What did I expect from Hannah Montana for Nintendo DS? I don't know, maybe that it would tolerable like Wizards of Waverly Place? Unfortunately, this game is not good. It's basically a simple point and click (although I guess it's a point and tap on Nintendo DS, since there's nothing to click. Unless you use emulation, of course) adventure. You solve mysteries, which involve simple use of inventory, hunting for thingamajigas with gadgets, roasting people or doing boring skateboarding/roller-skate mini-games.

You move by constantly tapping where you want to go. You can’t hold stylus to lead the way or use conventional controls, you have to keep tapping the screen to move. Occasionally you’re tasked with using a magnifying glass (or a flashlight in dark areas) to find mandatory items, which devolves into trial and error “pixel hunting”. There’s a light inventory management, where you’ll be combining one item with another, then gifting them to an NPC. It doesn’t ever evolve past that, you can’t have lots of items that you need to figure out a use for, which make it feel like pointless busywork. You’ll be constantly body blocked by NPCs that you have to converse with and choose right answers to progress. To do that, you need to draw some shape (which is also necessary to unlock doors to some areas), in what is probably the worst pattern recognition I’ve experienced in a DS game. Even when I tried to draw the shape exactly the same as what was shown, the game refused to register that, which feels arbitrary. You do get to diss on seemingly rival characters, which is kind of amusing for a few times, then it just becomes annoying how often the NPCs are conveniently placed in front of the area you’re supposed to enter. I actually managed to find an out of bounds glitch to skip a human wall and advance past, but the game didn’t budge, I tried to give an item to the sender, but nope, you MUST pass those speech checks for the game to progress. This game truly hates fun.

The (lack of) fun continues. Even conversing with right NPCs can be tricky, as the collision for taps can be wonky. There are also generic NPCs in some areas that you’ll bump into, and off them, which makes traversing these places even more annoying. The game isn’t very intuitive, I kept using in-game hint system to figure out where I was supposed to go or what to do. I admit I did blank a few times and I don’t know Hannah Montana show very well, but it would’ve been nice to have a character name in the dialogue so I could remember who is who, a simple but quality thing. The only character I remember (aside from Hannah Montana herself) is Chuck, and he’s a gigachad. Lastly, there are aforementioned riding sections, that are autoscrollers, and you’re tasked with removing all sorts of obstacles. The obstacles can take more effort to remove, but otherwise these sections are pretty bland and have little variety. Did you know? When riding a skate or rollerblades, you trip over a manhole, instead of falling in. I wish that was the case in this game, that would’ve been kinda funny.

In the end, Hannah Montana is simply a boring game, it features inconsistent mechanics, lacks challenge or any sort of satisfaction and a repetitive game loop. Hard pass on this one.