Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2

Have you ever met people who are charming enough that you’re almost willing to forgive their many flaws, though in the end you find that those flaws are too glaring to overlook?

Well, that about sums up how I feel about Namco Bandai Games’ Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2. The cute characters, good presentation and catchy music all make me want to really like this game, but in the end it’s just too repetitive and unrewarding.

I never got to play the first Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop game, but I was looking forward to playing this sequel because, really, who doesn’t like these lovable digital pets? Turns out that while it’s fun to take care of Tamagotchi in their original handheld egg-shaped mini-computer form, this Nintendo DS game is an exercise in frustration.

This is not to say that the game is totally crappy. As I said, it’s pretty charming, and it’s even better when you’re with your kid when you play it, or are watching him or her. In fact, my five-year-old daughter enjoys playing it, but only for short stretches before she gets bored. And that’s really the problem with this game: you don’t really have any motivation to continue playing it, because the tasks are mostly simple to do (sometimes mind-numbingly easy, in fact) and very repetitive.

Not only that, but even though you have different shops that require their own set of tasks, it’s basically the same type of gameplay repeated ad nauseam. Believe me, it gets old real quick. No shop gets more interesting beyond the first stage, which involves you providing service to a procession of customers before Princess Tamako finally appears to tell you that she is upgrading your business establishment, and some even lose their appeal before you even finish attending to your first customer.

It all begins with you choosing a name for yourself — it’s limited to four letters because you only have four blank spaces followed by the standard “tchi” suffix. Next, you have to pick one of three Tamagotchi as your partner — Memetchi, Mametchi or Kuchipatchi. My daughter and I chose Mametchi. Once you’ve chosen a partner, there is a cutscene where your partner is celebrating because you two have just won 10,000 gotchi from the Tama Lottery.

Does he decide to donate the 10,000 gotchi to a good cause by giving the developers a raise so they’ll create a Nintendo DS game that people will actually enjoy playing? You wish. Instead, the surprisingly entrepreneurial Tamagotchi suggests that you use the money you’ve won to open up shops in the Tama Mall. At first, you only have access to four shops, which you unlock once you pay the cost of starting the business. So you have the Cake Shop, Flower Shop, Gas Station and Burger Shop available from the start, and as the game progresses and you earn more gotchi you’ll be able to access other businesses.

Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2 is basically a collection of mini-games, one for each shop. As I’ve said, these games are almost ridiculously easy, though you will find some of them amusing at first. Any enjoyment you’ll derive, however, won’t stem from the gameplay but from the cuteness of the Tamagotchi and their shops.

What’s not cute, however, is that you quickly realize that it doesn’t matter whether you play the game well or not, because regardless of whether you flub your tasks or do an awesome job, your almost idiotically generous customers will still hand you the money. Sure, they’ll grumble and say they might not return to your shop, and your business partner will tell you that you have to do better, but the suckers will still pay you the same amount. I’m talking about stuff like catching burger patties, lettuce and other ingredients (that are falling ever so slowly, anyway) to make the kind of burger your customer wants, or serving customers on a plane, or setting up pins in a bowling alley.

The bowling alley, by the way, has to be one of the stupidest games I’ve ever played. You set up the pins by clicking on them and dragging them to their positions, then click again once they’re all set up to have the customer bowl. Then drag the ball to return it to the customer, set up the pins by clicking on them and dragging them to their positions, then click again once they’re all set up to have the customer bowl. That’s it. It doesn’t matter whether you score a strike, or your ball lands on the gutter. And it gets even worse, because later on you’ll open up a Sushi-Bowl shop, which is exactly the same, except that you’re setting up sushi and the Tamagotchi roll themselves down the bowling lane to eat the sushi! I’m not making this up.

It came to the point where I was just clicking on the touch screen without even bothering to perform the tasks, just to get through the wave after wave of customers and get Princess Tamako to upgrade my shop. Moreover, while she’ll upgrade your shop three times, with the last one making your shop a Royal (insert type of shop here), it’s really just a royal pain because you have to complete exactly the same tasks as before, only now you might be serving more customers at the same time in some shops.

The gotchi you earn will eventually enable you to buy stuff for your room and your partner in the game’s Care mode, but this pseudo-virtual pet mode does not have any impact on your shops, or any form of reward for taking care of your partner. Why even bother?

And that, I guess, is really the epitaph for this game. It actually came to the point where I was telling my wife that it’s almost like this game is telling kids that it’s OK to be mediocre, that they shouldn’t even bother to exert any effort to do a great job. It is a shame, because the game is cute, which is why I gave it a score of 3 — I actually feel I’m being generous, just like one of my Tamagotchi customers. Actually, I’m just doing that for the sake of my daughter, because it did amuse her for a while…

…Until even she decided: Why bother?