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Feel the Magic XY/XX

Touching is good.

Well, I assume it's good. I mean, there are just some things you shouldn't touch. Never, ever touch one of those flat-top electric stoves because even when it looks like they're off – they're on – and man, are they hot. However, your DS's touch screen will not be hot when you touch it. If it is, I suggest you trade it in for a new one because, well, that's just not normal. Feel the Magic XY/XX teaches us that no matter how hot the contents are on the screen, the screen itself will never physically be hot.

You'd only think this if you'd use your imagination.

I strongly believe that today's visual media – interactive and non-interactive – is slowly ruining the imaginations of people from their young teenage years up. I'm not saying we all need to dress up in Superman costumes and run around with our arms extended, pretending we're flying in our own fabricated anti-reality, I'm just saying that video games in general do not leave much to the imagination. This being said, the creators of this little piece of modern art in handheld form did something ingenious. Something I would have never thought of. We all know damn well that since some of the team working on this game were female, they would certainly be able to make a very cute, very pretty digital female. I would imagine that the bigger challenge here would be to illustrate the looks of the protagonist, what with his bicycle helmet and bland clothing (although – a pixellated fish? I want!). This is a character who is supposedly a very dorky type of kid trying to win the heart of this beautiful girl.

This is that one girl in high school that shines above the rest, the one that you knew you'd never be able to get but you just kept admiring her from afar. Trust me, I know, we all know. Oddly enough, this is also true for the game's own storyline.

The point I'm getting at here is that this protagonist, believe it or not, happens to be all of us. All of us guys, anyway, as his story is something we could all relate to and probably even dream about. The game's unique graphical style makes it so you don't see their faces – it's all a black silhouette. You only see their clothing. This is where the game leaves you in the dust – these characters are supposed to be who we are, who we want to be and who we want to be with, but we can't because we're all too afraid of rejection.

Where the game becomes interesting is what seemed to be crafted around these characters, scenarios that couldn't possibly ever happen to anyone normally, but it has you sort of playing as a superhero to the love of your life. At first, the feeling isn't mutual, which is why you'd even be doing all of this in the first place. It's also where help is on the way.

I'm sure you've already seen images of it and videos if you were at all interested in seeing what the game had to offer. In the beginning of the game, your character is walking and you cross paths with this lovely girl who, of course, ignores your existence. Enter the Rub Rabbits – a team of people dressed up in rabbit ears who aid you in winning over this girl. You, being naturally desperate, agree to join this group in hopes that you manage to score a date with her.

Well, this girl seriously must have been a walking Zeppelin because suddenly everything that could possibly go wrong does. Perhaps it is the game's twisted way of depicting fate, but it's just downright bizarre. Towards the beginning of the game, your character is traveling in a group and all of the sudden a giant candle comes through a wormhole – possibly from an alternate dimension entirely – and it's up to you to blow this army of candles out one-by-one and prevent a fiery doom. Some guys would think about saving a girl from being mugged or attacked, but in this game you save the world from giant candles.

It's generally a good story, more than passable for a handheld game of its genre. It has all those nice things we've come to expect in our interactive media – plot twists, story climaxes and a neat little surprise ending.

What makes this game less of a mind-trip is that, yes, you're still controlling it the whole way through. It's still interactive media and it's still a fictional video game. What gives this game so much pure, unadulterated fun is the fact that you control it entirely with the touch screen. I know I personally wanted a game like this the second the DS was announced, a game where everything was controlled just by moving the stylus around on the touch screen. Some games even make use of the system's built-in microphone. For instance, there's one game where you're trying to get the girl's attention, but all of the sudden a marching band comes between you and her and starts playing. Rather than doing the sensible thing and approaching her, you decide to yell to get her attention. Some people may be too self-conscious to do this in public, but I was yelling at my DS on the bus to school in hopes that the girl will acknowledge my existence. I had much success, in case you're interested.

The graphics, admittedly, are a little rough around the edges. The game itself runs smoothly, but sometimes you'll just notice a few quirks about the game that kind of throw the overall style off a bit. Some characters are blocky and textured poorly, such as the bulls that appear a few times throughout the game. It's a very convincing DS game, especially when you're so used to the psuedo-Jaguar blocky 3D graphics the Game Boy Advance can display, but it generally does distract you from the game's surreal look sometimes. There's a very low polygon count in many of the objects you will see in the game, which is good as it takes a page from Rez. Which is fine if it's stylish enough, and if you can cram as much action onto the screen as the system can take. They're nice graphics – certainly fitting and unique – but aside from the opening video, there's little to oogle over once you get used to your new toy.

Feel the Magic XY/XX is perhaps the most arcade-style launch title for the DS. Sega's studios are generally very good with arcade-style, although both Sonic Team and United Game Artists are the two studios that have the least experience with arcade games. Regardless, the style is still present in this game. I came up with this consensus as I was playing it and listened to the application of music and sound. The sounds consist of little yips, moans and cheers – yips that you'll hear often – as you progress through the game. In "Bull", whenever you touch a bull to calm them down you hear "Way-ah!" from your character, and when you hear this about 7 times a second it occurs to you that it's not really annoying – it's an arcade experience in your hand. It's how I've come to associate console games with arcade-style games, besides certain styles and gameplay dynamics which most probably would be conventional on the DS. The music tracks are short and repeat a lot throughout the game. It doesn't get grating because, unfortunately, you barely notice it throughout the entire adventure. It's very refreshing to hear such crisp sounds coming from a handheld's speakers, though, and it clashes very well with the oftentimes frantic action going on on-screen.

Like I mentioned, the game's main draw is the fact that you need to use the touch screen for everything - everything from the menus to in-game to unlocking secrets during cut-scenes require the use of the touch-screen. I found it optimal to use the stylus for Feel the Magic as it allows for the most precise control. It's a great system because sometimes you actually feel like you're poking this character around directly, which is something that you never really have seen or felt in a conventional video game before. We've seen Sonic Team's famed Yuji Naka speak about how excited he is see something as fresh as the Nintendo DS, but his team really went all out when using the handheld's dynamic touch screen for such a unique control.

As far as the actual game length goes, yes, it's a relatively short game to complete the story mode once through. I was a bit skeptical myself as to how difficult the game would be, since the touch screen is so much more direct than a conventional controller, but I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of difficulty some of these mini-games presented. They require real attention, coordination and precision sometimes, and I found myself losing to many of the game's diverse stages. There are two other difficulties to unlock after completing the first. Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of the unlockables is the ability to unlock clothing for the girl of your dreams. I'm a sucker for fanfare like that, so I like to go all out and try to find all of the hidden Rabbits in the cut-scenes (which you can find by tapping certain points during the game's 4-panel comic book style cutscenes) to unlock clothing. You can unlock different hair, dresses and shoes for her. You can also insert older Sonic Team GBA games into slot 2 of the DS and unlock hair styles in Feel the Magic, which is great, because I can finally get some use out of Sonic Battle.

This game gets an N-Philes score of A-.

Aesthetic beauty aside, Feel the Magic is a clear-cut winner in this pond of first generation launch titles. It's a nice little challenge with a well-permeated concept, which will be something you, your friends and your family will be able to pick up and play at any given moment well into the DS's lifespan.

Posted in: Reviews