Ping Pals – Review

Oh dear, Oh My, I’m embarrassed to admit I paid good money for this title (yes honestly it wasn’t submitted to us for review, perhaps THQ had seen the plethora of bad Ping Pals reviews and thought, let’s not add fuel to the fire). Sure I bought it before it was reviewed and now I’m reviewing it here to forewarn innocent others of the peril that is pictochat with colored graphics and lame collectible items. Yes that’s right Ping Pals is essentially pictochat, which of course comes free with the DS in the form of firmware, so why would anyone pay an additional £30 for this title? Well as far as I can gather the core demographic for ping pals may well be the classroom gamer, kids at school who like to trade items in games, yes, the Pokemon crowd.

On first loading Ping Pals you do get to create an avatar that’s representative of you (ahem) and the graphics are in color, essentially that is where the difference between pictochat and ping pals ends. Although Ping Pals tries hard to be a whole new and clever game because of the addition of mini games and color graphics including avatar not even the ‘trade game’ aspects of it really make it worth more than a tenner and some may even groan then.

Graphically speaking Ping Pals looks like it may well have been ported directly from the GBA, there’s nothing at all of any graphical worth here and certainly nothing to get excited about, it is in a word old. Sound too offers diddly in the way of innovation and you’re just left thinking… I can’t believe I spent money on this when pictochat is actually better.

The female Gamer and deaf gamer angle has to be included because that’s just what we do here at Thumb Bandits, but all I can say is this… male, female, inbetween, martian or otherwise it wont matter because this title has little to offer you over what pictochat already does. The deaf gamer too would be better to spend their gaming pennies elsewhere.

Overall I’m actually struggling to come to any intelligent reasoning behind the release of such a title, given the DS includes pictochat. I can only come up with two possible explanations, one, THQ have counted on unintelligent saps who love gaming and are led by pretty packaging and the idea of a ‘collecting’ game. People who enjoy games like Animal Crossing or Pokemon for example, perhaps THQ are hoping they’ll part with their hard earned cash only to be left weeping in a pit of despair when they realize they fall into this category *raises hand*. Or two THQ truly thought this would appeal to the throngs of younger gamers who have not become cynical and twisted by forays into titles that should have remained in the gaming bin and not unleashed on the innocent gaming masses. Whatever the truth behind it don’t be fooled into thinking the THQ logo means quality, this is abysmal and an affront to the DS logo, keep your money and purchase ANYthing else.

Review by Angela

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