GamesRadar - DS Reviews

Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Mobilized (Review)

23/11/2009

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Mobilized recognizes and reproduces what its franchise has always been known for. Enemies constantly pouring out of nooks and crannies while you push forward with bullet fed justice. However, Mobilized is missing what makes its big brother such a blockbuster experience: insane amounts of polish. ...

C.O.P. The Recruit (Review)

20/11/2009

If we were to judge this based entirely on the opening city fly-by, we might say it was one of the most impressive DS games we’ve ever seen. Streets, cars, skyscrapers and pedestrians in a bustling 3D rendering of New York, powered at a super-smooth frame rate by a humble handheld console. Amazing, we might say. We’re going to have some serious fun here! ...

LEGO Rock Band (Review)

19/11/2009

This title consolidates the Rock Band and LEGO series to create a game that shows there’s still some originality left in those franchises.

Twenty-five licensed songs from real artists are here to be tapped through, though mercifully without a Guitar Hero-style grip. ...

Band Hero (Review)

18/11/2009

Activision’s attempt to reach out to a younger, more casual rhythm gaming audience may send an uneasy shudder down the spines of some in the hardcore Guitar Hero crowd, but the scores of tweens and teeny boppers that will surely flock to Band Hero and find themselves hooked on the experience means more money in the bank. ...

The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun (Review)

17/11/2009

The Secret Saturdays stars 11-year-old Zak Saturday and his super scientist parents Solomon “Doc” Saturday and Drew Saturday. The three of them together study supernatural animals called Cryptids – which are kind of like Pokemon only less cute. The DS game takes advantage of the Saturdays’ special items from the show, like Zak’s grappling claw and Drew’s Tibetan fire sword. ...

Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans (Review)

10/11/2009

We’ve lost track of how many Dragon Ball Z games there have been, possibly because there are more than ten and that’s all the fingers we’ve got to count on. Still – one more won’t hurt, eh?

Rather than the many Dragon Ball beat-’em-ups there have been over the years, the DS-based Attack of the Saiyans is a role-playing game, and distinctly of the old school variety. ...

Ant Nation (Review)

9/11/2009

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. ...

Squeeballs Party (Review)

9/11/2009

The big deal with Squeeballs, we’re told, is that it’s the first cross-platform motion-controlled game. But while the developers may have figured out motion controls on Wii or Xbox 360 with their cool peripheral, they didn’t get their heads round the stylus. Taps, swipes and slides don’t seem to register on the touchscreen, making aiming, throwing, slicing or any other task ten times harder than it needs to be. ...

Scooby-Doo! First Frights (Review)

9/11/2009

The Scooby-Doo cartoon was rubbish really, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, it’s a ‘classic’ – whatever. It wasn’t particularly scary or funny, and if we wanted to watch a stoned bloke talk to a weird dog, we’d hang out at the local park more often. Its continued popularity is therefore a mystery to us, particularly when Scoobs and the gang turn up in limp games like this. ...

Where's Waldo? The Fantastic Journey (Review)

5/11/2009

The big question here isn’t so much ‘where’s Waldo?’ but ‘where’s the game?’ – we rattled through this in under two hours. Okay, we played on Easy difficulty, but Normal wasn’t much more of a challenge. There is no Hard mode. ...

Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop (Review)

5/11/2009

Cooking is hard. Understanding how ingredients work with each other while grasping the subtleties of flavors make cooking anything more complicated than a pizza difficult. Cooking is a skilled profession, and while Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop cannot teach you how to become a chef, it can let you feel the joy of being a host on the Food Network. ...

MySims Agents (Review)

3/11/2009

The MySims seem to have picked themselves up after looking like they were about to head down the dumper with MySims Racing and Party. Agents is a much more MySims kind of game, stuffed with all the customization and ‘essences’ of the first game, but also focused on an espionage-lite story. ...

The Hardy Boys: Treasure on the Tracks (Review)

3/11/2009

We used to bemoan the lack of point ’n’ click games on DS back when, well, there weren’t many point ’n’ click games on DS. Now fans have plenty to choose from but, alas, few rise to the top, and Treasure on the Tracks merely swells the ranks of mediocrity. ...

Spore Hero Arena (Review)

3/11/2009

Spore’s main ‘hook’ – the whole ‘design your own peculiar/amusing/offensive-looking creature’ thing – is a bit lost on DS, where the small screen hampers your foul creation’s visual impact. But the main problem with Spore Hero Arena isn’t that the detail of your creature is lost in a haze of pixels, but that the whole game is rather dull. ...

Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics (Review)

2/11/2009

Hero's Saga: Laevatein Tactics springs from the ranks of classic strategy RPGs, admirably attempting to recreate the punishing war of attrition that was the 16-bit SRPG. For good or ill, the game has shunned most of the improvements in basic user-interface and gameplay mechanics that have gone a long way in evolving the genre. ...

Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (Review)

27/10/2009

A good idea is a good idea forever, isn’t it? Two years on from the first Drawn to Life, this sequel proves that there’s still mileage in the ‘draw your own hero and bits of the game’ concept. Unfortunately, The Next Chapter doesn’t do enough to improve the bits of the original that weren’t so great first time round. ...

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (Review)

22/10/2009

Hurrah, it’s time to become a Pokemon again! After answering questions on such varied subjects as how we feel about school and what we’d do if a TV crew asked to interview us, we were transformed into a Mudkip and sent off into the land where Pokemon live free from human interference. We’re sure we’ve been here before... ...

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Review)

22/10/2009

If minigame compilations rarely seem as good on handhelds as they do on consoles, it’s probably because it’s so much less practical to get them working in four-player mode. Rounding up four controllers for a spot of split-screen action on Wii is one thing, but finding four DS owners, each with a copy of the game, is less likely. ...

WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2010 (Review)

20/10/2009

Moving the control system away from awkward stylus scribbling to good, old fashioned button pressing instantly makes SmackDown vs Raw 2010 a more approachable and playable wrestler. But the issuing of commands is not as responsive as we’d like. ...

Space Invaders Extreme 2 (Review)

19/10/2009

Project Just, the designers of Space Invaders Extreme 2, are evil geniuses. In combining the ancient arcade shooter with both bingo and roulette they’ve created what is arguably the most addictive game ever. Is it a sinister probing of human frailties, or a genuine attempt to revamp a classic? It doesn’t really matter, because whatever it is, it’s brilliant! ...