JRPG SIVOW-SUPPLE-briefly about Contact

The little -known Action RPG for Nintendo DS, which decided to go against the current and redraw not only game designer, but also scenario templates that had already scored by then.

Contact. What can I tell about her. Despite what GRASSHOPPER ManUFACTURE did it, the same SUDA51 did not take part in the development of participation;I ran a maximum nearby and shouted something. Almost the entire game is the creation of Akira Weda, who managed to work on the fourth ending in SquareSoft, and in a small Love-de-Calic studio over the first two games. Plus, Contact is his first work as a screenwriter, and for the studio – the first portable RPG. Let’s see what they did there. So, we turn on, reach the initial screen and.

You know, during the first launch of the game, this menu drove me to a certain hybrid of stupor and confusion that I did not immediately pay attention to the lower display, where the keyboard was safe and lurked. But the screen is definitely testing, much more original than the banal “New Game / Load Game”. But, before the game itself begins, you have to go through a small rite of initiation and in the process to get acquainted with a professor named Professor, who, together with his pet, is plowing space space on the angular pixel spacecraft and who will be incredibly surprised that you can contact with your console with another galaxy.

What a rite of initiation? The professor will ask you to first name your name, place of residence and your favorite food. This is not difficult. But after that he will ask you to write your hobby and your dream. You know a lot of games that before starting the player to write some cherished desire? Intro lasts a couple of minutes from strength (this is if you are not shaking on any question of the professor), but during this time it manages to demolish the fourth wall to hell. Yes, I have not been in vain so the review entitled. Here, not just the characters periodically break the fourth wall and turn to the player. The whole game is built on the flare of the fourth wall, and the player is the same character as everyone else in the world Contact. This is her charm and the main trump card for a potential player. As such a topic is not new. On the contrary, it was not hackneyed only lazy, but it was extremely rare in my memory in my memory.

OK. We introduced our dream what next? And then the fun begins. Some bad guys attack the professor’s bowl, as a result, a piece of uncharacteristic green color falls off her and falls on an unknown planet right under the feet of an ordinary boy. This boy is the name of Terry, and he will be drawn into intergalactic showdowns only because he was in the wrong place and at the wrong time. As for the latter, it was at this time that the professor parks nearby, grabs the element that has fallen from the ship and the boy at the same time. For what? I don’t know.

In any case, now all the characters are collected together. Professor, Terry and Player. Ultimately, the professor’s ship finally falls apart, forcing everyone to make a forced landing on another unknown planet, and now the three heroes will have to learn how to get along with each other and try to collect all the elements that provide the food of the spaceship. For a professor, this is the only opportunity to leave the planet, for Terry – this is the only opportunity to return home, and for the player it is an opportunity to play a game called Contact. And while the heroes are busy with the search, the professor disguised his unfinished spacecraft under the pirate ship. After this long, long, long intro, the long-awaited game comes. From now on, Terry is completely on your guardianship, take care of it.

Looking ahead, I will say that as such the plot is not bad, but it is too few. Most of the time you are left to yourself. Terry under your leadership simply swims from island to the island and collects elements of the spaceship, simultaneously helping local residents. The very guys who shot the professors at the very beginning will interfere with him. As such revelations that would blow up the genre, I did not notice in the script. Everything is quite simple, linear and not overloaded with details. So that even a little offensive. However, if you live until the end of the game, I recommend waiting for the end of the credits. The final letter of the professor will put all the points over the “Yo” and to some extent will reveal the author’s idea of ​​the Grasshopper Manufacture.

The appearance of the game after the early experience of passing the portable port f.WITH.P. – It’s just Crysis 15! Of course, unframed backgrounds do their job, even though you will not turn it now in three dimensions. And in the foreground some bushes loom, and on the back there is something to see. Of course, GBA knows how, but there is something attractive in this. But all this you will see only on the screen with the main character. If you look at the display with the professor, then the visual design of his flying dwelling is much more pixel and schematic, more reminiscent of Earthbound style. You think this contrast was made by chance? Not in the case of these developers!

The first thing you have to encounter is a combat system and a pumping system. And if the first is simplified to the limit: you approach the enemy, and Terry automatically beats it (everything you can – choose a special.abilities), the second will meet you with some kind of indecent number of different parameters. No, there are classic things, such as strength, dexterity and some protection there, it’s all good, but when such parameters as: “karma”, “skill of using stitching weapons”, “cooking skill”, involuntarily think about how much time it will go to swing and pumping all this. How it is swinging and pumping? Right during use, as it was in Final Fantasy II, The Elder Scrolls series and probably somewhere else. You are beaten – protection and quantity HP are swinging. You beat – the force is swinging, as well as the skill of weapons of the type with which you are piercing bad enemies. They pumped the ability to handle weapons quite well-you will receive any special.Reception. That’s the whole formula.

