Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. I will be going from WarioWare Touched! to Petz Catz Clan. From Planet Puzzle League to Grey's Anatomy.  Every Friday, I will write a review on the game I have chosen for the week.

This week I am going to be taking a look at Imagine: Teacher Class Trip.

This week, I decided to review one of the two hundred Imagine games that are pushed out on the DS every week.  Okay, so I am slightly exaggerating on that, but there are literally a ton of these games.  An entire row of the DS games at one of the local GameStop stores is nothing but Imagine games.  I found one called Imagine Teacher, and I was going to do that one, but than I found Imagine Teacher Class Trip.  Yeah, I had to review that one.

The game takes place at the Montrose Vacation Center.  What the hell kind of vacation center makes you have school?  Anyway, you are April, the Chickadee class teacher.  When you arrive at the "vacation" center, you run into Peggy, a real bitch that you apparently went to Junior High with.  She's the center's Deputy Director, and your biggest rival in the inter-class competition.  She gives you your "missions", which consist of teaching in the morning and the afternoon activities.  If you get first place in the day's missions, you win a section of a treasure map.  It's ok, I don't really understand it either.  I'll be honest here, I didn't really get too far into the story of the game.

The teaching sections entail you being in a classroom with your kids.  You will do things like ask them questions, poke them if they are acting up or cheating, and give them tests which you have to grade.  The questions the kids answer are extremely simple, things like matching the heads of animals to their butts.  The thing here is that these kids start out STUPID.  They seem to get more answers correct as you go along, but at first they get EVERYTHING wrong.  This leads to some great scenes when you are grading the tests.  You mark their papers zero, and you get a screen of the child crying, and it tells you you did a good job.  So, here you are, in the crappiest "vacation" center ever, making kids cry just so you can get first place.

The afternoon activities are a little more involved, including such events as racing, climbing, singing, and fishing.  For these events, you choose which of your kids will compete.  Some of the kids will be sad, and choosing them for the event will put you at a large disadvantage.  For the races, all you do is cheer your kid on.  You do this by swiping across the touch screen to do things like clap and splash an open water bottle all over the place, or you blow into the mic to blow a whistle.  There is even a siren that you crank the handle on.  For the singing, it turns into a timing based rhythm game.  There are more activities, but they are all repetitive and boring.  If you finish in first place, you get your prize.  Then it is time for lights out, and you have to go into all of the kid's rooms and make them go to bed.  Usually you just blow your whistle if they are jumping around and turn off the lights.  This also brings out another mean facet of the game.  Sometimes you will go in the rooms and one of the kids is crying.  What do you do?  You blow your whistle at them to shut them up!  If you "win" by getting your kids to bed first, you get some candy that will help you through the coming missions. 

Everything has a cutesy look and feel to it, and surprisingly, the game itself looks pretty good.  Everything is bright and colorful and clean.  It looks like they took their time with the visual aspect of the game.  The audio, on the other hand, is just your standard annoying crap.

What is made to be a game to show how "fun" it would be if you were a teacher, it ends up being a repetitive and mean game.  These kids seem so excited to be going to this "vacation" center, and all they end up getting are tears, anguish, and a heaping dose of humiliation.  That is exactly what you will get if you purchase this game for anyone not between the ages of 7 - 10.

Final Score: 3/10

If you want to read any of my past DS on DS reviews, you can find links to them all on the Official DS on DS Blog.