The Smurfs

The Smurfs has a long and weathered history in animation, beginning in the early 80’s leading up to its 30^th anniversary September 12^th. Prior to that however came the release of The Smurfs 3D movie, and of course the obligatory movie based Smurf games. After spending some time playing Ubisoft’s The Smurfs DS game, the verdict is in and it’s anything but surprising.

The game is played by holding your DS sideways much like in games like Brain Age Academy. To get started you’re asked to sign your name, and from there you can get right into the mini-game fun. The game is separated into three major parts that include mini-games, story books and your trophy collection.

The first, and most likely the most focused on part of The Smurfs seems to be the mini-game section. Essentially this section consists of six generic mini-games in which you must complete a small task in order to get trophies (more on that later).

Smurf Coloring is basically a coloring book for your DS, however it’s one where you don’t exactly control the coloring itself. What I mean by this, is that while you are granted the power to decide which colors to use to bring life to a drab looking outline of a Smurf you are unable to actually draw. This means that you are only able to select a section of the drawing to be perfectly colored in. For those who enjoy coloring in this manner, you’re in luck. The touchscreen is very responsive when it comes to accurately choosing where you want to color and the mini-game features twenty different pages for you to color and save.

Match The Smurf is exactly what it sounds like, Papa Smurf thinks of a Smurf and it’s your job to match as many of his thoughts to actual Smurfs as possible. There are about twenty different Smurfs to search and choose from on expert mode, all with very distinct poses in order to help distinguish them from one another. While this is fun for a short while, once you’ve selected all of the Smurfs things start to get repetitive and you’ll find yourself becoming more annoyed with how well you’re doing rather than appreciate your improvement.

For those of you who are mesmerized by cakes and decorating them Cake Decorating is most likely the mini-game for you. This little distraction provides you with twelve different cakes and all the toppings you could hope for to build an awesome cake of your choice. Unfortunately, placing toppings on the cake seems to be more like pinning a tail on a donkey rather than actually placing food on a cake. Much like the Smurf Coloring game however, Cake Decorating doesn’t actually have an end. You just keep on decorating until you’re content with your cake in which case you can save the cake for your viewing pleasure.

Probably the most relaxed of the games is Smurfette’s Dress Up. This quick little game involves players dressing up their favorite little Smurf (Smurfette) in whatever lovely garbs they would like. While the selection of different clothes and accessories isn’t spectacular, if dressing Smurfs is something you’ve always wanted to do Smurfette’s Dress Up is for you. With easy and accurate touch screen registration, I found it very easy and simple to switch between the various types of clothing available for Smurfette. In addition much like with the Cake Decorating mini-game, there is no real time limit. So you can spend as much or as little time as you’d like with this mini-game.

On the other end of the spectrum comes Smurf Symphony which in the most basic of terms a Smurf Movie, Wii Fit and Guitar Hero hybrid in which players are given control of a Smurf band and are to play a song. Like with Guitar Hero, the notes (Which match the shapes of the buttons) you are to play fly down from the top of the screen in a straight line for you to hit in a rhythmic fashion. However like Wii Fit, the game plays several notes then passes the reins on to you to repeat the same notes. Over and over until at long last the song you are playing is completed.

The final game, and I’ll be honest the worst game is a Smurf Launcher. This game essentially has no outside instructions besides a picture (admittedly all the mini-games do) which doesn’t explain the gameplay at all, besides swipe at your screen as fast as you can to go higher. Once in the game, a Smurf comes onto the screen to be launched in order to grab coins. The game works fine in that you get launched, however what the instructions fail to show is that flying trash will be flying around your Smurf in an attempt to stop you. Unfortunately, I found dodging the trash to be completely based on luck rather than precise timing. Additionally, it seems there is a limit to how far your Smurf can go where even on easy mode it would be nearly impossible to meet the maximum height and receive all the coins. All in all, if there were a mini-game to avoid it would be Smurf launcher.

However despite the multiple short comings of the mini-games, the main attraction to The Smurfs is its story book section. It’s in this section that The Smurfs really shines, at least more than the rest. The story follows the Smurfs on an epic adventure that follows the story of the movie. The game reads the story to you so even the youngest of players will be able to enjoy. Throughout the story instances in which the mini-games are incorporated can be found. This results in an interesting change of pace; depending on how you do on the games the story can change. Admittedly it’s not a drastic change, and it doesn’t really affect the story in any significant way. However it does help to give the game a bit more purpose rather than mindless mini-games.

The final section of the game is a trophies gallery, after preforming nearly any action be it playing a mini-game or reading a bit of the story, you’ll be rewarded with a trophy. These Smurf collectibles are easy to get and plentiful in number, they don’t really serve any purpose besides being collectibles. It seems as though Ubisoft decided to just throw them in to give players a (nearly meaningless) incentive to continue playing The Smurfs, long after it has stopped being fun to play.

Overall I understand that The Smurfs is aimed at a younger audience, however even with that age group in mind it’s hard to enjoy The Smurfs. The game is plagued by some of the worst graphics to be seen on the DS, poorly cropped and pixelated Smurfs litter the screen at any given time. The mini-games, while they contain very precise controls are in and of themselves not fun at all. While using only images and not text may have been a good idea to make the game accessible to players who can’t yet read, it really would have gone a long way if the game didn’t use such generic and unhelpful images to convey the goal of the game. The only real redeeming factor is the Storybook and it’s possible use as an educational tool for young children. That is until the child gets so frustrated with the game and it’s poorly designed interface to the point that they give up on learning to read for the rest of their life.

Someone pass me an iPhone with Smurf’s Village on it.

Review written by Andrew Nino