DS Reviews, Previews and Screenshots

If you've ever played Angband, Nethack or any of the other oldschool "roguelike" games, then you'll find the permadeath of Shiren the Wanderer to be a blast from the past. If, on the other hand, you've grown accustomed over the years to the ability to save, die, and reload, you'll find the permadeath of Shiren the Wanderer to more than a little bit brutal. There are no take-backs, only do-overs. And by do-overs, I mean, you start from the beginning and do it all over again.

For those used to reloading the last save after dying, having to start over again can take some getting used to. It requires a different approach to the game. A different mind set. A certain level of bloody-minded determination. It's worth it, though.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a neat little adventure/puzzle game for the DS and, quite possibly, the strangest game I've ever played. What makes this game so weird is not the actual gameplay, but the context in which the game takes places. Every single person in the curious little village that Professor Layton visits requires that he (or his apprentice) solve some sort of puzzle before even speaking to him. Everyone. Without exception. Even when there's a freshly dead body in the room.

It reminds me of those old horror movies where the traveling protagonist happens upon a town that is inhabited solely by zombies or cultists or the slaves of Bluebeard. Except here, rather than being zombies, everyone is some sort of puzzle freak.

If you've been wanting to play Assassin's Creed on your DS, then look no further, 'cause it ain't gonna happen. While Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles certainly has some similarities to it's high-def console brethren, Assassin's Creed it isn't. Sure, you play a guy named Altair. Sure he wears white and sticks people with sharp knives. And yes, that ever present Middle Eastern theme is accounted for. But the core gameplay mechanics which made Assassin's Creed fun to play -- even after you've finished the main storyline -- are all absent.

What you're getting instead is a combat heavy 3D puzzle/platformer on a three inch screen.

Sudoku has risen in popularity over the last couple of years to the extent that there are dozens and dozens of versions available. It's in the paper. It's in the little booklets at the checkout counter of your favorite grocery store. The first electronic version of Sudoku I tried was "Sudoku Mania" for the DS.

Worst. Game. Ever.

As games go, Sudoku has relatively few interface requirements. You need to be able to enter numbers, and you need to be able to enter potential numbers - also called penciling in. Those two things are required for a fully functional Sudoku game. Period. Of the games surveyed, only two utterly fail on that point (which is somewhat surprising), but many of the others have such poorly designed interfaces that I seriously have to wonder how the designers manage to get out of bed and dress themselves in the morning.

Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol is a surreal game in which you play a mute robot charged with saving the world by planting flowers. In addition to planting(and dancing for) flowers, Chibi-Robo must also defend his park from Sergeant Smogglor and his nasty hench-things, the Smogglings. If I understand the marketing material correctly then the message of this game is supposed to be one of greenness. Which is to say that it's somehow supposed to instill a respect for the environment in those who play. CO2 emissions are bad, mkay?

As a tool for promoting environmentalism, I think Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol is something of a flop. It is, however, a charming and surreal little game that you won't admit playing in front of your more manly friends.

Trauma Center: Under the Knife is a strange little DS game where you play the role of surgeon in a soap opera. As a surgeon, you have to excise tumors, remove shards of glass and dose your patients with a bunch of green goo using the stylus as your surgical instrument. As a cast member in a soap opera, you must strike striking poses and read a bunch of melodramatic dialog.

When the game is going well, which is to say, when I'm not killing the patient, I love it. It's great. But when the game gets hard, which is to say, when I'm killing the patient, I hate it. When Trauma Center is hard, it's brutally hard: just like in real surgery, a single screwup can kill the poor sod on the table. And having to skim through all of the pre-surgery conversation over and over again so that I can just kill the patient again is pretty frustrating.

So, as much as I love the game play and the idea of Trauma Center: Under the Knife, my heart just can't take the stress. And that's pretty much all I have to say about it.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is the twelfth installment of the "Nintendo Wars" turn based tactical war game series (going all the way back to 1988), the second installment to reach the DS, and the first that I've played. If the previous incarnations are anything like Days of Ruin, then I have been seriously missing out because it's one of the best DS games I've ever played.

Seriously. If you like turn based strategy games at all, stop reading this and go buy it.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies is the fourth iteration of the popular Geometry Wars shooter that first appeared as an Easter Egg in the game Project Gotham Racing 2. Since then one version or another of Geometry Wars has appeared on just about every modern gaming platform not produced by Sony.

Obviously inspired by the arcade classic Robotron, the concept of Geometry Wars is simple: you fly around and shoot things. Your ship is vector drawn and roughly claw shaped. Your enemies: various types of vector drawn polygons. Circles. Squares. Parallelograms. Stars. And so on. While fun, every other version to date has been little more than a quick arcadey diversion. Galaxies, though, brings a pile of new features and a level of depth that will have you coming back for more.

After you rest your hands, that is.

I was at my local "game store" (is it really a game store if they don't get new releases until a week after release?) the other day, and I saw a Prince of Persia game for the DS that I'd never heard of before: Battles of Prince of Persia. Even stranger, there were two used copies in the used games section, where before, there were none. But the real surprise came when I got the game home and popped out Pokemon Pearl so that I could play it.

Turns out that Battles of Prince of Persia is not, like every other Prince of Persia title before it, an action adventure game. It is, instead, a trading-card based tactical war game which happens to take place in the Price of Persia universe. What's even weirder is that it's actually really cool.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker (DQMJ hereafter) is a critter collector RPG (jRPG?) in the same vein as Pokemon and Digimon. You play a young man, there is a quest, and to complete said quest you must travel far and wide collecting critters as you go. And like other critter collectors, the character you play is largely irrelevant; it's all about the critters.

As the sequel to a sequel to a spinoff of a sequel (seriously, the wikipedia entry is a maze of game versions), story presentation suffers somewhat in that when the game starts you have no freaking clue as to what's going on. Seriously. No Clue. Well, no matter, in a game like DQMJ, the plot is really secondary. The core game is really about capturing and breeding lots of different kinds of monsters.

And on that front, DQMJ does a pretty decent job.