Grasshopper Manufacture has shown in their last two games (Killer 7 & Samurai Champloo) that if there’s anyone who can shake up the modern game industry and spark it with creativity, then they’re the ones who are going to do it. In similar thought, the Nintendo’s DS is a system that shown it can encourages creativity and new directions in gaming. So who better to make use of the DS’s unique abilities than Grasshopper Manufacture? Well Grasshopper’s DS game Contact, an exploration in the field of style + RPG, is the product of that combo and what a product it is.

Just as with their other titles, the main selling point of Contact is its bizarre, yet very cool, story and style. Straight from the start when you first boot the game you’re treated to a title screen consisting of an old computer GUI on top with F1-F3 as the new game/load/contact menu. On the bottom screen is the top of an old keyboard focused on the F1-F3 keys. Starting a new game has players meeting Professor who is aware that you, the player, are contacting him through a software program titled Contact that’s being run through a hardware known as the Nintendo DS. Curious about whom you are Professor then asks you all sorts of questions about your favorite food, hobbies, etc… in a throwback to games such as Earthbound. What’s especially neat about this is that depending on what you type in (on a rickety old keyboard on the bottom screen) Professor will react accordingly and make comments like “oh, I enjoy that too once and a while”. Right from the start, little touches like this make Contact an incredibly immersive experience.

The story of the game is that you, the player, have come into contact with Professor right as his ship crashes on a planet where a kid named Cherry is having dreams about chasing girls. Professor and Cherry meet shortly, but are interrupted by an urgent matter, which causes them to fly off immediately with Cherry being forced to tag along. From here the story takes twists and turns in usual Grasshopper manner as players must guide Cherry around locations while he looks for Elements to get him home eventually. It is a great little story and the atmosphere is just perfect.

Gameplay in Contact is presented through a strange mix of a Japanese MMORPG and a Western traditional RPG. Using either the touch screen or the d-pad, players tell Cherry where to go next as he walks along beaches, towns, dungeons, and the usual adventure locations. Along the way he’ll run into all sorts of enemies and people walking around doing their own thing on the map. Then similar to the recent Final Fantasy XII, players tell Cherry to go into battle mode and tell him to go up to the nearest enemy and he’ll slash, wait for the enemy to slash, slash, wait for the enemy to slash, repeat until either he or the enemy is dead. Players can intervene during these exchanges by using special super attacks that costs a special bar (gained by killing enemies) or pull up the menu at any time and use items or make Cherry run away. Battle isn’t even required in most cases as many enemies won’t attack Cherry unless he strikes first. Even more interesting is that Cherry will fight and kill fellow NPCs if in attack mode while standing near them (though the game frowns upon doing this).