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Developer: Art Co. Ltd.
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: Sept. 9, 2009
Systems: Nintendo DS (reviewed), Wii
ESRB Rating: E-10+
In a nutshell: If an ant's life is really this slow paced and dull, I don't know how they get through the day...
0:00 The hauntingly bad box art for this game has been staring at me from my game shelf every day for over nine months now. Once I play it, I can take it off my shelf and put it away in storage. So let's get this over with...
0:01 A chirpy, 12-note tune plays and then the plain title screen goes silent. Scrolling green grass at the bottom. Everything so far screams "very low-budget."
0:02 A series of static images show ants being sucked up by a tiny UFO and... dropped in a lake? In a lab with an ant on the front a white haired bearded man studies the ants. He thinks he can harness the ants to destroy all other bugs? Maybe? Really I have no clue what these pictures are supposed to be representing.
0:03 Ah, the professor is addressing me now. "Use the ants I've given you to defeat the alien ants!" Um, OK.
0:04 An overhead shot of the battlefield. The game's tutorial tells me what each on-screen button does. Most of them seem wasted on calling up menus or switching between the top and bottom screen. "Now the only way to learn the controls is by playing." What kind of a tutorial is THAT?
0:05 "Alien ants are out to plunder our natural resources!" says the professor. "Take these ants! Use them to defeat the aliens and protect our planet!" Why wasn't this portion of the story FIRST?
0:06 Ah, now the proper tutorial gets going. It tells me to place a flag to attract the slow worker ants to some pink candy on a field.
0:07 Switching to a cross-sectional view of the underground ant farm, the game tells me to build a new chamber for either more worker ants or more soldier ants. I go with soldiers, because this is looking like it's going to be a combat-heavy RTS game.
0:08 Underground, work has started on the new chamber. Meanwhile up above the workers have finally decided to actually go eat the candy that I guided them to. Don't ask me why they waited so long...
0:10 Using the magnifying glass tool, I learn that most of my ants are currently "walking." Wow. Thanks for that.
0:11 I suck up two ants with a pipet and exchange them for six energy. Why? Because there is NOTHING ELSE TO DO!
0:12 A leaf appears out of nowhere. I move it aside to find a sugar cube, which the workers go collect on my orders. Are we having fun yet?
0:14 I use a training tool to teach my ants fire attacks. Apparently it teaches them by ACTIVELY SETTING THEM ON FIRE. They get through that OK, but if I set them on fire too much, they become little ant angels and disappear. I have no idea why this is even an option, but of course I've killed three more ants just because I can.
0:16 I kill another ant with poison and yet another with with too much water. I feel like a sadistic five-year-old, but anything is better than just watching these ants SLOWLY build their chambers and consume sugar. Of course, having fewer ants means these processes continue even more slowly. D'oh!
0:18 Man are these ants stupid. Yes, it's hard to attribute human characteristics to black dots swarming about a tiny screen, but it takes them quite a while to simply realize I want them to eat the stupid sugar. The rest of the time they wander about aimlessly and quite... well.. stupidly.
0:20 This repeating, five-second loop of music is slowly driving me mad. It's like the Farmville music but not at all catchy. Plus its upbeat tempo is contrasting horribly with the slow, downbeat play of the game.
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0:22 The sugar cube is FINALLY gone and an enemy ladybug has appeared, buzzing around a piece of pink candy that just materialized. "Quick, send out your soldier ants!" Something to do, hurray!
0:24 I've set my flag, now all I have to do is, "Sit back and watch them do what they do best!" They swarm the ladybug, which fights back with some awkward thrusts. The ants throw up some blue water droplets when they're hit, and automatically retreat to the anthill in the center when they're hurt. Once it's done, the workers can go scavenge the kill.
0:25 I'm up to 746 food, but down to 466 energy, if you care. Aw, who am I kidding. Of course you don't care.
0:26 The workers actually seem to be harvesting candy rather than the ladybug I worked so hard to kill. Meanwhile, I'm turning all of my soldier ants into fire ants, because it's something to do and I am DESPERATE for something to do.
0:28 I naively hope the menu options for a "new area" will offer me some reprieve, but "the plains" I'm currently on are the only area available. Sigh.
0:30 I'm definitely regretting my decision to kill seven worker ants earlier... having them around would probably speed things up. That said, the game did let me kill the ants. I contend that a better designed tutorial would not have let me get to this point of despair.
0:32 I just spent the last two minutes reading Scott Adams's blog, because I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do in the game. In that time, the worker ants finally finished work on the first new chamber, creating nine more soldier ants. I wish I had chosen more workers, of course, but how was I to know that back then? I was so young and stupid back at 0:07
0:34 The ladybug has been entirely harvested now... there's just a tiny bit of pink candy left to pointlessly harvest. COME ON ANTS YOU CAN DO IT!
0:36 I'm half tempted to just start over and let all ten workers live, and then create more workers in a new chamber. It might speed things up, in the long run. Of course, to do that I'd have to undo all the hard-earned progress I made so far, and every minute I dither is another minute this idea becomes more impractical.
0:39 The candy is a tiny pink nub, but the tutorial still refuses to move on until it is ENTIRELY gone. This is possibly the worst tutorial design I have ever seen.
0:40 With the candy finally gone, a blue box appears. I send my workers to investiagte. Meanwhile, next chamber is finished and I now have 28 utterly useless soldier ants waiting about.
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0:42 TWO WHOLE MINUTES later the box finally opens. In it is a mission (how does THAT make any sense?): "Defeat all the alien ants." Finally, my soldiers get a chance to do something. AND SO DO I!
0:44 It takes me a while to actually find the alien ants on the map -- they're the red dots off to the upper left. I put a flag out and of course the aliens go down to the overwhelming onslaught of my superior ant-power. None of my ants even die in the battle. Man, I know it's a tutorial battle, but that was just stupidly easy. Anyway, got 50 energy, 50 food and a new chamber. A new chamber... that means I can MAKE MORE WORKERS! HALLELUJAH!
0:46 There's a new blue box to open, a new bit of pink candy to eat, and a new chamber to open up. This is WAY too much for my measly three workers to do... and yet do it they must!
0:47 Another ladybug comes in for the pink candy. I send out all my soldiers, and once again none of them break a sweat in taking the big lug out. Meanwhile, two workers are still hard at work opening that blue box...
0:48 The box had another mission in it, but I accidentally hit cancel before I could read what it was. ARGH!
0:50 I've been letting my three workers focus on that new chamber, because I need the nine new workers it will provide. Of course, by the time they are done I will be an old man.
0:52 I'm told one of the chambers is "becoming a mess." I'm told to slide my stlyus over it to clean it. This is the most fun I've had in... 52 minutes, at least.
0:56 While waiting for the workers to finish that new chamber, I've been downloading Spinzizzle to my iPod Touch. It's free today only, so why wait? It's not like I have anything better to do...
1:01 I just spent the last five minutes watching a great video on the war on drugs. As it finishes, so does my new chamber of workers. Now maybe things can get movi--oh, I'm out of time? What a shame.
Would I play this for more than an hour? No.
Why? Even if this game didn't actively waste my time with its slow pace, I'm confident I'd find better ways to waste my time on my own.
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