DS Reviews, Previews and Screenshots

Jam Sessions is not game. Rather, it falls somewhere between toy and folksy guitar simulator. It has some built in effects: distortion, chorus, flanging, etcetera. But the actual range of guitar sounds and dynamics is fairly limited. The overall palette that Jam Sessions is capable of is pretty well limited to the range of filk, folk and emo. We all know what folk is. Filk is just folk about weird subjects (video games, the Hobbit, Star Trek, etc), and emo is well, emo. And I don't mean old-school punk-emo, I mean the new fangled emo which consists of boys whining about their feelings over acoustic-electric guitars. Death Cab for Cutie comes to mind. And now I've gone and insulted the musical taste of some of my audience. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

When I first heard about it, I thought that it sounded like a spectacular idea. But somehow, the idea and the thing don't match. I was thrilled to start it up, but after five minutes I was, well, bored.

After going over my review for MHF2, I realized that I was making fun of a genre of games I knew nothing about. So, at random, I picked up Pony Friends. My other horse-care game choices included "Horsez" and "Bratz Ponyz", which I may pick up later for comparison. I have no idea whether this game represents an outstanding, middling or horrible example of the genre, and gosh, we do want to be honest and informative here.

Also, it's good excuse to indulge my inner 8 year old girl. A statement which, in retrospect, probably sounds a little creepy.

What an absolutely awesome idea: SimCity on the DS! Not only does that mean I can play SimCity anywhere, but the DS interface is ideally suited for this kind of game. And with two screens, you could do stuff on the bottom and watch your city on the top. A city building nerd's dream it is!

And a city building nerd dream it shall remain.

I gotta give the developers of Zoo Tycoon DS some credit. They tried like hell to port a high detail PC game to the DS. That took balls. Stephen Colbert sized balls. And to publish what they came up with? Dick Cheney sized balls. Seriously, they must be made of some as-of-yet unidentified substance harder than diamonds.