A dating game!

User Rating: 2.5 | Sprung DS
By joshaskins | Review Date:
The earliest form of computer games were based around stories, usually in a simple text based adventure which gave the player the option of what to do next - 'Go left' or 'Pick up' for example. It was the ability to interact and decide which way the story went that was such a pull factor for people to play these games. Nowadays though, interaction in games means feeling like you actually are driving a formula 1 car round Monaco or experiencing the emotions of being a solider in a war and so naturally going back to play the old text based adventures feels very drab and old hat. So when Ubisoft released ‘Sprung’ as one of their 3 launch titles for the DS, we were intrigued. A text based dating simulator? Surely it couldn’t work... Graphics I’ll start by talking about the graphics and animation within Sprung as it is one of the games major plus points. The whole game is designed to look very much like a cartoon style story and it works very well. The characters look well designed and colourful and the animation is superb as they react to what ever you choose to throw at them. (Quite literally...) For example, choosing to say something that implies you are wanting to get with the person you are talking to can produce a blush or a nervous reaction and it looks very good on the DS’ screens. The emotions of the characters are pretty good and the reactions of them to certain events helps to improve them further – you really get the sense of how you are making your friend feel. The top screen shows the person you are having the conversation with whereas the touch screen is kept for your pretty face and the choice of dialogues. Its certainly very nice presentation and animation and although it doesn’t in anyway push the DS’ abilities like Metroid does, it performs well and you’ll be happy to watch the story unfold without having to cringe at any graphical errors. This is a very good job because you spend all the time staring at these graphics and watching the characters animations… Sound The sound is OK but don’t expect anything exciting. There is no speech and so all you get with the conversations is text and a few reaction sounds now and then. I suppose if they had included speech for every dialogue then it would have probably become very annoying. Seeing as there is no real way of being able to complete this game straight through without messing up at least once, then this would lead to having to hear the same speech over and over again and this would have began to annoy. But we will never know now. The music in the game is not quite cheesy enough to be annoying but still not catchy enough to keep you humming along all day. Each stage has its own music track and these seem appropriate enough to the setting. Basically, it does its job but doesn’t try and improve on that. Gameplay The one thing that really worried us about Sprung when we first heard it was coming to the DS was the fact Ubisoft said it was based on ‘choosing dialogue in order to pull’. Sadly, they weren’t lying. You start the game with the option of playing as either Becky or Brett who are apparently best mates. The two of you go on a holiday to a ski-resort with the sole intention of hooking up with a member of the opposite sex. Secretly though the two mates are in love with one another and this becomes clear later on though the various scenarios. Yes, the story really is that exciting. Scenes take place in friends rooms, the ski resort, restaurants etc and although the backgrounds look nice and different, the gameplay is ultimately the same. In the conversations (or stages) throughout the game you will see your player on the touch screen along with some conversation options and the person you are speaking to on the top screen. You simply have to choose the line of text to ‘speak’ to the other character by pressing it with the stylus – your character ‘says’ it and the other character responds appropriately. This leads to more options and the sequence repeats. When I say repeats, I mean it repeats for the entire game and there is not much else to it. You aim to achieve specific goals within each of the scenarios which could be anything from cheering up your friend, to trying to get your ‘friend’ to go out on a date with you. It may sound simple but some of these goals take a long time to complete and have a huge amount of possible outcomes that you could end up with – luckily many of the scenes do have checkpoints so you don’t have to return to the beginning should you fail to complete the task. Sometimes it also feels like guesswork and you cannot accurately know what the other character is wanting you to say in order to achieve your goal. Maybe if they have added some sort of way to get to know each character more, so you could work out what they would like to hear, then this would have made the game more playable. Deep down though, this game IS only a text based game and is certainly not cutting edge, but it did keep me entertained for a good while. Another one of the main reasons that this game managed to make me smile is the dialogue and conversations. They are really well scripted and should manage to make even the most boring of people raise a smile. This is down to the fact that Ubisoft have pulled in one of the writers on the FOX show, North Shore to write the conversations in Sprung. It’s a very good job, as the conversations are what the game relies on and if they were boring then I really couldn’t see anyone wanting to play the game. Hats off to Ubisoft for not trying to write them themselves! It may also be worth telling you that Sprung is rated T – for teen and this is clear with some of the rather dodgy text – it’s funny and by no means an adult game but just bare the teen rating in mind if showing this game to younger gamers. There are also items that you are able to collect during the game, usually from asking for them or just receiving them as presents from characters when you choose the correct dialogue. These items can be used to try and help you out in a conversation where you are losing the other characters interest or failing to meet the goal of the scene. They add a bit to the gameplay but not really enough to shout about and it’s very rare that the objects can really effect the path of the game greatly, which is a shame. Lifespan Sprung embarrassingly took me around 6 – 7 hours to complete through as Brett, and I only achieved that time by major use of trial and error. If you wish to play through as Becky as well and see how that story pads out then the game could take you up to around 10 – 15 hours which is decent. But then you have to remember than your playing a text based game here – we are not talking 15 hours of shooting or jumping – its 15 hours of reading and choosing options. Sure the conversations are funny and I personally found it really rewarding to play to the end of the game to see how the story finished but to many people this game will be as interesting as watching paint dry. The item collecting also does not add to the replay value and once you have completed the game as one (or both) of the characters then the chances are you will not come back to it. It is impressive to see how many options and conversation paths that are included into each scene on Sprung and there are hundreds of ways each conversation can end up but who honestly is going to want to play it hundreds of times? Summary Sprung is certainly a different game and is a big change from the likes of Mario and Metroid. The graphics look nice and the animations do a great job in portraying the characters emotions. However the game just feels so dated and slow as all you do is select dialogues for your character to say. The conversations are sure to make you smile with their slightly rude wit and eyebrow raising comments but once you have got over the novelty value the game really begins to drag. Ubisoft could have made such a better job of their second DS launch game but instead it ended up as a text based interactive story… with dating. Lets face it, it is far more fun and productive to get out their and try your ‘pulling’ skills for real! It’s crazy and you won’t have played much like it before, but by the time you switch off your DS, you’ll be praying you never play anything like it again.

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