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Contact

Posted November 27th 2006 by Terry Harjanto.

Have you ever felt guilty for getting a video game protagonist killed? Did throwing Chrono about through time to be disintegrated by Lavos make you feel bad? Or maybe forcing Cloud to realize his self-deceiving false memories? If being sent on a guilt trip is the kind of dramatic endeavor that makes a game great for you, than you'll definitely want to focus your attention on to Contact, as it's a game with the unique characteristic of making sure you know you're playing a game where you're forcing a poor hapless protagonist into fighting monsters and getting lost in dungeons.

There are two things that hints at how unique an experience this game will be. First, it was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, the same loons that were behind Killer 7 on the GameCube. Second, it's been published in North America by Atlus U.S.A., who has a reputation for bringing some of the most unusual and downright strange games from across the Pacific Ocean.

Because of this, it's difficult to subscribe Contact into any specific genre. Most people will likely end up lumping it in alongside their other Japanese RPG's. I, on the other hand, don't really consider it to be an RPG, and not just because it makes for a rather poor one. In my attempts to somehow summarize the experience that is Contact, I could only think of it as a post-modern work of interactive art.

As I noted above, Contact is unique for its self-reflexivity -- a fancy word one of my favorite English professors uses to describe a piece of art that recognizes its existence as a piece of art. At the very beginning of the game you poke the pixelated Professor with your stylus to get his attention. He responds by looking, not at the DS screen, but past it, straight at you. After more stylus poking the Professor realizes you exist outside of his world.

At some time during this interactive introduction, the Professor - who is revealed to be on-board a space ship - is attacked. The Professor crash-lands and then meets the protagonist of the game: Terry. For almost the rest of the game you control Terry, but are asked by the Professor to keep your existence a secret.

For the most part controlling Terry is similar to other single-character RPG games. While the Professor watches you and Terry from his space ship in the top DS screen, you control Terry's movement on the touch screen and explore the game world, which is essentially a chain of islands. Combat is automatic and triggered by pressing the B button. The automatic nature of the combat system does make it somewhat boring and you'll only need to worry about keeping an eye on Terry's hit points. Fortunately, the monotony of watching Terry whacking enemies can be broken by activating techniques that use a certain amount of points which can only be replenished by defeating more enemies.

Another special feature available to both the player and Terry is the decals provided by the Professor. These decals are peeled off of a sticker book using the stylus and than peeled onto the game world. Most of the decals have a generic function such as neutralizing or damaging enemies, healing Terry, or teleporting him back to the Professor's spaceship, which acts as the game's all-purpose hub.

A good portion of the previously mentioned techniques are costume specific. For example, wearing the Aqua Shot costume arms Terry with water-based spells such as a blast of water or healing. Furthermore, some costumes have specific abilities. The Shadow Thief costume allows Terry to pick locked doors and chests. The Mr. Cuisine costume allows Terry to combine and cook food items. A large amount of the offensive based techniques are divided among the three weapon types: slashing, striking, and fists.

As long as you keep Terry in proximity to enemies - or vulnerable NPCs - Terry will swing his weapon according to the equipped weapon speed and his agility stat. His agility stat is just one of many that range from cooking skills to weapon use skills to elemental defense skills. In true RPG style, each of these stats are raised simply by using them; using swords will increase the slashing weapon stat and being struck by fire will increase Terry's fire defense stat.

This stat system is great in that you won't need a lot of time leveling up Terry but can instead focus on your own favourite weapon type and improve the skills you prefer to use. Obviously, the reverse is also true in that if you want to try out all of the play styles and Terry's features, you'll have to spend a lot of time increasing all of those individual stats.

The most unique stat is definitely Terry's stomach. Hit points can be recovered either by taking a bath in a tub (which are found beside beds which act as save spots—both are strewn around the game world, including inside dungeons) or by eating. Each edible item in the gain has some effect on Terry, whether it be restoring hit points, providing a temporary stat boost, or curing a status ailment. Each of these items also has a digestion time and Terry's stomach can only hold so much food. Making Terry commit the deadly sin of gluttony will often result in his stomach quickly becoming full and thus not be able to recover more hit points in extended combat.

