DS Reviews

There are no prizes for guessing that with a name like Nostalgia, this RPG harks back to the halcyon days when a party of four adventurers turn-based-battled their way through dungeons, earning XP from fights to level up and gain new skills, visiting stores in towns to acquire new kit and… Hold on a minute – nostalgia? ...

There isn’t much to separate Africa from the first SimAnimals. You’re still in charge of a range of environments (savannah, jungle, river), each containing animals and plants to be looked after. There are a few goals for each stage, such as befriending a meerkat or getting an aardvark to destroy a termite mound, but it’s fairly aimless. ...

Aside from the option to record your own monster-scaring roar with the DS mic, Where the Wild Things Are is a largely by-the-numbers platformer based on the children’s book (well, the film of the book, predictably). ...

As we stare down the barrel of a fresh new year, our thoughts turn to games. In this most futuristic year of 2010, technology will surely bless us with unparalleled experiences. Well, here’s hoping it does, because 2009 went out on a low with this cack-fest.

Arcade Attack is a fighting game so tedious that we suffered a total neural shutdown about five minutes in. ...

So, with the awful TMNT: Arcade Attack behind us, we can start afresh, striding boldly into the new year. And… oh, we seem to have trodden in something on our brave march forwards. Hang on *pokes at shoe with a stick* Eww, it’s a big pile of Astro Boy: The Video Game.

If you enjoyed the marvelous Astro Boy: Omega Factor on GBA don’t go thinking this film tie-in is anything like that. It’s not. ...

Much like how the Wii version of Go Home has abandoned the Rabbids’ minigame formula, the DS outing careers off down a new path by embracing physicsy puzzles. ...

As the second Family Game Night landed on the Wii, the series made its DS debut, and this outing combines elements of the first and second Wii games. Battleship makes much more sense here than on Wii, and Connect 4 is easier to play with a stylus too. ...

How would you go about making a classic ‘whodunnit’ mystery novel even better? If your answer is “By turning it into a videogame where your time is divided between furiously tapping the touchscreen to keep the dialogue moving, answering sub-Layton calibre logic puzzles (usually about train times – Poirot gives this kind of thing too much thought) and desperately fighting against an overly-fussy handwriting recognition system,” you answered… incorrectly! ...

It’s Assassin’s Creed II – but on your DS! Except it isn’t at all, of course. It’s a 2D platformer with fluid controls and some satisfyingly gory death sequences, but like so many of its peers on DS, it attempts to ape its bigger brother version too faithfully, and it ends up looking more out of its depth than a snake in a high-fiving contest ...

This is a reason to buy a DS for those who don’t have one. And an excuse to find/dust off/unbox the handheld for those who do.

Just process that for a second. We all know Nintendo’s little machine is shovelware central just now. But Link’s disarming, consistently clever RPG adventure, which is chock-full of ingenious puzzles and bosses so big ...