TouchMaster: Connect
Publisher: DoubleTap Games/WB Games
Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)
TouchMaster: Connect (which, for those scoring at home, is the fourth TouchMaster game to surface in three and a-half years) takes the contradiction even further with its sideways approach to online bragging rights.
This time, though, the blame for what results lies as much with the system's limitations as it does with the game. Similar to previous TouchMaster games, Connect's 20 mini-games mark a prioritisation of quantity over quality.
The games fall into four categories - strategy, action, puzzle and card - and generally give players a single objective to fulfill.
Tricky Fish, for instance, asks players to "juggle" a fish by swiping upward with the stylus, while Quik Match is a simple mahjong clone with numbers instead of symbols. Connect doesn't completely skimp on presentation.
Each game has a high score table and a lengthy roster of achievements to unlock.
Nine of them support two-player wireless multiplayer with one game card.
And Connect's attempts to fulfill its name - more on that later - are interesting, if not terribly successful.
But the chief problem with Connect is the same problem the previous three TouchMaster games had: the games themselves feel unmistakably cheap.
The touchscreen controls are stiff, the graphics look like relics from the CD-ROM era, and when Connect tries to emulate a game that's already prospered on the DS - Coco Loco, a Bejeweled clone, for example - the results are unflatteringly stiff and clunky by comparison.
Authenticity of emulation is an admirable goal, but the TouchMaster games would be a whole lot more fun if they left that behind and created facsimiles that felt like they were developed for the DS instead of some cheap arcade box.
Connect gets its surname from its headlining new feature, which allows players to link to their Facebook and Twitter accounts and post their accomplishments to each respective service.
Superficially, the idea makes sense, but in practice, all it really feels like is advertising.
At least when friends annoy you about their Facebook game pursuits, you can jump in and play them if you feel so inclined.
Connect, by contrast, feels like a one-way street, and while the social networking name-dropping is very 2011, the online leaderboards that became cool in 2002 remain a superior system in this arena.
Fortunately, Connect has those as well.
Unfortunately, the Nintendo DS has no way to stay persistently connected to the Internet.
So while you can compare your scores with others around the world, you have to manually connect to the Internet and submit your score whenever you want to see updated leaderboards in a separate menu.
Connect only downloads leaderboards from that one game, too, so if you want all 20 leaderboards, get ready to navigate a lot of menus.
Considering the other failings of the setup - there's no support for friends lists, much less a friends-only leaderboard, nor is there any way to challenge other players from within the game - the hassle just isn't worth it.
