riginal RPGs haven’t enjoyed a whole lot of success on the Nintendo DS, but Atlus is hoping to change all that with Contact. Developed by Grasshopper and Marvelous Interactive, Contact fuses MMORPG-style combat with a traditional single player experience with impressive results.
The game begins with an isometric view of the inside of a spaceship. An old man types away at his computer while his pet dog/cat/alien Mochi scratches itself. You’ll sit there for a good 20 seconds before you realize you have to poke The Professor with your stylus. Here he actually talks to you through the screen, explaining that the DS is some sort of inter-dimensional communication device. He proceeds to ask your name, hometown, favorite food, etc., which I’m sure will pop up cleverly later on in the game when players have long forgotten about entering the info.
Not long after, The Professor is pursued by another ship and is forced to crash land on an Earth-like planet. His ship’s power cells have been blown off and you must help him collect them. But since you are an observer in Contact, you must get someone else to do your dirty work. Through a haphazard turn of events, The Professor ends up kidnapping a boy named Terry and forces him to collect the scattered cells. The top screen serves as a surveillance camera on The Professor’s ship (cartoony graphics), and the bottom screen will follow Terry around (more realistic pre-rendered backgrounds). Players will essentially serve as the communication link between the two characters. Most of the time all of the important action will take place on the bottom screen, but every once in a while The Professor will impart a useful tip up top.
As previously stated, combat leans a little more to the World of Warcraft side than traditional turn-based Final Fantasy fights. You have to manually switch Terry over to his battle stance and move him close to the enemy. Then he’ll start automatically pounding away. Terry’s three different weapon types include punching (brass knuckles and claws), slashing (knives and swords), and striking (clubs and staves).
By obtaining various costumes, Terry can learn new types of magic and job skills as well. Magic includes earth, wind, fire, and water. This seems to be the only way to pull off ranged attacks at this point. Jobs include cooking, fishing, and thievery. The first two are pretty self explanatory, but thievery is primarily about picking locks on treasure chests and forbidden doors.
The more you use a specific weapon type, magic, or job skill, the more it will level up and bring forth new techs. If you wear the water costume, for example, and make a point to use water-based spells as much as possible, you’ll learn more advanced spells and also learn some passive techs as well. These can do things like lower enemy defenses or increase your parrying skills. But instead of making players stock up on ether or some other magic replenishing material, Contact includes a meter that refills as you kill more enemies. This way you can blow through techs as the points roll in or save them up for a boss battle.
In addition to the costume system, Contact has a few other quirks that set it apart as well. As you eat food, other stat boosts will go along with the general health boost you’re used to. These boosts will only last as long as the food takes to digest in your stomach – anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. There’s also a stomach gauge the displays how full you are. This means that if you’re still digesting all of those cheeseburgers, barbequed ribs, and fruit you ate, it will be impossible to heal until your guts make some room. This doesn’t pose too much of a problem against standard enemies, but it adds a whole new level of challenge against bosses.
Terry also builds a reputation depending on his actions around the world. If you make him beat up defenseless pigs, sheep, or townspeople, everyone will give him the cold shoulder or even come after him. Plus, your stats in bravery, karma, and fame help determine if girls want to date you. Contact doesn’t seem to take this system to the extreme of some other games, but it still provides some variety.
The decal system shakes things up as well. Terry can obtain stickers that he puts on himself for stat boosts or use them actively in the field. To use a decal, you have to go into the menu and peel the sticker off using the touch screen. Then you smack it on the main battle screen and smooth it out with the stylus. The battle decals can do anything from transforming enemies into harmless farm animals, summoning Mochi, or transporting Terry back to the ship.
In fact, this is just the start of Contact’s use of the DS’s functionality. Pretty much the entire game can be controlled using the touch screen if you prefer. Moving, fighting, and menu navigation can all be handled with the stylus or alternately with the buttons. Most players will probably end up using a combination of the two. Stylus movement is great when you’re trying to get from point A to point B, but the D-pad is the way to go for more urgent situations – and there will be plenty of those.
Despite its cheery veneer, Contact actually includes a decent amount of challenge. A well-paced flow of stronger new enemies will always keep you on your toes, and the bosses are nothing to scoff at either. For the human sized bosses you’ll have to find the most effective weapon in your inventory to use against its particular weakness, pace out your special attacks, and figure out what kind of food to eat so that you won’t fill up too quickly. The larger bosses are a whole different story. We fought against a giant crystal monster that took up most of the bottom screen. Up top was a giant hole in the ceiling that we could use to predict where deadly boulders were going to fall. Dodging his huge arms and attacking his weak points for “massive damage” felt extremely close to an action game, and was a welcome change in gameplay and strategy.
Contact also has a limited online aspect as well. While we weren’t able to try it out, we did talk to a rep from Atlus about what to expect with the mode. The “contact” mode allows you to hook up with friends over the Nintendo WiFi Connection – but not like you think. Your friends appear as NPCs in your own personal “WiFisland.” Instead of having a bunch of Terrys running around, Grasshopper decided to make the appearance of your friends “randomly generated.” So not only with your friends act like NPCs, but they’ll look like them too. The overall goal of the online component is apparently to help you earn unique items that are not available in the main game. Whether this is accomplished through trading or some other method is yet to be seen.
Overall, Contact has a lot of promise and I’m definitely excited about it. Though there are a few minor annoyances that I could do without. For example, when you set sail for a new island you actually have to wait a few minutes in real time to get there. I ended up just setting down the DS and checking my e-mail until the next stage came up. Also, you can only change outfits on The Professor’s ship unless you find a new one in the middle of a level. This means a whole lot of pointless running around for something Grasshopper could have just included in the menu screen. But maybe these pesky functions simply exist so that you can get a power up later on to get rid of them.
Gouichi Suda’s Grasshopper team seems to have taken the quirkiness they’re known for (Killer 7) and made an in-depth, yet fun RPG. This could be the next third-party DS hit, which is unfortunately becoming more rare these days.