It's hard to imagine that a game about great writing come to life could feature stiff, bland characters with completely wooden and unnatural dialogue and no compelling action. Instead of instilling an interesting in literature, Inkheart makes boring fiction writhe and suffer on the Nintendo DS' two tiny screens.

Inkheart follows the movie adaptation of the Inkheart novel, reproducing likenesses of all the speaking characters in hand-drawn portraits displayed prominently whenever they spout their useless and poorly worded dialogue. Unfortunately, those static pictures are the greatest thing the game achieved, as the rest of it is ugly and boring. The plot of the movie is highly abbreviated, and there is no voice acting or reproduction of cut scenes to relieve the monotony of this adventure's incompetent point-and-click gameplay and blocky sprites. All you get for your money is line after line of conversations that feel like they've been translated by the same people responsible for the "All your base are belong to us" fiasco.

The largest and most insurmountable obstacle to enjoyment of this game is going to be the gameplay, which is borrowed from classic third-person point-and-click adventures and thrown onto the DS' touch-screen (turned on its side) in a clumsy interface that leaves you wondering why we ever moved on from the mouse. Inkheart manages to highlight the slow, painful movement of every character, and if you're trying to find any of the essential items in the environment, you're going to find yourself tapping around like you're playing Elite Beat Agents on the extreme difficulty level. There is nothing to do in almost all of the game but click your character (Dustfinger, Meggy or Mo), move him around and try to find the one or two required items to continue.

The objectives are very straightforward, if poorly explained. The simplest of tasks has you find a couple of items and bring them back, and the more vague ones usually require about three items, combined in highly predictable ways, such as putting a magnet on a string on a stick to grab an unreachable metal object. There's never any use for the dozen slots open in every character's invisible backpack, and if you find yourself still holding onto an item after 10 minutes, you're probably doing something wrong. If you're still in the same area, which is never more than three small rooms at a time, you've probably done something wrong. When this happens, you should probably hold down the A button to reveal the location of all interactive objects and figure out what you're missing. Once every interactive item is in your possession, the right answer is unavoidable.

There is no difference between any of the characters, either in gameplay or dialogue. They all plod along like stiff-armed, pixelated zombies and say the same things when you click on items that you can't use. The first thing Meggy ever said to me was, "I think, that won't help either," which left me to wonder what the first unhelpful thing was and why Meggie was so fond of unnecessary commas. Goldfinger managed to be even more repetitive and dry with phrases like, "But nonetheless, I should be very careful just the same," and "Elinor will turn me out on an ear." The poor writing doesn't help when confronted with the occasional puzzles, such as one that asks you to associate numbers with dwarves, wishes and "the flies." The first two numbers make sense and are accessible pieces of the puzzle, but I don't think I'll ever know why the answer I gave for flies was correct. The only way to get past that puzzle, as far as I can tell, is complete guesswork.

The graphics and sound are just as bad as the dialogue, making a PC adventure from 10 years ago look like a Pixar movie in comparison. Every character is so grainy as to be indistinguishable except for its color scheme, and they all walk identically, holding their arms far away from their bodies as if they're afraid to touch themselves. The music is generally slow, consisting of soothing and completely forgettable melodies that repeat every 30 seconds or so.

Things only get worse when Inkheart strays from the standard point-and-click setup. There are a few mini-games that involve sledding, sneaking and juggling that do just as poor a job of capturing excitement as the rest of the game. The juggling mini-game is the most competent, having you tap balls as they cross a green line to successfully keep the balls in the air. The sledding is also decent, asking you simply to slide down a hill and steer the sled right and left with the d-pad to avoid obstacles. The others are just atrocious. One mini-game is closely timed and has you pointing a small animal across rafters in an attic with the stylus. There's no point in exploring thanks to the time limit, and the rafters don't have very good recognition boxes, so you can fall off while still being firmly planted on them. Of course, there's no punishment for falling, so it's not a big deal and you just try again. The other sneaking mini-game involves moving a character with the stylus and making the screen follow him with the d-pad. The control mechanics are nonsensical, and there's almost no point to being sneaky since you can duck into doors and make guards forget you're there. It's possibly the worst mini-game to have graced the portable DS console.

There are no multiplayer or network interactions for Inkheart to worry about, so the adventure is mercifully short once you figure out how to highlight interactive items. Without the discovery of the A button, the game can be a frustrating mess of tapping around two or three rooms with no real direction in mind. Once that button is pressed, though, it's a quick and easy hop to the ending, occasionally interrupted by dull mini-games. You can replay those games for a little bit of replay value, but the best use of this title is probably as a doorstop.

Score: 3.0/10