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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 03/15/2007
- Released on: 03/19/2007
- Originally published on GameSpot: QuickSpot (DS) Review
How much fun can you have looking at two pictures and spotting the subtle differences between them? You'd best hope the answer to that question is "a whole heck of a bunch" if you plan to invest in Namco Bandai's QuickSpot for the DS. It's just about the simplest premise in the world, revolving exclusively around variations on the aforementioned descriptor. Sometimes the images animate, sometimes they're upside down, and sometimes there are multiple differences between the same two images, but the underlying concept remains the same all throughout. At least QuickSpot won't cost you much, and it does have some reasonably solid multiplayer. But once you've played for a couple of hours and blasted through the bulk of the game's available images, you'll have had your fill.
The primary single-player mode in QuickSpot is a rapid-play mode that puts you through a progression of stages, each of which tasks you with spotting a set number of differences before time runs out. These get progressively more obscure as time goes on, and at the final level for each stage, there's a "boss" stage. This stage flips the script a bit and has you wiping away a bunch of crud with the stylus so you can see what's on the second screen or blowing into the DS's microphone to float a bunch of leaves off the second screen, all while still under a time limit. Other than these few changes, you don't do much in QuickSpot apart from drawing circles around things. Even the menus require you to draw circles around the start button or other various options to continue. In gameplay, you simply spot the difference between the two presented images and draw a circle around it. That's pretty much it.
You can blow through the first set of stages in about an hour, though there are some new stages and challenges that unlock as you progress. However, within that first hour, you'll have seen practically every image the game has to offer. Granted, many images have several available differences that alternate depending on the stage and relative difficulty level, but after a while you will start seeing a lot of repeats. The added challenges, such as the animated images, add some value to the mode, but the fun wears thin relatively quickly. The only other motivation to continue playing through the mode is a weak brain-training angle that judges you in a few specific categories, such as concentration and judgment. The trouble is that it's never clear exactly how you're being judged in a lot of these categories. There are times when you might screw up royally but only lose a bit, and then there are times when you think you did really well, but you'll see decreases in certain categories and increases in others. The mode seems kind of tacked on because it's not very well spelled out.
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QuickSpot (DS):
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