Thursday 11 August 2011

Quickspot

Gamespot score:6.3(fair)

my score:7.0

(+)Pros:-Fun and quick puzzles that feel good to solve,-concentration mode is good fun,-multiplayer can be exciting with alot of friends,-provided images are pretty damn beatiful,-quick load times and no lags.

(-)Cons:-Rapid play mode is stupidly easy,-little image variety,-not much single player content to last long.

Gameplay time:Below 10 hours


For today, I will be doing the review of a fairly simple game. Quickspot is quite an old game now, but I played it not too long ago, and it didnt turn out to be as bad as I thought. Quickspot is a fairly simple game, and is probably one of the simplest games on the DS up to date. Anyone can play quickspot, and almost everyone will be able to enjoy it quite a fair bit. While it may not be the longest lasting of games, it does provide a good deal of fun during the short amount of time it will be spending with you. Now, grab your stylus and prep your eyes, get ready to spot some stuff!



Quickspot has NO story, its not a game with story...at all! I mean come on, its just a game where you spot the difference between 2 pictures...how can you expect a story out of something like that! Still, like many games out there, you don't really need a story for the game to be good, quickspot is one of those games out there.


Spot the difference...not too hard isn't it?

Quickspot is a very simple game to review, since the gameplay revolves on one thing and one thing only, which is spotting the difference between two pictures. If you have played photohunt before, then quickspot should come to you very easily. You are given two pictures, the original on the top screen and the faulty one at the bottom, with your stylus, you point out the mistakes by drawing circles around the different area. Its simple, really. The game's single player "campaign" is rapid play mode, where you are thrown into a bunch of levels where you have to spot a difference between two pictures. In each level, you will have to clear about 5-6 pictures, each with 1 difference to spot. These are VERY EASY. As the levels increase, you need to solve more pictures with the same amount of time, adding some difficulty.

 Later levels even throw in extra stuff for you to do, like flipping the pictures upside down, or having you scratch out the bottom screen before you can see the picture. Despite all of these interesting added challenges, the gameplay remains relatively easy and clearing the stages will be a breeze. You will be circling mistakes like a boss, and the game continues to load the next image at the speed of light with no lag. Theres a boss at the end of each level..but its really lame, its just putting everything you have learnt in that level to test. Before you know it, you will be done with rapid play, its rather short but pretty enjoyable, but the thing is, you have yet to reach the fun part of quickspot.



The pictures are well drawn and look great.


Aside from the quick to finish rapid play, quickspot's most fun mode is concentration mode. In this mode, you get to pick from one of the many images in the game and spot a whopping 10 differences between the two. While this strays away from rapid mode's fun and quick clicking, its far more challenging and obviously more fun. With 10 differences (and no time limit), you get to slowly figure out all the differences, and when there are only a few left which are hard to spot, your eyes and mind will then start cracking. Some of these images may not be that hard compared to the rest..but solving all of these images will definetely last you longer than the entire rapid play mode, and it also makes you feel more accomplished. It feels better to finish 1 set of images with 10 differences other than many sets of images with only 1 difference each.

 Plus, in concentration mode, you can fully admire how beautiful the in-game images are. You will see namco cameos like pacman or klonoa...awesome stuff. The multiplayer is also a blast, if you have friends to play with, ESPECIALLY that one bomb mode. You have to pass the one DS around your friends and find differences with a ticking bomb, when the bomb runs out, whoever is still holding the DS loses. Scramble mode is alright, its just a matter of who solves more mistakes quicker, but also has its own value of fun.

Quickspot is a fun and simple game, but is a little too lacking in content, especially single player content. Rapid play wont last you even five hours. Hell, if you're a quick player, you can clear it in over 2 hours time. In concentration mode, there are only about 40-50+ images, and if you're good, you can clear them all in about 5 hours or so, maybe more if you're not as good.

Overall, you're down to less than 10 hours gameplay. Plus, the images, while they are of the greatest of qualities and look crisp, theres not much variety to it. In rapid play mode, you will probably start seeing duplicates of images after about an hour of gameplay. Finally, the difficulty in rapid mode. Not only is rapid mode short, its very easy. Even the final level wont provide that much of a challenge compared to some of the concentration mode images. You will breeze through the whole thing in 2 hours like its nothing, most of the images' mistakes are so easy even a 3 year old kid can spot it. 

Quickspot is quick, simple and good fun at its best. The spotting of differences between a set of images is a simple concept, but its quite fun to do. Even if you find rapid play too easy, concentration mode will keep you busy. The images are awesome looking, and with friends the game can be a blast. Overall, if you're looking for something very simple, quickspot is your game, just dont expect to get alot of content out of it if you're going to rush it.


Happy gaming.