Treasure World (DS) Review

Posted by Jordan Williams on 07.28.2009

Prepare to play a game so great you never have to actually play it! ...Wait what?

Title: TREASURE WORLD
Publisher: Aspyr
Developer: Aspyr
Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1
Rated: E

Remember those old digital pet monster games where you had to scan the barcode of random items in order to get 'new' monsters? Do you REALLY like collecting a lot of useless junk that has little to no value? Do you like using your Nintendo DS as nothing more than a book bag weight? Well boy oh howdy I do have the game for you!

Treasure Worlds is a ...uh...game for the Nintendo DS in which you are trying to help a space explorer with a horrible haircut get his spaceship up and running again so he can continue to explore space and beyond. How exactly do you fuel up his ship though? You have to explore the galaxy finding stars to fuel up his tanks. On these stars you can find millions of items to decorate the planet you are currently marooned on. How you find these stars is through the Nintendo DS' Wi-Fi. It picks up any Wi-Fi signal nearby and translates them into a star, in which you gain items from them.

That's it.

No. Really. That's it.


Graphics

Despite the horribly simplistic nature of the game, the game does have pretty good graphics. All of the 3D models are very well animated and since the majority of the game takes place in the dark, the lighting they use is very good as well. However, almost all of the items you collect are nothing more than 2-D panels; they don't look very impressive and actually look sort of bad against all of the other 3D aspects of the game. You also have a little robot helper that you can dress up to your liking. He (or she) has tons of animations and clothes (which must be found) to put on, so you can actually give it a bit of a creative twist. But the simple fact that NOTHING in this game is free and you will have to scan a lot of wi-fis to get anything decent (or enough money to buy anything decent), it sort of puts a hamper on how creative you can be with the things you are given.

Overall the game looks pretty good, maybe even a bit above average for a DS game, the thing that hurts it the most is that while it looks good there is NOTHING being done with the graphics at all. In fact, you spent most of the game...not even playing it.

Gameplay

Okay. This is going to be hard to explain...in my time here I have reviewed a lot of non-games. LOL, Lux-PAIN...the list goes on. But this is the first game I have ever reviewed that you play by...not playing it. As I explained the only way to get new items and stardust (fuel) is to scan nearby stars. The only way to scan nearby stars is to use the DS to scan nearby Wi-Fi hotspots. The thing about this is that while you are in scan mode you can't do anything else with the game. Not a single thing. All you can do is close the DS and put it in your book bag or what have you and drive/walk/bike around to find new hotspots. The game is just a veiled attempt to get you to go outside and be more active, but the downfall of that is the using the Wi-Fi on the DS sucks the battery dry. Over my course of playing this game for about 3 weeks my DS would have to be charged about 3 times a week due to it burning out on Treasure Worlds. Couple this with the fact that Wi-Fi hotspots are not interchangeable. Meaning if you live in an apartment complex (like I do) and you have a ton of hotspots nearby, that is good. But once you've exhausted those you are going to need to hit the bricks to other areas to find one. This might be fine for those who want to waste gas money hitting up every McDonalds, Starbucks, and LAN shop you can think of. There is a bit of a mini-game to where you every item in the game makes a noise, if you place them in certain orders you can make some nifty little music tracks but it's really not worth the effort in the long run. Couple that with the fact that the touch screen isn't very accurate when it comes to placing these things and you have a recipe for a game that just isn't much fun to play when you actually play it. Yeah, there are some other things like a built in mailing system and a trading system but they aren't...well. Fuck it. I'll tell it like it is. THEY ARE NOT FUN. There really isn't ANYTHING redeeming about this non-game as far as its gameplay goes. It's nothing more than a battery drainer that turns your DS into a paperweight.


Sound

The sound design is just about as half-assed as the concept. There are a few musical tracks here and there, but the majority of the music is actually made by you. But given how awkward and time consuming it is to place objects to make music on the map, it makes the game feel like you were actually in outer space. Cold and dead. There is, however, a nice little pinging sound that lets you know when another star has been found on your map so you know to at least open up your DS to see what you've discovered. There are some pre-made song tracks that you can find during the game, but they also completely rearrange your landscape to fit the items in the song. With no 'undo' or 'clear all' option, this means you will have to spent a lot of time plucking all of the items off the map to re-arrange them. Overall the sound isn't great...but considering the fact that you do not play the game often enough to hear the sound...well. I guess it balances out.

Lasting Appeal

Since the cap to fuel up the space ship is set at 1000 and you only on average get 15-20 stardust at a time, you obviously are going to be playing this game for awhile. As far as how long it lasts? Well, I have little patience for games you don't actually play so it only lasted about as long as it took me to review it which was about 3 weeks. For others I can't see it lasting much longer unless you are one of those completionist players who need to finish EVERYTHING and even then I think you'd get tired of this one fast.

The 411

This is a non-game of the highest caliber. It looks pretty and has a pretty decent gimmick and premise, but the mere fact that outside of just collecting junk there is NOTHING to do make the game nothing but a huge waste of battery life. The idea to get people active and outside to explore is sound, but there is no reason why you should have to pay 60 bucks to do it. If you work at some sort of IT Job, have a packrat mentality, and are always near a portable power source then you are going to love the hell out of this game. If you are interested in having fun with your DS and actually PLAYING it, well...let's just say this isn't the type of treasure you are looking for.

Graphics	8.5	The graphics are actually pretty good. Lighting and 3D modeling works wonderfully
Gameplay	2.0	This is a non-game of the highest degree. Whenever you do play the game all you get to do is surf menus anyway.
Sound	3.0	No real sound to speak of outside of the music tracks you make, and they are too much work to do.
Lasting Appeal	3.0	Unless you want to collect all 25,000(!) objects, you are not going to play this for long.
Fun Factor	4.0	Admittedly, it is fun the first few hours to see what new items you unlock, but that fun wears off FAST.
Overall	3.5   [ Bad ]