Contact: First Play - Collected 2 Cells

On my return from a business trip to California, I was welcomed back by a copy of Contact for the DS in my mailbox. I had heard about its quirkiness and was curious how the self-aware nature of the game would work. The first two hours of play have been very enjoyable and exposed some interesting design decisions.

The concept behind the game is that a video game character known as the professor is contacting you through the DS to enlist your support. He picks up a boy from another world in his ship and has you direct this character in collecting fuel cells for it which have been dispersed around the world. The professor communicates to you directly through the top screen while you control the boy Terry on the bottom screen.

Gameplay consists of choosing an island to search for cells, and navigating through overland and underworld screens in the traditional RPG 3^rd person overhead view. At its core, Contact is a dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash adventure. Using either the stylus or the directional pad, you direct Terry to approach and attack an enemy. Once you have set Terry to attack, he will continue to trade blows in real time until either the monster falls, or he does.

Although Terry fights automatically, the game provides a couple ways to affect the outcome of the battle. First, depending on the costume and weapon Terry is using, you can execute a special move by pressing the Y button during combat. Using a special move drains your special energy meter but it is recharged by defeating enemies. Second, in some battles you have to cancel out of fighting mode and control Terry to dodge an impending attack. Third, as you get perilously close to the end of your life you will need to access your item menu and eat up delicious health restoring food. Adding some complexity is the limit to the amount of food your stomach can hold, and that some items take longer to digest than others.

When you do die, you will be pleased that Contact doesn’t send you to a Game Over screen, and it doesn’t require you to start over at the last save point. After taking too many wounds, Terry wakes up in bed back at the professor’s ship with space-dog Mochi at his feet. To avoid dying, you can direct Terry to take a bath at tubs (restores health) or a nap in beds (saves the game) strewn around the world before continuing his dungeon crawl. A cute addition is that you can play with Mochi while Terry is sleeping.

Costumes play an important role in the game, as they determine which weapons and special attacks Terry can use. They also allow him to perform certain skills like cooking with the chef costume, or picking locks with the shadow thief costume. So far I have only found 3 out of the 8 costumes that Terry’s hanger rack can hold. The first is a chef’s costume which allows me to cook food by mixing ingredients and frying it up at campfires in the world or at the professor’s kitchen. Unfortunately, I have been unable to prepare anything yet as I must be missing ingredients or perhaps recipes. The second and third are a water and earth elemental suit which allow me to use water and earth special attacks respectively.

Contact has been a lot of fun so far, making it a challenge to avoid playing more until I finish writing this first progressive review. I’ve really liked the player friendly aspects of the game, such as the penalty-free death, but regrettably the story line has been fairly easy to ignore so far. I’m definitely looking forward to discovering more cells and costumes and hoping for an interesting development in the plot. Wait for the next review, I think the professor is paging me.