"Worth a buy if you see it cheap"

Contact is one of those games. It's great fun, but it doesn't sell too well and doesn't get much attention. Contact is fairly unique, and whilst it doesn't do anything particularly new, it's still good fun.

The story is fairly simple at first. You play as, well, yourself. Your DS has magically been able to connect, or contact, with a strange Professor. His ship is being chased through space and he crashes on a planet. There he sees a young boy, Terry, and quickly takes him away. He then crashes on another planet, and calls to Terry. He sets Terry the task of finding the professors cells, which will help fix up his ship, so he can escape from the planet, and take Terry home. Terry agrees, and thus your adventure starts. The only problem is, a group, the Cosmonots, want the cells too, and thus the race begins. It doesn't sound too interesting, but it's a good story overall, mainly toward the end, and the ending, of the game. There is a lot of things to think about plot wise, and despite the fact this game will most probably never get a sequel, there were still questions I had after the game.

Contact doesn't play like your typical RPG. The view is overhead, in which you control Terry. You can enter a battle mode, where he will attack different enemies, which are all seen on screen. Pressing B will enter, and exit battle mode. Terry automatically attacks the enemies when they are in range. Pressing Y will open the Tech menu, where you can use your different abilities. Depending on the outfit Terry is wearing, he can learn and use different Techs, and also do different things like cooking, fishing and stealing. The main place of the game is the ship, the Professor has hidden his space ship, inside a boat. You can select which island you want to go to via a globe in your bedroom, in which you willl arrive after you sleep (which allows you to save your game), and healing is mainly done by taking a bath. You can also collect Decals, which when used, can boost your stats up, but you can only equip 4 at a time, and when you use one, you don't know what it's effect is. You also get Decal stickers, when used, have different effects, like restore your HP, get Mochii (the Professors dog/cat pet thing) attack, or teleport you back to the ship. You only have one with you, but the professor can restore them for you. There isn't really much else to it, you travel along the islands, get the cells, and advance in the story. Contact only took me 10 hours to beat, but there are a lot of post game side quests to keep you busy for another 5-10 hours or so. Contact isn't particularly hard either.

In Contact, there is a different approach to the RPG format. Instead of gaining EXP when you beat enemies and get levels, you level up your different stats. Getting attacked will get your Stamina up, which effects your HP, or killing loads of enemies gets your fame up. There are loads of stats to level up, and it can certainly take some time trying to max them out. Your stats can go down too, and if you have a low karma, people will even attack you. You can also kill them back though, although this will lower your karma even more, but in some circumstances, can wield good rewards. When you using your healing items, you will have to wait for them to digest. For example, an item might restore 50 HP, and take 6 (real) minutes to digest (and yes, some items do take that long). You can eat about 5 or so items before you're full, so you have to wait for some food to digest. This stops you from just using healing items constantly, since it will be pointless healing when you're HP is nearly full.

The graphics aren't too bad on Contact. The top screen shows the professors ship, in a 2D, rather NES style, isometric look. The graphics are all pixelated, and aren't very good at all. The bottom screen however, features a lot more detailed 2D models and levels. The will also change sometimes to a more platformer view, although this is rare. The music is OK, some nice tunes here and there, but nothing completely memorable.

Overall, Contact is a great little RPG to spend some time with. If you're done with other RPGs like Mario and Luigi and FFIII, this might be worth your time. At a cheaper price, I would definitely recommend it. A fun and good, but a little short, RPG, overall, I would give it 8.1.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/07