If we were being kind about Ant Nation, we’d applaud the witty decision to make a strategy game about ants on DS. See, because ants are really small, it means the designers can just use a few pixels for each one, giving the game an amusingly retro ambience. Actually, that’s cobblers – there’s nothing amusing, witty or retro about Ant Nation. It’s catastrophically boring, both to look at and to play. The latter is more of a concern, obviously, as your $30 should entertain you no matter what the game looks like.

Controlling various groups of ants/dots, you have to gather food, attack enemies and expand your colony. Aside from the lack of visual stimulation, there’s no option to speed things up once you’ve placed units on the map, so this is achingly slow. It’s hard to think of anyone who’d get any enjoyment out of this, apart from gamers who’ve accidentally ingested large quantities of horse tranquiliser.

Nov 9, 2009