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61 Frames Per Second

The 61FPS Review: LOL - Never Party Alone!

Posted by Derrick Sanskrit

Let me spoil this review by saying that LOL for the Nintendo DS has been dubbed the official new favorite video game of the Hooksexup staff. Still with me after that? Okay, here we go...

Amidst an interesting array of reviews, some very good, some very bad, and an awareness that the game was designed by the Kenichi Nishi, the genius behind Chibi-Robo, I ordered myself a copy of the online-only and multiplayer-only LOL not knowing at all what to expect. As there is absolutely no single-player capability in the game, I had to wait until a few friends with DSes were around to test it out. Such an occasion occurred not too long ago here in the Hooksexup office when 61FPS mastermind John Constantine, Hooksexup Editor-in-Chief Will Doig, and myself all sat down with a couple of drinks and a DS for each of us. What followed was pure social gaming magic.

The actual game LOL is not too dissimilar from my favorite board game, Wise And Otherwise, in which a game leader reads the beginning of an arcane proverb and the players each write down their conclusion to the proverb, after which all are read aloud anonymously and everyone votes for their favorite. The main difference here is that the leader can pose anything they want for the players to respond to: a question, a drawing, a written commercial jingle, what have you, and the players are free to reply however they wish as well. Sure, you can always vote for your own response (as one player who joined us after a while did, thinking they were oh so clever) but as the game doesn't keep a score and the real sense of accomplishment comes from making the other players fall down laughing at your own answer, such "cheating" is ultimately pointless.

Here's an example of one of our play sessions: John poses a question to the group: "What is Sean Connery wearing RIGHT NOW?" We all start scribbling on our screens and muffled chuckles are heard around the room as we plot our wacky responses. Time to see the fruits of our twisted minds: John has drawn something completely indecipherable with the caption "An entire live moose as a hat." The sheer absurdity of the concept has us chortling. Will has crudely drawn a skinny guy stretched out on the ground in tighty-whities, mimicking a nearby American Apparel billboard. The mental image of Sean Connery in one of those vaguely pornographic advertisements has caused us all to slide out of our seats in disbelief. I have filled my screen in black and used the eraser to remove the words "The skin of Shia LaBouef." The use of negative space has added an extra level of creepiness to the answer, generating an uproarious response in my coworkers.

 


Riding on a LOLlercoaster...yeah


This continued, passing the DSes to our colleagues so we all got to enjoy the game and taking breaks to drink some more, until we realized that we'd been playing for over two hours and all had places to go. We've come back to the game a couple of times since then and its still just as much fun, enough so that we've declared LOL to be Hooksexup's official new favorite video game, with Will even pondering several times investing in a DS for every desk in the office for group brainstorm session via LOL. That said, it is still not a perfect game. The game is limited to 2-4 players but sometimes it would be great to have just a few more. 6 participants would be ideal, I think. My second-favorite multiplayer game, Metroid Prime Pinball, is a much more complicated game, I'm sure, and supports up to 8 players off of one game card. Also, the fact that the host has to mark a check box next to each of the answers before revealing them to the other players is a needless slow-down to an otherwise lively play session.

Those few complaints aside, LOL can be an excellent game. If you have amusing friends and access to three or four DSes, we strongly reccomend securing a copy, especially as its rarity now is sure to make it somewhat of a collector's item in the future. Break it out when the party hasn't quite started up yet or when it's dying down and you're almost guaranteed a great time. Kenichi Nishi has described the game as a comedy trainer and we can not argue. On a system increasingly full of self-help "games" and overwrought RPGs, comedy is a delightful breath of fresh air.

Grade: B+

Previous 61FPS Reviews:

Dragon Quest IV
Metal Gear Solid IV
Ninja Gaiden 2
Grand Theft Auto IV
Wii Fit


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT

Comments

Patrick Alexander said:

<i>Archime-DS</i> is the best game; I'm glad you've been enjoying it! I can play it for hours and hours with my friends. It's definitely not for 'gamers', though.

September 24, 2008 11:37 AM

Derrick Sanskrit said:

There was so much I had to cut out of this post to keep it readable. It's easy to just ramble on and on about a game like this, but yes, it does bear pointing out that the game has different names in different territories, but they're all the same game, and they're all region free, so you can play any of them.

For the Japanese, look for Archime-DS. Europeans, look for Bakushow.

September 24, 2008 12:34 PM

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about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia's prized possession is a certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


CONTRIBUTORS

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

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