scissors and hoping that the correct option has been chosen. Advice is given throughout the battles, but sometimes the advice can be a little misreading. It’s enjoyable at first, but the utter randomness of the attacks is a huge letdown, whereas with Pokémon and other similar RPGs, if the player falters it’s their own fault for not being strategic.

Graphically, Dinosaur King is pretty much a birds-eye-view of the entire world, and the characters are all sprites that are well animated and look bright and distinct. They are controlled by the D-pad and a little of the stylus here or there. The cut-scenes and the top screen are often fully animated in an anime style and looks really good -- the characters are all well drawn, although somewhat generic. Everything just makes sense in the art design.

Final Verdict - 5/10
With a tired and clichéd premise, Dinosaur King makes a good use of what could be done. Lots of DS features are used, and the graphics are strong, but it’s just too similar to Pokémon but with too few of the features to capture older gamers attention. Younger gamers will enjoy this title a lot, especially those who follow the series.

PictoImage

After the obscenely big Christmas dinner, the pudding that follows, the wine and everything else, it’s easy to just fall onto the sofa and watch the same Christmas movies that have been playing for years and of course, watching the Queen’s Speech is required, as well. Then it’s time for those horrible Christmas games, such as Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. Fortunately, there’s no need to be embarrassed by drunken drawings anymore as SEGA have brought out PictoImage which is very similar to Pictionary, but on the DS.

The basic idea behind PictoImage is exactly as I’ve stated: it’s Pictionary on the Nintendo DS; however, there’s a lot more to it than just a simple Pictionary port to the console.

The Single Player mode is easily the mode that has the most substance to it, and for those who don’t have various friends to play this title against, it’s the saving grace. The Single Player has hundreds of different images to double tap on and then a drawing appears that’s been drawn by a real person, and it’s the player’s job to guess what that drawing is. It sounds simple, as it is; however, it’s not easy. As with all picture-based games, they are easily misinterpreted, especially as real people have apparently drawn the images, as on each guess the creator’s age and gender appears.

Once one has a rough idea of what the image may be, there are two different options of trying to name what it is. There’s the keyboard option, which is where the player just taps the key that they want -- this is easily the most reliable method; however, the non-standard keyboard is very annoying for those who know how to type. The game simply lists all of the letters of the alphabet in alphabetical order; this increases the amount of time it takes to type in the word “horse” or “tiger”.

The other, less reliable, method of input is actually writing the letters down one by one. This would have been a great method; however, the text recognition system isn’t too great. It’s fine for lower case letters, on the most part, but for upper case it confuses “L” and “I” and various other letters as well. If the player’s handwriting is brilliant, this may not be an issue – but for those of us who scrawl it becomes a problem.

The images themselves aren’t always that easy to guess, as there are naturally multiple words for various images such as cry, crying and tears, so on many images multiple guess will be required, which reduces the number of points overall for that round. Some images require a lot of thought as they could almost be anything, and it’s not always the age of the person who’s contributed that causes this – it’s their ability to draw.

There’s a solid tutorial offered as an option as well, so that the player is able to understand how to play the game and what some of the options that are often left unused are for and how they work. This tutorial really eases the player into the game at a nice pace and makes the Single Player much more palatable. The Gallery Mode allows the player to save up to 10 images that they have previously drawn so that they are able to use them again in future games, or just view their fine art.

The Multiplayer Mode follows the same vain of gameplay; however, rather than always being given the option of guessing what the image may be, the players are able to draw their own image and then the other’s have to guess what it is – Pictionary at it’s finest. Unlike Pictionary, there’s the option to erase a part of the drawing that is not correct, and the option to colour it all in with an ample pallet of colours.

Aside from that, there’s also the option of guessing from up to 300 different images in Multiplayer Mode as well, which is governed by a scores based system, and the winner is the person with the most points. This game is not online, and this game would be a lot more fun if it were; however, there would be a lot of room for abuse as this game really is targeted towards the younger end of the gaming spectrum.

There’s really very little to mention about the graphics: they are clean and crisp and there is no bleeding of colours -- it’s all very tidy. The only issue is the poor text recognition from the DS Stylus, as there aren’t many people in the world who have great handwriting in this digital era.

Final Verdict - 7/10
As this is a party game for the youngsters there was no need to add the Single Player option. However, there has been an attempt to prolong the gamelife after Christmas is over with the Single Player, which is actually fairly challenging. With no real flaws, and a Single Player mode to make it stand out from games like Bakushow, it’s a good fun buy for a quick laugh.