I'm not feeling the magic...
Focusing first on what this game ‘is’, it is a decent showcase of art. No faces, just silhouettes of figures in colourful clothing. For the most part, the game does a good job of telling the story via the art displayed before each mini game in four panels. It’s the sort of thing you look at and think ‘hey that’s kinda cool.’
Another thing this game ‘is’ is a decent demonstration of what your DS can do. It uses all functions in some meaningful way. Depending on which mini game you’re playing you will have to touch, drag, rub, blow and even yell into the microphone.
Unfortunately, these mini games, while amusing at first, are not really that hot. You might even find some of them annoying (I did). The story mode doesn’t present these mini games in a particularly inspired way although they do follow some bleak plot about a guy that loves a girl (yawn). In particular, towards the end of the story is a shameful lapse in creativity when the villain sort of gases you and you have to play through the three previous boss fights you just completed in-a-freaking-row.
The addendums to the story are really quite redundant. The mini games you’ve completed in ‘Story’ mode get unlocked in ‘Memories’ mode so that you can play them again. If you didn’t see that one coming you deserve a punch in the mouth. Problem is, they weren’t that much fun in ‘Story’ and they ain’t that much fun in ‘Memories’.
Another mode is ‘Maniac’. Why they decided to call it this I do not know. Maybe it has something to do with the links drawn between your stylus and a half-naked silhouette girl. You heard me. Your rewards are unlocked here. What rewards you ask? Clothes, so that you can dress your digital little Barbie, and that’s as far as I’ll get into it suffice to say this is one truly crap way of rewarding players for sifting through total bogus mini games (unless you’re a prepubescent girl).
The game might be dirt beneath the style, but you might find it worthwhile to give it a look at least for that layer of amusement in the first few moments of play. Just don’t buy it. Borrow it off someone who was stupid enough to pay good money for it…like me.
But if you want a good mini game complitation, I'm pointing you in Warioware's direction.