Titeuf: Mission Nadia (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

I was first introduced to Titeuf thanks to my love of French language comic books and this, Spirou and the wonderful Asterix kept me laughing through my early teens. Unlike my two latter heroes though this is Titeuf's first English language game as the last GBA game was deemed too risky to unleash on a full international audience. Why this one is any different is anyone's guess but with recent releases of the comic books breaking all records it's safe to say that he's going to be around for some time to come. For those who've never encountered Titeuf before, one newspaper describes him as an eight year old with 'a peculiar face – the top of an egg perched above an anvil for a chin, crowned by a vertical plume of yellow hair'. So that's what he looks like but what does this game play like?

Gameplay

The basic plot of this first DS outing for Titeuf has our hapless pre-teen attempting to win the affections of a girl who attends the same school as him called, that's right Nadia. In order to do this he must pass a series of tasks to show his worthiness and this is where the gameplay becomes a clever mix of your standard 3D adventure and Wario Ware although rather than being 3 second games the majority of the challenges here last around half a minute. Also unlike Wario Ware the mini-games aren't simply available from a main menu. Success here depends on traveling around a small town asking friends and family for clues. Your best friend here is Hugo who can always be found via the map or, later on in the game, via mobile phone and he will always have handy hints on where to find your next challenge.

The challenges start out as simple affairs, such as forging your father's signature by tracing an original with points given for likeness. These quickly turn to much more difficult arcade based games. One of our favorites involves escaping a rather irate old man on your scooter as he pursues you down the town's streets whilst you avoid on-coming cars and loose drain covers. Once you've completed this the same scooter is available as a means of transport around the ever-expanding city. There are also a number of challenges that take place in or around your school with the teacher at the core of most of them except when there's the food fight between you and your friends. There are loads more than this and in order to save each one you simply cross it off in your notebook. While there's no multiplayer every one of the games you unlock can be visited again in order to gain the high score.

Controls

The control really is very simple indeed and for once the camera angles actually behave themselves so you're never trying to peer around a corner when the control system won't allow you. Each of the mini-games includes a rather handy instruction screen briefing you on just how to tackle the next challenge. The only downside to all this are the few occasions where you can't find the next meeting point or doorway entrance because you don't happen to be standing on the correct spot. This does get easier, thanks to the handy icons at the top of the screen but it's very frustrating initially.

Graphics

Mission Nadia boasts one of the best 3D free roaming environments since Mario 64 DS. Developers, Dream On Studios have done a stunning job in bringing Titeuf's comic book world to life. It's also wonderfully animated to the extent that the on-screen characters occasionally display the subtleties of movement and facial expression which wouldn't go amiss in your average Saturday morning cartoon.

Sound

The audio here is minimal at best with the majority of music constructed from small repeated samples and speech limited to the kind of cartoon babble we hear in a many first party Nintendo titles. The sound effects are slightly better but audio is definitely not one of Mission Nadia's strong points.

Dual screen

Outside of actually walking around the town most of the interaction is done with the touch screen and your stylus won't have seen this much use for some time. There are also some games that require the microphone and while you'll probably feel incredibly self-conscious screaming the word 'Fart' at your console in order to complete a challenge there's no question that this is what the DS was designed for.

Final comments

It's possibly a bit early in the year to say this but I'm confident that this will be one of the best third party games of the year due to its clever mix of existing gameplay and stunning visuals and animation. It's not often that a developer succeeds in putting the gamer right in the middle of the action but after only a short amount of time you genuinely feel you live in the comic book world. The mini-games deserve a mention too covering just about everything your average teenager finds funny and most of them stand up to repeated plays. Overall this is a stunning package and while it won't last you nearly as long as the brilliant Mario 64 DS, if you did enjoy that launch title then you'll no doubt get a great deal of pleasure from spending a little time with Titeuf and friends.

Pro: Stunning 3D Visuals, Loads of Mini-Games, Great replay Value.
Con: No Multiplayer, Occasional Dodgy Collision Detection.
Final score: 8.9

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