All DS Reviews

Pac N Roll (Review)

Sep 8, 2005

Pac-Man's been around for ages, but now he's going around like never before. Balls to complicated action heroes with legs and arms - Pac-Man manages with nothing but his pokey little nose and a permanent grin on his face. Pac 'n' Roll is actually quite similar to Super Monkey Ball. It's less subtle, but just as exhausting as you roll Pac-Man by rubbing the stylus over him on the lower screen, like a track-ball. A dash move is activated by swiping at him with the stylus and letting your stroke ...

Pac Pix (Review)

Apr 14, 2005

Draw Pac-Man - the sharp angle of the mouth, then his round body - and he'll animate and move off in the direction you drew him facing. Guide him towards the roaming ghosts by drawing walls in front of him: the direction you draw the wall is the direction in which he travels.That's the simple premise behind this game, and it captivated the crowds when the DS was first playable at last year's E3. But there's more to Pac-Pix than that. It's much cleverer than we originally thought. Although ...

Panzer Tactics DS (Review)

Jan 18, 2008

The ravages of portable war have been largely limited to cartoon battles between fictional forces until now, but Panzer Tactics DS lets you twist your noodle on 30 missions pulled from World War II. Panzer Tactics DS isn't for tactical newbies, with a ramping difficulty that makes each of three 10-mission turn-based campaigns progressively more complex without becoming too brutally frustrating. Tutorials teach the basics, but there's no substitute for getting a few losses under your belt for ...

Pet Alien (Review)

Oct 24, 2007

Oct 17, 2007 Its definitely a rare skill to be able to craft a puzzle game thats actually easy enough for preteens. Unfortunately, someone at developer Shinen has that exact gift. Pet Alien would be a legitimately decent puzzler if it werent for the fact that anyone with a double-digit age will smoke through its 80 levels in two, maybe three, hours flat. Attempting to save your human “owner” from space kidnappers, youre given a cast of five aliens, each of whom has a different ...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Review)

Apr 3, 2006

Who defends the indefensible? Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This bumbling rookie lawyer has to get his facts straight and his perspiration under control, because defendants are counting on him in five cases of Nintendo DS drama. It will have you testifying that the adventure genre is alive and well. Phoenix has his work cut out for him, including examining the scene of the crime, working with law enforcement, consoling the defendant, and cross-examining witnesses. It's a dirty job, but one ...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Review)

Mar 27, 2006

Monday 27 March 2006 Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney (or Finger of the North Star as we're inclined to call it) remains as simultaneously charming, incomparable and inconsistently engaging on DS as it was on its previous format. With the exception of a new and technically adventurous fifth case, this is GBA's Gyakuten Saiban remade, localised for the west and given a touch-screen interface. But the setup/payoff pattern of investigation and courtroom cross-examination remains fresh: characters ...

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All (Review)

Jan 16, 2007

Defense attorneys in Phoenix Wright's world must be stressed to the point of insanity. Not only are their clients presumed guilty until proven innocent, but the only way to actually free them is to find the real culprits and force them to confess on the stand. What's more, the judge is a gullible idiot who allows key witnesses to constantly revise their testimony after being caught in lies. All things considered, it's a wonder these lawyers ever get paid. Of course, it wouldn't be much of a ...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations (Review)

Oct 22, 2007

Oct 22, 2007 Phoenix Wright, you stand before us today accused of gross negligence in light of past criticisms. Twice have you stood before this court and twice have you ignored us. Your twists and turns dash rationality to pieces like a logic piñata and yet, for all your snakelike judicial journeys, you are just as guilty of showing your hand too early, forcing us to take ludicrous routes to an answer we spotted from minute one. You punish perceptive players - surely those most likely ...

Picross [import] (Review)

Mar 16, 2007

Forget Sudoku. Kakuro: get your koat. Picross is the logic-based mind-meddler of champions. It's well established in Japan - having been invented by a woman flicking a skyscraper's lights on and off, believe it or not. Now the infection's spread to DS. It works like PC timewaster Minesweeper with the randomness taken out. Starting out with a totally blank grid, you chisel out squares with your stylus, according to the numbers at the edges. So: seeing "3" and "7" at the top of a column means ...

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Review)

Jul 11, 2006

It was a glorious day when developers realized they shouldn't try to cram console versions of games onto the comparatively underpowered DS. Action games with 3D graphics just don't translate well (Splinter Cell, for one), and even though Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest manages to emulate the PS2 game well enough, it's still a sleep-inducing trial of lever pulling and button mashing. Gameplay never changes from the very first level - run from room to room, sword at the ready, and ...

