Project Rub (Nintendo DS)

Sega certainly aren't afraid of trying strange subject matters for their mini-games either, and you'll find yourself making someone puke goldfish and turtles, guiding someone on a unicycle over winding roads, unbuttoning a girl's blouse..... yes, that's right - unbuttoning a girl's blouse!... like Wario Ware, this list goes on, but I won't spoil it for you!

Best of all - all of the daft tasks at hand are completed using the touch screen and the microphone to combine touch and sound to control everything in the game. Whether it's the DS's quality build, or a combination of the DS itself and the games developers, it has to be mentioned how awesome the control really is. Put simply - it does what you tell it to, when you tell it to. It's an amazing achievement - these sorts of games would have been ruined by bad controls, so it's really pleasing to see that someone has got it right so early on in the DS's life.

The game itself is not as fast-paced as the Wario Ware games - there are time restrictions on some games I suppose, but there is not always a countdown timer to show this... the game just lets you know what's happening by storyboarding the action across the two screens, and giving you very clear instructions before you take the mini-game on. So then, it's not as challenging as Wario. Infact, it's really quite easy to complete. You have a "Story" mode that awards you with a challenge to play in "Memories" mode each time you complete a mini-game. Essentially, it just unlocks the mini-game you just completed and makes it selectable from the menu contained within "Memories".

So what's it all about then? It has a story mode - and what's that story exactly? Well, as I mentioned before, unbuttoning a blouse is a mini-game. It's the owner of this blouse that is the games subject matter. A young girl has captured your heart, and you are completing a series of mini-games to win her love. Whether it's defending her from scorpions & bulls, warming her by the fire, holding her hand while she walks - you'll find that there is some rather original and compelling material in there. There can't be many games around with this sort of theme (good ones, anyway!) so it's a nice change after all the GTA's and Halo's that you've probably been hammering away on recently.

You can also win new "looks" for your lady friend (put the Sonic the Hedgehog hair on her - it's amusing!) and can access this "looks" screen using the "Maniac" option on screen. Once in there, you have 3 options to change on your lady friend - the torso, the head and the legs. I won't ruin the list of designs, but rest assured there is lots there to keep you busy if you like the idea of being a pixel-plastic-surgeon! One interesting feature, is when you press the screen swap key, and the top screen (where you normally view your lady friend as you change her features) moves down to the bottom touch screen. Your pixellated filly will giggle naughtily if you use the touch screen to the full advantage - go on, tickle her and see what happens! A pretty useless feature, but I think sadly most people will be like me and will be tickling round the skirt area. It's not big and it's not clever - right!? Hehehehe...

Graphics are lovely. That's an odd word to use, but they are just lovely. The frame rate is smooth as blue-lid sunpat, and there are many moments when the storyboarding will raise a smile or two. For the subject matter of the game, the graphics work perfectly. Reminiscent of the Dreamcast's Space Channel 5, the hues of Orange and Yellow may convince you that San Andreas crept in a bit, but that won't stop the corners of your mouth turning up during some of the moving sequences.

I think that the game combined with the sleek, new DS machine, makes it seem better than it probably is. It's still a great first effort though, and shows just how willing developers are to embrace the new control methods.

Overall - a great launch title that has more polish because of the very swish new machine that it slots into. If you have a DS already and like mini-games, it's definitely worth a look.

Not Wario Ware - but still very, very good.