Chronos Twins (Nintendo DS)

I couldn't be bothered with setting up any of my old systems today... I just don't feel up to the hassle. So I pulled a game from my small pile of unplayed DS games... easy.

Chronos Twins is a game I picked up for a fiver from Game, quite a while ago. It's easy to buy a game for a fiver when you know they should usually cost more. Whether they're any good or not is a different matter. This one looked appealing... from the screenshots on the box, you can see it's got kind of an SNES-game look to it, and it's got what sounds like an appealing time-travelling concept. Although to be honest, I thought it was called "Chronos Twin" from the iffy cover art... it was only when I looked it up on the internet that I found otherwise.

The game boots up and presents you with a choice of languages to start with. I thought at first that I'd accidentally picked the wrong one... maybe if I look at it again it will say "Engrish" and not "English". I don't know if it's actually poorly translated or if it's a mildly clever homage to the games of the past. Probably not the latter... the presentation in general is pretty shoddy.

Once the game starts, it's pretty standard run-jump-shoot platforming action... until you die. That's when the time-travel element comes into it, and you're forced to play through the same world, both in the past and in the present. The twist is... you play both at the same time.

Are you any good at patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time? If you are, this game is for you, because that's what playing it feels like. You have to keep your eyes on both screens, because there are obstacles on the top screen that you can only clear by performing an action on the bottom screen, and vice-versa.

It's a really weird way to play the game, and for the majority of the time I just couldn't get my head around it at all. And when the actual gameplay is so standard and hum-drum, it doesn't really inspire you to go on. But, that said, I did find myself warming to it after an hour or two. I don't really know why... what with the rubbish translation, text that you can't skip or even speed up and ordinary jump-over-the-block-and-shoot-the-really-slow-moving-thing gameplay, there's not that much going for it. Must be the fact I don't actually have to get off my backside to play it that makes it mildly appealing at the moment.