Console: Nintendo DS
Developer: Sega
Release Date: 16th November 2004
Project Rub, or "Feel the Magic: XX/XY" as its known in America is a minigame collection released by Sega which tells the story of a main character who falls in love with a girl and resigns himself to making her notice him, asking her on a date and then saving her from a crazy kidnapper multiple times. Each scene of the story has 1-3 minigames that must be completed in order to progress, with heart points awarded for winning and taken away for failure. Once the correct amount of heart points has been attained, players can move onto the next scene.
The story of the game is fairly surreal and humourous with many of the minigames depicting crazy situations, including removing goldfish from a man's stomach, playing a few frames of 10 pin bowling with people at a bus stop as the pins and distracting security guards with cats while you sneak into a secret base. Each of the minigames must be completed a number of times before progressing; the more complex ones require just one try but other games take up to 5 repeats of increasing difficulty to pass.
Between each scene, the story is laid out in a 4-koma style comic detailing the rough idea of each situation. While the plot isn't something that stands out as brilliant, these fit well with the surreal minigames and go a little way towards explaining why we're doing what we're asked to. Tapping in the correct place on the comics will reveal a "rub rabbit" and unlock new outfits for the female love interest.
The game makes heavy use of the touchscreen on the DS as well as a having few games which are based around the microphone feature. There's good variation between touchscreen games; requiring players to tap, rub, steer, and paint their way to success, although with each game needing to be repeated a number of times, you could argue that Warioware Touched! has a better variation for a minigame collection on the DS.
The touchscreen games are well made and work very well, with responsive controls and enjoyable gameplay elements. I only had trouble with one boss battle where letting go of the screen and touching it again caused the main character to lose a life from walking into part of the boss. The microphone based games are a little less responsive; at one point the game was on full volume and heard itself, thus failing the level for me. There's also a level where you're asked to make as much noise as you can which seems impractical when you consider that the game is on a handheld console. If you're in any public place, the last thing you'll be wanting to do is shout at your DS.
The final few levels seemed to be a little out of sequence with a "last" boss battle showcasing some of the most difficult gameplay of the game, followed by an incredibly easy "final" battle where you rub the screen quickly for a while, followed by a touchscreen/microphone combination game which is fairly difficult but nowhere near as the "last boss" battle. In this way the game seems to fade out rather than going out with a bang.
Graphically Project Rub is fairly simple and uses shadowed figures of characters without any facial detail to represent its characters. The environment and other objects are fairly nicely drawn and overall the game retains a comic style. In terms of music, there's only a few tunes featured in the game but they fit well with the style and are quite enjoyable if a little repetitive.
Overall Project Rub is a refreshingly quirky minigame collection that makes good use of the features of the Nintendo DS, but can become repetitive when you're asked to repeat games on increasing difficulties. There's not a whole lot of replay value despite "Hard" and "Hell" modes being included, as it's exactly the same games, but harder and the entire game can be beaten on normal difficulty within 3-5 hours depending on your skill level. It's definitely worth a play but there's also better minigame collections for the DS in Warioware Touched, or Rhythm Heaven.
Rating: 78/100
Grade: B
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