Contact: Second Play - Collected 4 Cells

After my last progressive review, I was interested in getting back into Contact, but it had not really hooked me yet. Things changed. I soon found myself having difficulty pulling myself away from the game, and sometimes I only took a break when my battery died. What had happened was that the game started to realize its potential.

At first Contact gave the false impression of being a grind with the occasional plot reward. Each town had new more expensive and more powerful weapons. Enemies from the first island showed up later with different colour stripes; they were exactly the same as before but with more health. Yawn. Or so I thought. Contact quickly redeemed itself with a combo of talents loaned from a number of my favourite titles: witty banter (Earthbound, Wild Arms), wacky enemies (Earthbound, Persona), retro flashbacks (Baten Kaitos), addictive collecting, girlfriend making (Harvest Moon), and fun diversions like cooking and fishing (Animal Crossing).

Contact’s unique concept that you are you, talking with the professor and controlling a boy with the DS, started to actually have some impact. Something was interfering with my communication across dimensions and all I could do was watch the boy regain control of himself. I guess I never thought about whether or not he wanted to be forced through the dungeons, fighting to the edge of death. Now I was waiting for him to decide whether or not he wanted to go back home and leave the professor’s cell collecting mission. It made the premise of being more than a game more visible. I started to interact with the boy by helping him, like flicking coconuts off trees with my stylus, instead of controlling him directly.

Costumes have continued to play an important part in the game, and have advanced beyond combat. Solving some puzzles require you to wear specific costumes. Unfortunately this exposed an annoying flaw in the game, as you can only change your clothes back at the ship. Imagine being deep in an underground dungeon and you find out you have the wrong costume on. Time to warp back to the ship, change, and start over. Not fun. In fact one puzzle had me change into no less than four costumes.

I did pick up three more costumes since last time. The first two are air and fire element suits, which allow me to use air and fire special attacks respectively. The last costume I picked up, the fishing suit, has really grabbed me. Unexplainably, I have been spending sizable chunks of time directing the boy to cast his rod and reel in as soon as the bob sinks under the water. These fish are tricky; some of them make figure-eights in the water, trying to force you to reel too soon. The chef costume has sprung to life as I have started to concoct tasty potions and hamburger steaks. Hint: start by trying to make one-ingredient-meals before moving on to fancier two-ingredient-meals. Unfortunately I still have not found the shadow thief costume, but I see chests everywhere that tell me I can’t open them without it.

Now I have to mention a couple of the things that definitely brought a smile to my face while playing. First, I really got a kick out of a couple retro-game flashbacks when the boy jumps into some old 8-bit arcade games. It’s kitsch, it’s camp, and I totally love it. Second, the combat started to get a lot deeper through the addition of weapon-type specific skills and multiple levels of special attacks. Now when I get into a fight I can switch to my brass knuckles, activate my nullify physical attack special, lure a group of enemies to swarm me, switch to my cutlass, and execute a spinning attack that kills all of them. Finally, the very contemporary dialog localization is great and sprinkled with pop-culture references. For example, one character in the game is looking for the special edition release of “Snakes on a Boat”, while another talks about some pop-star’s blog.

Contact has really shaped up to be the game I was expecting when I first popped the game in my DS. The game is virtually pulling me back in since I have only just opened the fishing feature and I want to catch my king sized fish! See if the momentum continues in my final progressive review.