Nintendo DS

Ping Pals

Ping Pals itself is an up-beat game that definitely 1-ups Picto Chat, but paying 30 smackers just for a few extras really isn’t my cup of tea; around 15 would be nice. I’d say wait for a price drop or buy it used since it isn’t worth the listed price (in my opinion). Unless you’re absolutely dying to get this game or you are completely obsessed with collecting, I would wait. Ping Pals definitely kick-started something here and it won’t be long until we see more of these chatting applications popping up, so keep your eyes peeled and happy chatting!

Chatting with Ping Pals is completely functional, but manually typing text gets annoying quickly, and the more intuitive and fun drawing feature is simply inferior to PictoChat. The avatar concept might appeal to young kids, who are the game's target market, but it only works well if several people all own Ping Pals. This isn't ever going to be the case as long as our schools are still teaching basic math. Furthermore, earning the money needed to buy avatar items requires that you manually type for hours on end or play the included mini-games over and over again, even though none of them are very appealing. This game just doesn't have much to offer over PictoChat, and for the price difference, we should expect a much fuller experience and a better interface. Ping Pals, though certainly not terrible, is one of those games that is hard to recommend to anyone, even its young target audience.

It seems an utter shame that any game should be docked points because no one is buying it, but in a game such as this it really is a factor. Unless you can find someone else willing to or already has, I’m not sure you should...even though the price is dropping to mythical proportions right now and lots of people are stealing a second glance. I said before that I found this game to not be half bad, but that doesn’t mean it is half good either. It really is nothing more than a glorified Pictochat, but that may be just what you are looking for. So, should you find yourself playing a copy soon, alone and bored, here’s a word of advice: why don’t you try watching the credits – there is money to be had in that, too! After all, what else have you got to do?

A chat program is already a hard-sell to a community of gamers. When Nintendo introduced PictoChat at E3, the company was still on the fence what to do with the product -- eventually it gave the software away as a feature of the system. Ping Pals is a glorified instant messenger for the Nintendo DS that, regardless of all the extras it offers users, is entirely redundant and ultimately an unnecessary addition to the DS library. Even if and when the Nintendo DS goes online, it's hard to imagine booting up a cartridge just to text-chat exclusively. Ping Pals, or a similar idea, should be a program that's an option embedded in existing game software...not as a standalone program. Regardless of its "additional" content it offers over PictoChat, Ping Pals is easily the most unnecessary product for the system.

In the end, it's impossible to rationalize Ping Pals' very existence to any satisfactory degree. Why make a game just like PictoChat when PictoChat already exists on the DS itself? After playing Ping Pals, you're unlikely to come up with any acceptable answers to this question, because none of the extra content it provides is worth paying for. Chalk this one up to poor decision making, lousy timing, or a combination of both. Just don't chalk this one up as a game you should play.

Chat function software for a handheld system that already comes equiped with an excellent chat function doesn’t make any sense at all. Sure the changeable avatars add some decorative value to PictoChat but as it stands Ping Pals is an unnecessary tool that is not worth the price tag. You’re better off spending your money on any of the Nintendo DS’s other current lineup of titles.

But for what Ping Pals offers, you can’t escape the feeling you’ve been cheated out of your money. While there’s nothing wrong with trying to make improvements on an existing free feature, there is a problem with just slightly tweaking said feature and charging thirty dollars for it. This game may be worth something, but not for the default price of a new game. If you’re looking for a new game for your DS collection, don’t bother with Ping Pals. You’ve already got something to fulfill your needs.

Le statut de ce jeu peut se résumer par le simple fait que "pictochat" est gratuit. Pourquoi payer pour un concept pratiquement identique et surtout utilisable très rarement ? Mis à part l'aspect graphique plus agréable et la présence de mini-jeux assez amusants, on se trouve face à une production vide et sans vraiment de légitimité. Une interrogation planera toujours sur ce soft et son utilité. Il est dommage de ne pas avoir bénéficié d'un fond plus fourni.

Ping Pals is like paying for a trial sample of chips, you get the same thing, but you paid for it.

Unless you absolutely must look at a cartoon character while you chat, there's no reason to buy Ping Pals. Otherwise, just stick with PictoChat and spend your $30 on Mario 64 DS. I'm just hoping that WayForward (Ping Pal's developer) is using the money it earned from making this to hurry up and release Shantae Advance.

If you're going to duplicate the basic functionality of a system and charge money for it, it's necessary to do a hell of a lot better a job than Ping Pals does. If it existed on its own, it would be mediocre, but as it stands it's completely without value. This is less a game to be played than buried in a landfill in the desert.

Perhaps if Ping Pals and PictoChat were both sold separately and weren't limited to a radius of 100 feet, then Ping Pals would appear a tad more appetizing. All things considered, there's absolutely no reason to even contemplate the purchase of Ping Pals.

On a basic level, Ping Pals offers fewer chat options than PictoChat—here, you can't choose the width of your pencil nor can you erase everything you've drawn with a simple click. Also, the actual drawing area is smaller than PictoChat's. As a trade-off for this functionality, you receive the ability to customize a creepy, Bratz-like avatar and play rudimentary games like Guess the Number and Hot Potato—creative PictoChatters could easily re-create them with little effort. You don't need this.in fact, nobody needs this.