In the latest project from the crazy brilliant mind of Suda 51 and his team at Grasshopper Manufacture (the creative talent most recently behind the bizarre gem killer7) comes Contact, an incredibly unique Nintendo DS action RPG that gives the genre a brand new lease of life with an ingenious premise and a ton of clever gameplay touches that'll completely blow you away.

Contact's major twist is the fact that it puts you, the player, in the plot's lead role. Your DS system has somehow managed to pick up signals sent from a crazy old intergalactic professor aboard his spaceship, enabling you to make contact with him in his game world, from your home in the "real" world. Shortly after meeting and greeting with the professor, his spaceship comes under enemy fire. Witnessing the whole thing, a boy named Terry gets mixed up in this mess as the professor lands and drags him onto his ship, which is then forced to make an emergency landing upon a strange planet because its power cells were lost in the attack. In order to get the ship back up and running, the professor needs to get his power cells back and asks you to guide Terry along on an epic adventure to locate the cells and return them to the ship.

During this long and unconventional quest you'll meet a cast of memorable characters (designed by Atsuko Fukushima of PoPoLoCrois fame), experience plenty of laughs via the game's wacky humor, become swept away by a captivating soundtrack and explore a wide variety of exotic locales, from dark castles and ancient ruins to tropical islands and dank caves. As a presentational interplay on the dual world premise, the graphics come in two styles. In the professor's game world the graphics are in 8-bit, dripping with old-school charm and nostalgia, while the worlds you guide Terry through display more modernized production values, featuring gorgeous pre-rendered background environments. Both styles, although not technically mindblowing, meld together flawlessly to complement the core theme. Even further to that end, there's also support for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection that lets you contact your friends online and transfer character data, which then registers in their system to create a unique NPC character in their game and vice versa. It's pretty much just a gimmick, but it's a clever little feature nonetheless.

As far as gameplay goes, Contact serves up a pretty straightforward action-RPG experience with plenty of dungeon crawling, monster hacking, item collecting, level grinding and NPC interaction to keep you compulsively playing for hours on end. The combat is very basic, simply requiring you to press the B button to put Terry into attack mode while you then watch as he does the rest - there is no frantic button mashing or anything like that. At first, watching Terry fight without full control over his every slash may seem a little dull, but as you progress, a vast array of weapons and special abilities liven everything up extensively. Through experience, Terry learns special Tech Attacks that can be activated mid-battle to dish out extra damage or aid him in other ways.

Most unique of all is the innovative Decal system. On your adventure you gather special decals (or stickers) that, in order to use, need to be peeled off from the decal menu and placed onto the screen using the stylus as if you were actually placing a sticker on the DS's screen. These decals pack all sorts of different powers, such as teleporting Terry back to the professor's ship no matter where he is in a dungeon, or summoning the professor's cute space dog pet, Mochi, to help Terry out. Of them all, my favorite has to be the balloon decal, which is a damaging bomb attack that has you blowing into the DS's mic to blow up a balloon and the size of the explosion depends on how big you can blow the balloon before it pops.

Developing Terry's skills also incorporates an enormous amount of depth; unlike the majority of RPGs that have you gaining experience by slaying creatures and advancing in one overall level of progression, Contact uses a free-form character advancement system that sees Terry growing as a character based on how you manipulate him. As a few examples, Terry's strength attribute increases the more he attacks, his wisdom grows as he uses Tech attacks, his magic attacks improve through frequent use and his movement speed increases as he moves around. That doesn't even to begin to scratch the surface of the depth to be found though - Terry has over thirty individual skills to develop how you so choose, even branching off to include personality and vocational traits like fame, courage, fishing and cooking (yes, there are even cooking and fishing side activities!) If that wasn't enough, there is also a cool costume system that allows you to put Terry into one of eight different collectible outfits, such as Mr. Cuisine, Shadow Thief, Fisher King and Aqua Shot, each of which open up new Tech attacks and weapons only available when wearing specific costumes.

The one serious drawback I did find with Contact is that its depth can be incredibly daunting at first and maybe even a little bit overwhelming for the casual player. This also carries over into the story progression, as it can be confusing to figure out where you should be going because the game oftentimes doesn't clearly point out what your next destination should be. There were a number of times while I was playing that I'd have to run Terry around from island to island trying to find out what I was supposed to be doing, and it did get a little frustrating and tedious. Other than that, I don't have any complaints or criticisms.

Contact is one of the most imaginative game concepts yet on the DS and fortunately for us all there is a deep and satisfying role-playing gameplay system to back up that concept and make it a thoroughly enjoyable and long-lasting adventure. There are a few very small bumps along the road to greatness, but Contact overcomes its obstacles and delivers an instant, one-of-a-kind DS classic you simply won't want to miss!

Reviewed by Matt Litten for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).