GamesRadar - DS Reviews

Taiko No Tatsujin [import] (Review)

Sep 19, 2007

Sept 19, 2007 No other rhythm action game on DS has yet to use the touch screen as a single, real instrument, for the duration of the game. In Rhythm Tengoku you're banging objects, shooting arrows, and punching cans. In Ouendan you're tapping a few random balls whose shapes are abstract rather than musical in nature. In Taiko No Tatsujin DS, however, as in its former arcade incarnations and Donkey Konga (made by the same team), the game is all about a real instrument. Styluses become ...

Tales of Phantasia (GBA) (Review)

Mar 9, 2006

RPGs most certainly have their fans. But among those who don't enjoy them, the main complaint seems to be that the battles are boring - you're usually limited to picking options off of a menu, after all. Well, Tales of Phantasia is the game designed to fix that. While it has the look and story of an ultra-traditional RPG, the battles give you direct control over the action. It's a welcome change of pace whether you love or hate turn-based fighting, and it's little surprise that the series has ...

Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop (Review)

Mar 14, 2006

The first few minutes of Tamagotchi Connection are some of the cutest you'll ever find in gaming. You're greeted by adorable, bloblike creatures that are living in squalor, and now want to be your friend for life. It's just you and your little tamagotchi buddy, opening a business on the corner, cleaning teeth, making brooches, cleaning laundry with the stylus ... all minigames that simulate work we should hate, but will spend countless hours playing. Then, after you've scrubbed your 100th ...

Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2 (Review)

Nov 20, 2006

Remember the digital pet craze of the mid-ninties? If so, then you probably remember that it was Tamagotchi that started it all. They've come a long way since then, and now they're back in Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2. Leaving behind the original Tamagotchi's roots, Corner Shop 2 is more a collection of minigames than a virtual pet. The game consists of various themed shops (burger joint, clothing boutique, bowling alley, sushi bar, airline, and so forth), and each one is a minigame. ...

Tank Beat (Review)

Jun 27, 2007

Tank Beat combines rolling combat action and real-time strategy command, dividing attention between the top screen's muddy 3D rendering and the touchscreen's rote 2D world of targeting, route management, and support direction. Draw a blue line from your tank's radar blip to a destination, sweep the stylus to change the view, blow enemies up with a tense tap of the corresponding red dot, and issue orders to companions. The elements are simple, and there might've been a decent game in there ...

Tao's Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal (Review)

Mar 28, 2006

The DS' touch screen and microphone abilities have given developers ample opportunity to innovate. But for every genre-busting use of these features, there's a Tao's Adventure. The only thing worse than this turn-based RPG's inhumanly counterproductive interface is the total lack of anything remotely fresh, or hell, even fun. In order to do virtually anything in this game, you have to tap a field of small, just slightly legible text on the touch screen. You can't end a conversation, search an ...

Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff (Review)

Nov 19, 2008

Back in the NES days, there was only one football game that mattered: Tecmo Bowl. Today it may come off as unrealistic and pretty shallow, but it was amazing then and is remembered fondly now. And with today’s football games dominated by sims like Madden, perhaps it's a good time for the return of Tecmo's simplicity. Just not with Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff. ...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack (Review)

Jan 14, 2010

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. ...

Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys (Review)

Apr 15, 2008

Is there no end to the abundant joy that’s been provided over the years by that most retarded of foils, the zombie? No, apparently not. The screenshots for this might look a bit kiddy, but the puzzling work definitely hits the mark like a shovel to the jugular. Take control of a trio of zombies who must rid the world of aliens, using each character’s unique moves and powerups. ...

Tenchu: Dark Secret (Review)

Aug 30, 2006

Tenchu: Dark Secret takes ninjas Rikimaru and Ayame from the popular PlayStation series and squanders their potential in a generic action title that has little, if anything, to do with stealth. Even the plot is tired: players must rescue and defend a Japanese princess from being kidnapped by a group of evil bandits who have surrounded her village. Viewed from above at a slight angle, players run around blurry, pixilated backgrounds trying to sneak up on guards from behind for a one-hit kill. ...

