"I'd rather walk up to total strangers and talk to them instead."

Ping Pals looked promising. Seriously, the box art wasn't bad and such. As opposed to other game boxes, however, there was only one screenshot (technically 2, but I'm including both top and bottom screens). Came my realization that the single screenshot is the entire game.

Avatars
You can customize them. Yes, but the problem is: over 80% of them are ugly. They may LOOK great when you preview them, but that's only because they're in a completely different angle than the actual avatar. You will end up wasting "Money" which you can't get back unless you find someone else unfortunate enough to have a copy of this game.

Sound
Repetitive. You can change it, but after about 5 minutes, they get boring and you'd rather play with the sound off.

Keyboard
Smaller than pictochat, and lack of smilies or Japanese characters.

Text box
Smaller than pictochat.

Instant Messaging
Yes, DS had a lot of hype over the fact that you can play wireless. But are you ever going to walk around the street and find someone else playing pictochat and talk anonymously? Seems to me that the only people who would talk to you would be friends or relatives.It'll seem much better to talk to them face to face than to struggle with small screens and mediocre "games". Not that they're guaranteed to have the game in the first place.

THE "GAMES"
You get five "games". 2 are multiplayer, so if noone else around you has a DS, don't bother trying to play them.
I honestly expected other types of games that take you off the chat screen. Or at least have a split screen where you play minesweeper with someone or whatever. This was the major disappointment IMO.

Top10
You find the top 10 of a category. There you find 10 items related to it. Problem is, they can be ANYTHING. Even things you have never heard of in your life.

Hi-Lo
You pick a number. The End.

Solo Chat
The worst.

You talk with a bunch of avatars with prewritten text. On the other hand, you'd have more intelligent conversations with someone less than five years of age. They basically give the strangest, problems, such as "should I wear a shirt" or "Directions to some place".

Of course, you can ONLY give TWO answers. Yes and No. There's only about 1 solo chat that you don't need to give a Yes and No answer, but you'd probably half to go through solo chat at least 100 times to find it. But instead, you'd give a number between 1-3 to type what your favorite ___ is.

Why I said you'd have more intelligent coversations with a child? When I meant Yes and No, I MEAN you can ONLY use 'Yes' and 'No'. Yea, Yeah, Nah, Maybe, Sometimes, Yup, etc. does NOT register. Instead, the solo chat man will say they won't understand you. They don't understand you three times and they leave. Even exclamation marks won't register. "Yes" will start the next reply and "Yes!" (notice the '!') will lead them into confusion. Your replies changes what they say, but it doesn't matter if they get mad or not because they'll repeat the same problem next time you go on.

Doodle
You draw a picture, your friend guesses.

Hot Potato
The goal is to type 'pass' before an imaginary bomb with no consequence blows up.

Conclusion
This game is boring and annoying. Normally, I'd say this is my own opinion and others should rent. But this isn't even worth renting.

1/10

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/05