Project Rub

7.0
Good

Gameplay	8.0	"Project Rub is all about touching, rubbing and blowing your DS."
Graphics	9.0
Sound	8.0
Value	7.0

By Morgan Bates

When Nintendo announced the DS slogan "its good to touch" we all cringed a little inside. Now Sega's internal development house, Sonic Team, has released a new game with an even more cringe worthy title, Project Rub. Rub is a collection of minigames akin to Nintendo's own Wario Ware series. It's a dating sim of sorts, in which you must get a girl to like you via various minigames played using the DS's microphone and touch screen.

The story is told via comic book style animations between rounds, it works well with the cell-shaded visual style that Sonic Team has opted to go with. You play an ordinary high school student, chasing after the girl of his dreams. Fortunately for him, a strange man wearing bunny ears - who happens to be the leader of a group called the Rub Rabbits - has given him the chance to win the heart of the girl, thus his quest for love begins.

The reason for the inappropriate and suggestive sounding name becomes obvious from the start: you rub the touch screen, blow on the touch screen and use the microphone to control this game. The unique controls alone may put some people off, as there is little doubt someone blowing on their DS on the bus or train will raise a few eyebrows. The main game is played out in story mode, which puts your boy in various situations where you need to help him avoid various disasters such as coughing up goldfish he is choking on and blowing out a giant candle that threatens to burn a bunch of innocent people.

In Maniac mode you can look through all of the parts you have collected in the story mode and design your own girl, you can also stick the displays and 'touch' the woman you have made with the unlocked parts. Touching the more sensitive areas will result in her 'squirming' and putting her arms over the place you touched - as opposed to laying sexual harassment charges against you.

Rub sports an interesting look: every character in Rub is almost entirely black; with no colour at all apart from their clothes and hair, the backgrounds are quite detailed in comparison. Although this is simply a by-product of the visual style, there are only black characters in the game so it is lacking racial diversity. Although it isn't that important, it raises all kinds of questions about racism in games, but fortunately, the visuals suit the gameplay.

The original Japanese voice-actor also does the English voice-overs, although these are just short sampled messages such as "break time", which is played in between rounds. The music in Rub is very catchy, if a litte repetitive, and speeds up with the games speed as you progress through the minigames.

Before each minigame you get some storyboard style instructions on how to play, be sure to check them as the mini-games themselves are actually quite hard and you only get three lives. The minigames range from typing numbers on a virtual calculator, to moving obstacles out of the way in a cart race. The number of minigames you can choose from changes each level and you must finish all of them to proceed to the next.

Project Rub is, at heart, a collection of minigames glued together by a love story, but it adds a new twist to the minigame compilation genre by blending it with a love story and using cell-shaded style visuals. Be aware though, if you play this in public expect a few stares in a "What's he on?" kind of way.' For those willing to take the plunge though, expect stylish visuals, addictive music and some hard mini games. I didn't think Sonic Team were capable of such a risqué game, I guess they have proved me wrong.

NZGamer.com - Project Rub Facebook