All of this talk of stats, unfortunately, is a precursor to the game mechanics themselves. These stats may seem interesting - Terry's stomach is definitely a unique feature of the game - but the rest of the stats are merely rising numbers. The gameplay in Contact follows this simple linear pattern. The over-arching themes may be thought provoking and amusing--but the basic premise of the game that leads to the actual playing is straight forward: the Professor's energy cells have been scattered across a series of islands and Terry has been tasked with finding them before the CosmoNOTs: the group that attacked the Professor.

Thus, you control Terry as he travels from one island to another; crawling through dungeon after dungeon; facing off with bosses which range from generic, to different, to just plain weird. Exploration is minimal, and often only a result of either missing a key item or finding yourself at a dead end and having to walk into walls to see if there are any secret hidden passage ways.

Furthermore, it seems the plot doesn't actually fit the game. The main story can be completed in approximately ten hours - which is one reason I hesitate to claim Contact to be an RPG - but only roughly a third of all items, equipment, and techniques are found or learned in that time span. You can spend some time fishing or gathering ingredients for cooking, but there are few side-quests to keep you and Terry busy--such as trying to obtain girlfriends by collecting different types of items (insects, video game cartridges, gems) for them, but more "end-quests" are unlocked after the game has been finished for the first time. The hardcore player will rejoice in the spawning of more difficult enemies, hidden elemental gods, and super-powerful cows; but the narrative experience effectively ends there.

That narrative experience, however, is still a great one. The self-reflexive nature of the game and the characters such as the Professor and Terry leads one to wonder about the ethics of controlling characters and the nature of whether or not AI and data "live". The plot twists and drama that unfolds at the end of the story will especially evoke a sense of guilt. These topics, however, are generally dealt with at the beginning and end of the game during cut scenes. In between is the creamy centre that has popularized Contact on the Internet. The simple dungeon crawling is kept amusing by the constant humour injected throughout the game in the forms of in-game pop culture references and gibes said by the Professor. The jokes scattered throughout the entire game relate to things as recent as Sony's 2006 E3 Conference to classic Internet phenomenon such as 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us'.

In addition to its quirky humour, the graphics and sound are also of high quality. The visuals are definitely a result of or a contribution to the post-modernity of the game as wonderfully drawn sprites and detailed backgrounds in the gameplay world on the touch screen are contrasted with the pixelated and minimalist reality inside the Professor's spaceship on the upper screen. Some of the sound effects are as quirky and weird as the humour but they all strangely fit in this smorgasbord of clashing and colliding art styles. The music is especially great as each unique area has its own theme and the more plot-centric scenes and areas have really catchy pieces.

Other quirky aspects in the game include Mochi, the Professor's space dog that tries to be a space cat. Every time you have Terry climb into a bed to save the game, the two screens will switch places for a moment and you get to use your stylus to play with Mochi inside the Professor's space ship. You can pet, feed, and play with Mochi and as Mochi becomes more and more amused, one of the decal abilities becomes more powerful. Another interesting bit is the quasi-multiplayer mode. You can connect with other players using Nintendo's WiFi to open up WiFi Island within the game. The other players will be represented by an NPC and will provide you with things such as stat boots or special items.

The controls in the game are another aspect that has been done extremely well. You can choose to play the game either with the D-Pad and face buttons or with the stylus. Both of these methods are effective, responsive, and well designed both in the game world and in the menu interfaces. For example, you can either press the Y button to bring up the combat technique menu or you can tap Terry with your stylus and then scroll through that same menu. However the stylus does have the advantage of being the only possible way to use the peel and stick decals—but bringing up the decal menu, or any other, does pause the game so that if you won't be at a disadvantage in combat in either control method. It's not a key issue but the control accessibility in Contact is very impressive and implies a great amount of polish to the game.

Slight Pulse - Only make contact if you don't have much else to do.

Overall, Contact has everything that would make a mediocre RPG: short plot, boring combat, linear pathways. I even ran into a bug a couple of times where Terry intersected with another sprite and got stuck, forcing me to reboot the DS. But its overall experience as a piece of art is quite astounding. Thankfully, the game play is just bearable enough such that you could still play all the way through the main plot to appreciate the great humour, the intellectual musings and the collision of art - visually and audibly. I say definitely pick this game up, but unfortunately most people probably shouldn't. Contact is not the next Secret of Mana and not comparable to the Final Fantasy games, but it's still a funny, dramatic, and thought provoking narrative experience.

Posted in: Reviews