Tetris DS (Review)

Apr 5, 2006

We're going to assume you know exactly what Tetris is, so let's jump right into why Tetris DS may be the best version of this seminal falling-block puzzler you've ever played. Aside from the unchanging-but-ever-popular regular game (which is dressed up with some Mario themes), there are five other ways to bust some blocks - a handful of which you can take ...

Theme Park DS (Review)

Mar 26, 2007

Theme Park is all about money. Your customers carry enough spending cash to buy five duck shoots and a couple of burger vans of their own, so the only way to protect your business is to relieve them of as much cash as possible before they wise up and start a dodgy fun fair by themselves. To begin with, you draw a few footpaths - because the theme in this park is concrete - and open the turnstiles. Before youve even built a single attraction, everyone will be forking out their hard-earned to ...

Theresia (Review)

Nov 12, 2008

At this time of year, little can be more entertaining than horror games. It’s fun to be scared, whether the fright is coming from the simple “1, 2, 3…Boo!” approach or a deeper, more atmospheric method. While they may not always put you in a great state of mind, only Theresia: Dear Emile, a poor excuse for a first-person-adventure-horror game, can fill players with such melancholy and hopelessness. ...

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 (Review)

Sep 25, 2007

Sept 25, 2007 While there have been DS golf games in the past that tried to utilize the unique stylus and touch screen we sometimes love and sometimes hate, the truth is that most of them sucked. You were expecting a golf reference there, weren't you? Something like they "triple bogeyed" or "splashed into the water hazard"? Nope. They just sucked. However, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 doesn't suck. It's actually quite good. Or, if you prefer, it sinks a ...

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (Review)

Feb 22, 2005

Tiger Woods has scared us into playing his virgin DS outing. He usually looks like a nice guy - but on the cover of this game he's pointing an accusatory finger and showing a face so full of wrath that it made at least one member of the NGC team void their bladder.Yes, Mr Woods! We'll play your game! Anything you say!Behind the glowering cover-photo, though, lies a surprisingly successful game of sticksie-ball, as we like to call golf here at NGC Towers, and it makes a good attempt of utilising ...

Time Ace (Review)

Jul 5, 2007

The concept of time travel is certainly appealing: who wouldn't jump at the chance to rectify personal regrets or prevent history's most brutal wars? In video games, this contrivance usually serves up a juicy excuse to whip up imaginative weapons, historic foes, and memorable arenas, but somebody forgot to tell Time Ace. It's fitting that the first level sends you after an evil time traveler's locomotive, given that most of the game rides on rails. Though you might occasionally get to circle ...

Time Hollow (Review)

Oct 15, 2008

If you think of Time Hollow as a graphic novel on the DS, it succeeds brilliantly with a top-notch story and memorable characters. As a game though, which is what it’s supposed to be, it fails miserably. You “play” as Ethan Kairos, a boy who wakes up on his 17th birthday to find himself in an alternate reality where his parents disappeared many years previously. Tied to his cat Sox’s collar is a mysterious Hollow Pen that allows Ethan to draw holes in time and alter past events. ...

TMNT (Review)

Apr 23, 2007

Imagine an action game with three different buttons for jump, but a camera which often made it difficult to tell which one to use at any given time. Imagine an action game with one attack button that triggers one three-hit combo... one. Imagine a game with turtles as its stars - but they almost never run. Instead, they must jump nearly everywhere they go, leaping only from one designated launching point to that launching point's specific landing spot - dot-to-dotting over the landscape like ...

Tokyo Beat Down (Review)

Apr 8, 2009

Dirty Harry. Bad Lieutenant. LA Confidential. Maniac Cop. All films starring violent cops, but none of those flatfloots are a patch on Tokyo Beat Down’s Lewis Cannon. If you squeezed the essence of cinema’s meanest cops into a cup, Cannon would gulp it down and ask for more. ...

Tom Clancy's EndWar (Review)

Dec 1, 2008

Having recently seen the brash, flash, voice-commanded Xbox version of Endwar and been reasonably impressed, we had an inkling that the DS version might not be the disaster area it initially promised to be when announced earlier in the year, and so it proves to be. ...