For those who don't remember the arcade and PlayStation franchise, Point Blank DS is a lightgun minigame compilation straightforwardly replacing the lightgun interface with precision stabs of the DS's stylus. Effectively, it's a surreally digitised version of seaside and funfair shooting galleries. Sometimes it's simple bullseyes, sometime it's cardboard criminals toting Uzis, sometimes it's fireworks. Whatever the target, the objective is simple. Hit as many things as accurately as you can in the shortest possible time. Ad nauseum. It's a solid enough concept in the arcade, the novelty just about surviving the transition to PS1 as one of the earliest options for GunCon owners. But years down the line, on Nintendo DS?

With a relatively meagre selection of challenges, coming to around 35 altogether with minimal differences between difficulty levels, and with each lasting at most about 40 seconds, it isn't long at all before Point Blank DS has shown you everything it has to offer. The key to its success should in theory be replayability, and it sure is easy to just pick up and play, whether shooting for high scores across a series of random challenges in Arcade Mode or just practising individual stages. The problem is that none of the games are particularly addictive or engaging. On PS1, with lightgun, that novelty value went a long way. On Nintendo DS, where an impressive number of games are built entirely and skilfully around using the stylus, it's just nothing new enough to really grip after more than a couple of days.

A curious attempt at longevity is embodied in the Brain Massage mode, an attempt to cash in on the obsession with the Brain Training games complete with its own bizarre spin on the professor avatar. Here, you can select from a series of themed groups of four challenges, and the game keeps track of your highest score of the day and then records your top daily scores on a line graph so that you can track your progress. In reality, the appeal of this mode is limited. Since it has nothing actually to do with mental faculties beyond simple speed and accuracy, and is in no way designed to test your brain in a certain way, most players will find that once they've mastered the game over the first couple of days, they will get consistent scores day-in, day-out. Worse, certain groups of stages just tend to lead to higher scores than others, meaning daily comparison only really works if you stick to one particular challenge, which makes an already repetitive game that bit less bearable.

Single-cart multiplayer options work exactly as expected, pitting players against one another for the highest scores, but suffers from exactly the same problem as the main game: it's just not particularly rewarding after the first 15 minutes to half an hour. With clean graphics and sound doing a great job of capturing the feel of the original arcade title, Point Blank DS is in many ways a very accomplished entry in the DS canon that Namco should be applauded for producing. But in failing to address not only the long-standing complaint against lightgun arcade ports, namely the issue of longevity, but also the reduction in oh-so-important novelty value that the switch to DS induces, the end product can't help but flounder. Plenty of fun in short bursts, but with nothing to bring you back after the first few days and nothing to keep you playing for more than a few minutes at a time, it's all but impossible to recommend Point Blank DS, at full price at least, over the rest of the DS's ever-impressive catalogue of games.