By Omar L. Gallaga

America-Statesman Staff

January 18, 2005

Overview: In UBI Soft's "Sprung" (we'll get to that name in a minute), you have the choice of playing as a hapless guy or a luckless girl trying to find your way in the dating scene in what's basically a cartoon-enhanced text adventure from the pre-historic days of video games. Think "Leisure Suit Zork."

Sprung Platform(s): Nintendo DS Company: UBI Soft Type/Genre: Choose-your-own dating adventure (Seriously) ESRB Rating: T (Teen - Alcohol reference, crude humor, language and sexual themes) *-Reviewed • Official Site • Arcade360 Index

What's most puzzling about "Sprung" (apart from it's attempt to coin a new "You Got Served"-like expression: Dude, you got Sprung! I still can't figure out what it means.) is that it's a Nintendo DS launch title. The fledgling dual-screen system needs all the firepower it can get out of the gate and this paltry offering is a bunch of text menus you navigate through, mouse-maze like, seeking the right dialogue to get you through the next stage. If the dialogue were as crisp as, say, "The O.C.," it might be fun. Instead, it's written by a writer from Fox's "North Shore," the TV show many of us tune out right after "The O.C." Modes: Single-player (choice of playing as a dude or a dude-ette)

Game Play: Try to remember the last time you had to call a tech support line and had to navigate through endless phone menus to try to get to a live person. That's essentially "Sprung," where you have a choice of three or four bits of dialogue you can employ in order to impress potential mates or to obtain an item you might need later in your hook-up quest.

Which is not to say that a text adventure that harkens back to the days of no-graphics gameplay wouldn't be interesting. It's just that "Sprung" lacks the wit that made those games so much fun, and the inability to type in commands limits you to a pre-fab line of inquiry that you'll have to repeat over and over to get through the game.

Technical Presentation: Surprisingly sharp. The game uses cartoonlike graphics to present its characters and you can see their reactions to your dialogue choices on the top screen while you make your choices on the Nintendo DS's bottom screen. The reactions are organic and convincing. You'll almost feel like you're in a chat room, talking to a clever bunch of high-school age robots.

Ease of Use: The game is simplicity itself with only a set of menus to navigate in every scene. However, the game does get tricky in some places where choosing the right dialogue path means clearing a stage. You'll find yourself repeating a stage over and to find the right combination. It may be easy in theory, but it's frustrating in practice, and the endless number of items you have to carry around in your inventory just complicates things.

Nice Surprise: The dialogue isn't all bad, really. While your character Brett (at least on the male side) is from the Blandy McBlanderson school of hapless hunks, some of the other characters, including best friend Lucas or business-school grad Elliot, are worth meeting. When you utter a particularly cute line, it saves it into a "Golden Line Notebook." One example: "You don't go to Dippy Donuts if you're looking for steak." Uh. Yeah. I guess you had to be there.

Point being that most video games have dialogue that sounds like it was written by android insurance salesmen. The dialogue in "Sprung," at least, is fun and sometimes clever. But don't expect "Leisure Suit Larry" levels of risqué laughs. To paraphrase Neve Campbell in "Scream," this is strictly a PG-13-level affair.

Enraging Quirk: The combination of text-adventure gameplay and the ski lodge setting took me back to the days of Molly Ringwald and John Cusack movies. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Tip: Write down the order of dialogue on scenes in which you have to regurgitate them back to someone else. You have to choose the dialogue in the right order and it can be tricky to remember, especially if you're prompted to select snippets from an earlier conversation backward.

Bottom Line: The game strikes out in an entirely new (or very, very old to some of us older gamers) genre and for that it deserves snaps for not being the typical first-person shooter game. But something about it feels half-baked, and it's not just the cheesy lines that populate scenes in clubs and hot tubs. A multi-player chat mode might have enhanced the game (using the Nintendo DS's wireless capabilities), but finding someone with another copy of the game might have proved overly challenging. "Sprung" is disappointing, but not uninteresting. Just know that if you pay full price for this game instead of just renting, you'll feel like you're the one who "Got Sprung."