Bakushow

If I said to you there was a new DS game coming out that was multiplayer only, required at least three DS owning people to really work, would set you back 15 GBP and would actually be easier and more fun to play using some pens, paper and a stopwatch, would you be pestering me for its name and release date?

Nope? I didn't think so. Yet amazingly that's basically what you get with Bakushow. If you wanted proof that developers will release pretty much anything on the DS, here it is, a multiplayer quiz game where you're expected to both write the questions and judge the answers.

In the interests of fairness we'll actually take a moment to go over the game's 'features' before we raise the critical eyebrow too high. Bakushow is a quiz game, the twist is that players write the questions themselves on the DS's touch screen before sending them via the wonders of Wi-Fi to the other contestants who answer them on their own DS and send the answers back to you inside a given time limit. Points are then awarded via a voting system (which ensures you really need three players to make it competitive) and the winner gets to set the next question. And that's it.

I'm not sure being a quiz game with no included questions is really a sellable concept but the Bakushow manual does at least try to pretend its lack of content is a positive, by pointing out how much freedom this gives you to use your imagination. Obviously the more imaginative the people involved the better the experience, which again isn't really a selling point. 'Will only be fun with the right crowd' is hardly a dream tag line. It's also worth noting that a sense of fair play is needed too, asking obscure questions or setting impossible challenges isn't going to make the experience fun for anyone.

The thing is, its not that Bakushow is bad as such, it's more that it's completely pointless. It does exactly what it claims to perfectly and as such if you buy it you'll have no grounds to complain you've been mislead or aren't getting what you expected. You will however surely kick yourself when you realise you've just been sold the most expensive pad of paper you've ever bought.

The DS screen isn't actually that big when it comes to this kind of thing either, wanting to write a question of anything more than a few words or draw anything with any kind of detail is next to impossible. A problem you wouldn't get with the glaringly obvious pen and paper alternative. In fact that's probably the saddest thing about Bakushow, not only is it a needless technological replacement for something we all already own en mass, it's also not as user friendly and convenient as its less hi-tech alternative.

It's almost possible that Bakushow could be vaguely useful for DS owners who were in a large room and wanted to play together but not actually sit together, it does at least negate the need to walk around passing bits of paper between you all. But that's really scraping the barrel; otherwise I'm at a complete loss to find a genuine use for it.

To make matters worse, even if the very concept isn't enough to put you off there's an entirely practical reason to avoid buying Bakushow. If for some reason you do ever find yourself in a completely paperless room with at least two other DS owning friends, Nintendo have already provided you with all the tools to recreate the Bakushow experience for free. PictoChat comes built into the DS and can be used to do essentially the same job, albeit you'll have to improvise the stopwatch bit and keep a track of your scores manually (and think what to spend that spare 15 GBP on).

Bakushow is, in a way, a tough game to score. I mean, its rubbish, but it does do exactly what it claims to and does it perfectly well. The fact that what it does is quite clearly the most pointless game concept in all of history is obviously a bad thing but it doesn't try to hide its flawed plan so anyone who buys it is hardly in a position to complain. If you love writing your own quizzes, have a paper allergy and have always wished that PictoChat included a stopwatch feature then there's a chance this is the game for you. The rest of us however should feel secure in the knowledge that there's now a clear winner of the worst game of 2008 award and then move on to something else. Quickly.

20%

By Paul Newcombe