Sprung: The Dating Game (Nintendo DS)

This game follows you playing as either Brett, or Becky on a trip to a skiing resort. It follows you through your interactions with your friends and your love life. Trust me, its more complicated than it sounds!

Graphically, this game is nothing to boast about. Mainly static pictures of who your talking too, with an incredible number of facial expressions and postures. However, the backgrounds are a little more interesting. Taking place between ski lifts, to clubs, to place of work. The use of both the top and bottom screens of the DS for characters add a nice touch of innovation. There are also some interesting graphics which i wont spoil in this review.

The gameplay is very standard, complete the objectives shown. This can be to split up or get two of your friends together, play truth or dare, or remember certain things. You do this by saying the right things from the list of choices. Although their is some flexibility in this, sometimes you'll be given choices you, a) don't want to make or, b) know are going to get you a game over screen! HOWEVER, ignoring this, there is quite a good sense of humour to the game, especially when one of the girls talks into a cow (literally) and especially in some of the things they say. The characters have a genuine sense of appeal about them too.

The music is pretty decent too. Some of the tracks are pretty catchy, but there are no voice overs-it's reading all the way. Saying that, it leaves more to the imagination.

All in all, this game has its pro's, it has it's con's. It seems very orientated at teenagers. The lads wont want to play as the girl and vice versa-you'll understand why if you try too! There isn't much action. What it is is a good laugh, and has some nice, quirky touches to it. Plus, its rarely seen in the UK. Its worth buying, but not if your a massive action fan.

Sprung is a great choice of game for a handheld as it's great for playing for 5 minutes at a time. The game works in set stages, and by not answering the correct lines you can get game over pretty easily. But there are some genuinely funny things you can use or do, such as pepper spray (!) or performing the heimlich manovour on someone. While don't expect this game to suddenly launch into 3d graphics, the animation and artwork in it is beautiful. I've been informed by a friend that the US version has a couple of bugs, including one which will crash the DS requiring you to turn it off using the power button, but for the vast majority of the time gameplay is smooth and enjoyable, if a little limited in scope (and perhaps lacking in hentai!).

4 out of 5 stars, as crash bugs are unforgiveable even in this early stage of DS development. While it's possible they fixed it, it's far more likely that it's just a version of the american cart, as the games are region free.

People complain about having to constantly restart. That has to be there, if this was a game that had no game overs who knows how coplicated it would have to be. The only other game i could compare this to would be the sims Bustin Out (GBA). The chatting in that is similar to this.

This game is full of jokes, random endings, strange objects and funny people. Buy it if you dont mind making the effort to continue even after the game over screen.