Planet Puzzle League (Review)

Jun 13, 2007

This one really snuck up on us. Seems like two or three weeks ago this wasn't even on a list anywhere and then pow, it's coming out the first week of June. The quick turnaround isn't surprising, however, as Planet Puzzle League is yet another rehash of a game better known as Tetris Attack or Pokemon Puzzle League. Odds are you've played this before, but odds are just as likely you loved every single moment you spent with it. And so it goes with this latest version - you just won't be able to ...

Pogo Island (Review)

Apr 4, 2007

Okay, just so were all clear, we have no beef with casual games. We loves us some Bejeweled, we cant wait for Line Rider, and weve played the crap out of Xbox LIVE casuals like Zuma and Hexic. In fact, Tetris would probably be considered a casual game if it came out today, and if it wasnt, its 20 knock-offs would definitely ...

Point Blank DS (Review)

Jun 19, 2006

If there's one genre that handheld game systems haven't been able to pull off, it's the light gun shooter. It doesn't really make sense - how do you pack in a life-size gun and still make it portable? Well, in the case of Point Blank DS, the gun becomes a stylus and, shockingly, everything works like magic. This is nothing more than a collection of twitchy, arcade-style shooting galleries designed for quick gameplay sessions, and in that regard, it hits the target dead on. The regular game ...

Pokemon Dash (Review)

Jan 28, 2005

Back in NGC/101 when we had our first hands-on with the game, we said that this was 'the contender for DS's wooden spoon' - and it turns out we couldn't have been further from the truth. Pokemon Dash has exceeded our expectations in that it's a much cleverer game than we at first anticipated.It's essentially a racing game. By rapidly rubbing his back with the stylus, you have to guide Pikachu (against five other Pokemon) in a point-to-point race across a large overworld map that's made up of a ...

Pokemon Diamond / Pearl (Review)

Apr 20, 2007

It's been four years since the third Pokemon generation began with Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire on the Gameboy Advance, and a lot's changed in that time, but, Pokemon fever continues unabated. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl are the best entries in the series yet - fans undoubtedly already have their copies en route, but a deep and engaging game awaits everyone else who can get past the cute characters and irritating marketing. Unsurprisingly, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl don't try to stray from the ...

Pokemon Fushigi No Dungeon Toki/Yami No Tankentai [import] (Review)

Oct 16, 2007

Oct 16, 2007 So you were transformed into a furry critter in the previous Pokémon Fushigi No Dungeon (Pokémon Mystery Dungeon in English) and you liked it. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Life as a Pokémon is actually quite good and doesn't ever involve being shoved into a ball or forced to bite out the throat of some other poor creature, because when humans aren't looking, Pokémon live in houses and talk Japanese. Because it was reasonably entertaining the first ...

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (Review)

Sep 19, 2006

Stop-gap solutions are a necessary evil. Sometimes people or companies have to offer a temporary remedy to address a need without fully satisfying it. That's exactly what Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team is. This tourniquet of a title is meant to keep Pokemon fans occupied while they wait for the new Pokemon role-playing games - you know, the ones that have been dazzling gamers for the last decade. Until then, they'll have to make do with this game, which has some good qualities that ...

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time / Darkness (Review)

Apr 30, 2008

Last year's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games were an interesting mix of developer Chunsoft's dungeon-crawling designs and Nintendo's inimitable pocket monsters. It was an interesting blend that offered a fun time... for a limited audience. For most Pokemon fans, the game was a bit boring compared to the mainline Pokemon titles. The latest games in the series, Explorers of Darkness and Explorers of Time, are more of the same. While there are ...

Pokemon Ranger (Review)

Nov 6, 2006

Another month, another Pokemon spin-off. Yes, the Pokemon money-making machine is full effect on the DS now, building speed in anticipation for next year's Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Pokemon Ranger is relatively insubstantial and ultimately forgettable, but remains an amusing dual-screen diversion until the next real Pokemon adventures arrive. So what exactly is a Pokemon Ranger? Unlike a Pokemon trainer, Pokemon Rangers watch over a specific area, its people and its Pokemon. They try to help ...

Pokemon Trozei (Review)

Apr 6, 2006

Is there anything the Poke-critters can't do? As much as you want to write them off, the sickeningly-adorable little monsters manage to sneak into a decent game from time to time. In this case, it's a falling-blocks puzzler called Pokemon Trozei. Instead of blocks tumbling from the sky, it's a bunch of Pokemon. The bit is to line up four of the same type horizontally or vertically with the stylus. Once you do - pop, they disappear like Tetris blocks. After you match four, you only need three ...