The audio in this game actually does suit the game although the music is fairly average and there was a couple of tracks that actually had me nodding away. The music seems to be at random as every time I restarted I was treated to another soundtrack. This game had intrigued me so much so I was scouting around the developers’ website at some of their previous games and it seems they recycle their music and sound effects quite a bit.
The graphics in this game are as you’d expect for a card game, most people have played solitaire on their computers at some point so this is a fairly standard setup. One of the mind-blowingly weird visuals I came across in this game was the crazy avatars that you and your opponent have to use whilst playing, from a wrestler, a turnip looking thing and some creepy face with legs, what is this all about? It’s a really strange feature in the game but wasn’t a total surprise from an Eastern developer releasing in the West. I also have to mention about the language barriers, there’s some severe broken English in the game which was a big disappointment as Nintendo is pretty strict on what’s released on the eShop I’m quite surprised to see such flaws in the game.
Let’s start off with the fascinating name Physical Contact: SPEED and does it live up to it? Well, there’s no physical contact unless you’re talking about the proximity of your 2nd player if you’re playing in shared mode. Surely there must be SPEED, well I’m afraid not. At its core Physical Contact: SPEED is a card game with a very basic ruleset and that’s to use all your cards up before your opponent.
During the game, you’re tasked with placing one of your cards on top of another card but only in sequence. Say there’s a 3 in the middle, you can either place a 2 or a 4 on top and this continues till you use your deck. Admittedly I did get absorbed for around 15 minutes grinding away for a brief moment of enjoyment when I’d destroy my AI opponent, which was pretty effortless. At times I had no options of putting any cards down so I’d have to sit and wait for my AI opponent to make a move which felt like an eternity and if no player can make a move, a card from each of the player’s hand is used and then you start again.
One of my biggest gripes with this game is the controls, they are extremely basic where you can only use the direction buttons to move from card to card and then up on the directional pad to place your card and that’s it! The Switch has joysticks and touchscreen, why am I not able to drag and drop these cards with my finger? It’s ridiculous.
Clearly being a card game there is no story but there’s a single player mode where you meet a Mortal Kombat style tower that you have to work your way up with a 3-star rating system on each of the floors, very fancy. There are alternative objectives on each floor but with the broken English I sometimes found them hard to decipher and it became some kind of twisted mini-game in its self. Whilst you’re collecting coins from the various objectives and winning they can be spent on avatars, tables and new card designs.
The only excitement I found from ascending the tower was the weird avatars, would I come up against the creepy head with legs, perhaps a mutant bunny. I’m not sure if they designed the images themselves but it was one part of the game that had me strangely excited.
I could only honestly see myself playing this if was in local multiplayer and my Grandma needed entertaining although I’m not totally sure she could handle the speed and I’d be far more likely to fire up Solitaire on the laptop.
Also if you haven’t seen the game trailer for Physical Contact: SPEED you must go look it up, amazing!
At £4.49 my personal opinion is that this game just isn’t worth the price. Roughly translated, recycled assets and basic core gameplay just isn’t the standard of a game I can give a thumbs up. I would have been a lot happier if they implemented touch and stick controls but the lack of them just shows the effort that’s gone in.