Moreover, in the game they realized even www.rainbow-spins.uk some semblance of a system of work from the early parts of Final Fantasy. If Terry finds some costume, then he receives additional abilities that are pumped in exactly the same way as the ability to own weapons. T.e., If you pumped any suit to 45 levels, you will get a new cool receiver. In a costume of firefighter, Terry gains the power of the elements of water (it sounds, of course, damn it. ) and can throw aqua-shars very painful for the first time, and in a cook costume he can prepare something from the available ingredients. You can just fry the meat, you can fry it with spices, you can cook the coffee if you find water and coffee beans. Although, while you are not pumping a cook of the cook, for the most part from the meat you will get a tasty barbecue, but an armful of coal. Does it make sense from food? Suddenly, yes. Food for some time gives an increase to the parameters of the hero, sometimes very significant.

List of all costumes:

Firefighter costume – In it, Terry can use the magic of the water element, and also receives an increase in the parameter “wisdom”.

Driver costume – In it, Terry receives a greater increase in physical strength and can use fiery magic.

Digger costume – Obviously, the magic of the earth. Plus, the costume gives a tangible increase to the maximum HP hero.

The costume of the cook – The parameters are weak, but gives a very cool protection against fire. Well, and allows you to cook.

The costume of the thief – gives an increase in speed, and also makes it possible to rummage over the pockets of the inaccuations and open the locks on the doors and chests.

And you know that the most sad? All this lot of details simply does not have time to open up to the end of the game by at least a third. If you are sprayed between different costumes and types of weapons, then the game will end at about 30-40 of the level of abilities, while new techniques will be issued at 60, 80, and even at a hundred level! My brain is simply unable to understand this. Why even pump all this to a hundredth level, if on a forty hero chop into chips of the final boss? Okay, Pokemon, everything is clear with them, there the big emphasis goes to the multiplayer and duels with other real players, but here. No, super-bosses appear in the game after passing the plot, but for the sake of them to spend so much effort on pumping, which is never used anywhere else. This is re-a-a-a-alenly strange.

And this is not all the oddities that the game brings with it. For example, a hero in cities can kill non -playful characters. But:

It is worth leaving the city and entering – the people are resurrected. They can be killed and kill and receive various nishtyaks from their corpses (especially from the corpses of store owners), which either cost a lot of money, or are generally not possible in other ways.

For the fact that you will arrange genocide, a couple of karma units will be removed from you from the strength. You can kill a person ten, twenty times, but he will still love you and consider it his friend. WHAT?!

The oddities do not end there. For example, a hero can have a girl. If it turns out successfully, then the girl will settle on the ship’s ship, and you can sleep with her in the same bed. This is normal and even cool, only for gameplay does not bear any benefit. The oddity lies in the fact that Terry can have four girls at the same time, they will simultaneously live on the ship, and the hero will be like this: “Yeah, today I sleep with you, and tomorrow – with you”. This. It’s simple.

The last strangeness worthy of mention is fishing. It is not only poorly implemented, it is also absolutely useless. Why bad? Because the developers have screwed up to her with random. The fact that you will get something out of the abyss of sea does not depend on you, otherwise the weather is on Mars. The same is the cook and the thief, but there it is not so annoying. And someone else says that it was in Sonic Adventure there was bad fishing. Regarding the benefit, the real meaning of fishing only in passing an additional quest. You can also, of course, fisher the fish for yourself all different, but you need to have patience just angelic.

But with music, everything is surprisingly good and not even strange. Although what is there to be surprised. Masafumi Takada and Jun Takoda at that time still worked at the Grasshopper Manaufacture, so you can not worry about the quality of the audio material. The soundtrack is written in a difficult way to say what style, but judging by the statements of the developers, that, they say, the music is written in a style possible only in a video game, we can say with confidence that the soundtrack for the game is written in the style of the soundtrack for the game! Recursive, however.

In any case, music as such can be described. For everything that is connected with the professor and his spaceship, chiptyun compositions sound. For the locations that Terry runs, the most often background and rather meditative and monotonous compositions sound. Moreover, in some compositions, atmospheric just goes off scale. Those melodies that sound in the forest are grabbed for the living.

I said above that everything is surprisingly good with music? Forget. She did not go out on physical media, and this is very, very bad. However, the situation was saved by the brave bromachis children who seized music from the game as is. Not CD quality, of course, but you don’t have to choose.

And what can be said in the end? Contact is a very strange game, definitely. System pumping systems and interaction with the outside world are good in itself, but not brought to mind. You feel a swing that the developers did not pull. If they coped with their brainchild, it would have turned out just some kind of portable file. But, alas, almost all good ideas are in its infancy. In any case, this game is surprisingly pleasant and interesting to play, even if most of the gameplayed yummy for some reason was shifted to the postgraduate passage.

And the final question, the answer to which I previously escaped: “What is this CONTACT in general?”. In my opinion, that we are responsible for creating.