All DS Reviews

1701 A.D.: Dawn of Discovery (Review)

Mar 17, 2008

Efforts to bring the PC's brand of Civilization style strategy games to the Nintendo DS haven't always yielded positive results. Age of Empires was decent, but they made it turn-based. Sim City had features cut. So did The Settlers, and it was a buggy mess on top of that. For once, wouldn't it be nice if one of those wonderfully engrossing empire sims survived the transition from the PC to DS without losing anything in translation? If you ...

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Review)

Jan 22, 2008

This is a complete reboot for the Advance Wars series. Forget all those cheery day-glo tanks, female officers in skirts no bigger than dental floss and the pantomime COs; theyre all gone, buried under several feet of dust and asphalt. All that remains is a barren wasteland, shorn of structure, rules and regulations, the survivors cowering in makeshift communities as impromptu gangs loot and pillage the land. This isnt the Advance Wars you know and love - Intelligent Systems baby is all grown ...

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (Review)

Mar 2, 2006

Many DS games use the two screens as an afterthought. Not so with Advance Wars: Dual Strike, which incorporates the hardware's features into the series' already addicting turn-based gameplay. The goal in remains the same: pound the enemy army into the ground. There are several Commanding Officers to choose from, each with advantages and weaknesses - usually having a proficiency in one type of combat while lacking another. The same goes for specific units, such as submarines, stealth fighters ...

Age of Empires: Age of Kings (Review)

Mar 17, 2006

Real-time strategy on the DS? Hrm … probably wouldn't work all that well. The lack of a mouse to move around the battlefield swiftly and control all those units would be a pretty frustrating setup. It's a good thing that Age of Empires' immigration to the DS came complete with a genre switch, then. The Age of Kings retains a lot of similarities to its PC forebears, but with a console-friendly, turn-based setup. The idea is this: play as one of five famous rulers - Joan of Arc, Genghis ...

Animal Crossing: Wild World (Review)

Mar 9, 2006

There's no enemy to overcome, no goal to achieve in Animal Crossing: Wild World. You wake up, do some chores and talk to villagers. That's it. Why it's fun we can't exactly say, but the staggering amount of personalization makes it easy to get sucked up in this super cute world. Right from the start you're given a town. Everyone's village has the same structures but a unique set of townspeople; talking to your neighbors brings you closer and often nets cool items and clues you in to what ...

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (Review)

Feb 19, 2008

In the last three Ace Attorney games, we've followed Phoenix Wright through just about every crazy twist of events imaginable. We've been with him through the loss of a close friend, seen him accused of murder at the age of 21, and pulled for him while he fought for his life after nearly being burned alive. But Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney starts with a shock that trumps all of that. ...

Arctic Tale (Review)

Mar 17, 2008

The problem with David Attenborough documentaries is that it’s always so hard to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Can you still root for the adorable, whale-attacked seal even after you’ve watched it maim an innocent penguin father of two? Anyhow, in this, another National Geographic film tie-in, you get to play as a polar bear, arctic fox and walrus, and must go on the hunt in a graphically poor snowy and ...

Arkanoid DS (Review)

Jan 24, 2008

[Editor's note: This was originally a review of the Japanese import version of Arkanoid DS, but we find it applies to the recently released domestic version equally well, with one exception: That paddle controller the review praises? It's not in our version. Luckily, the stylus works well. It's just not as cool.] ...

Arthur and the Invisibles (Review)

Jun 22, 2007

Your opinion of Luc Bessons latest cinematic offering will have absolutely no bearing on your impressions of Arthur And The Invisibles on DS. Playable but completely losing any sense of wonder and magic, its a collection of fairly uninspired autumnal Crank! Point! Hit! Blow! minigames. Have you played even one of the WarioWare games? If so, you've played this already, and it was a bit better ...

Asphalt: Urban GT (Review)

Jun 22, 2007

A battle between motorcycle and SUV would surely end in a mile-long streak of two-wheeled hamburger. But Asphalt: Urban GT 2 is more interested in high-speed hit-and-run arcade antics than realism, borrowing liberally from more established console brands. Whether you're careening around on a Ducati, plowing through obstacles in a Hummer, or streaking toward the finish line in a Mercedes SLR, nitrous is your best friend. Laughing gas can be fired off in one, two, or three canister bursts (see: ...

Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles (Review)

Feb 12, 2008

If you've ever wondered what Prince of Persia would have looked like as a PSone-era platformer, here's your chance to find out. Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles might borrow the setting and characters of last year's free-roaming, rooftop-climbing hit, but its deathtrap-filled levels and linear action are much closer to the series that Assassin's Creed evolved from. ...

Bangai-O Spirits (Review)

Aug 12, 2008

Think you’re good at games? You can measure how hardcore you are by spending a couple of hours with Bangai-O – if your eyes are bleeding, your nerves are frazzled and you’ve torn your hair out in scalpy clumps, this game has just exposed you as a casual. What are you going to do about it, chump? ...

Battles of Prince of Persia (Review)

Feb 15, 2006

Prince of Persia as an action platformer: great. But as a turn based strategy game? Prince moves four squares across the wall, buzzsaw trap moves three? Um, maybe not. In actual fact, it's turned out a lot like Advance Wars, with the Prince (and various other generals) leading armies all over the Middle East and India in the period between Sands of Time and The Warrior Within. And, you know, it's also turned out rather brilliantly. The gameplay system, based around randomly drawn cards set in ...

Best of Tests DS (Review)

Mar 17, 2008

The puzzles and brain teasers of publisher Conspiracy's new brain-boosting game for DS, Best of Tests, are fun to a point. The questions are typical brain teasers involving observation, memory, speed of perception and analysis, and should be familiar to anyone who has ever taken a standardized IQ test.There are two areas to test: Intelligence, and Memory. Each has 3 categories, Easy, Normal, Difficult; and each category has a sub-category, ...

Big Brain Academy (Review)

Jun 6, 2006

We've been training our noggins with Brain Age for a couple of months now, but its clean-cut presentation and real-world interface seem remarkably quaint after firing up Big Brain Academy. The premise is the same - play touch-screen minigames that test your mind in several categories - but the wide variety of gameplay and overall personality may make Academy more exciting in the end. Like Brain Age, there's no ultimate goal to achieve. Just keep playing the 15 activities until your score (or ...

Biker Mice from Mars [import] (Review)

Mar 14, 2007

Konamis 1994 Biker Mice on the SNES was not a bad motorbike racing game. Its a shame, then, that the racing element is the one part of this new DS game thats entirely broken. You steer left and right on the 3D course with the D-pad, while holding down A to accelerate and B to boost. Note: boost is a Martian word meaning “achieve speeds its impossible to steer at.” Making subtle moves with the D-pad is unfeasible, which is especially annoying on levels where you have to avoid ...

Bionicle Heroes (Review)

Jan 5, 2007

It has been said time and time again that good things come in small packages. This holds true for Bionicle. A series of cool (little) robotic toys with a cool story, Bionicle has been a great success for LEGO. While the latest game based on the product, Bionicle Heroes, is a bland, fans-only affair home consoles, it would be a mistake to overlook the game for the Nintendo DS. Unlike its sister products, the DS version of the game is a decent little game that offers players quality action on ...

Bleach DS 2nd [import] (Review)

Apr 10, 2007

What do we love about Bleach? Fox-headed samurai. Furious banana eat-offs. A screen-engulfing caterpillar with a cherubic baby face. Death gods masquerading as Japanese schoolgirls using huge reserves of demonic energy to summon explosive teddy bears. What do we hate? That all of the above appear in the same ten seconds. On paper - or at least in the much needed translated instructions we found online - Bleach features a sophisticated combat system that revolves around biding your time for ...

Bomberman Land Touch! (Review)

Nov 28, 2006

Bomberman is one of those series, like Tetris and Bubble Bobble, that will show up on every gaming system until the end of time - and deservedly so, as there really aren't many things more fun than running around a maze blowing friends and foes to bits with bombs. Bomberman Land Touch! however, is actually two games in one, with two vastly different modes make it one of the best choices to feed your DS this holiday season. It doesnt matter if youve never played a Bomberman game before. ...

Bomberman Land Touch! 2 (Review)

Feb 14, 2008

For Bomberman Land Touch! 2, Hudson didn't try to re-invent the wheel. What they've given us with this new game is pretty much what they gave us with the last one: an awesome collection of multiplayer minigames and an Internet-enabled rendition of the classic bomb-heaving battle mode that fans know and love.Think of the cartridge as two-games-in-one. The first is a collection of 45 different minigames that exclusively employ the touch screen. ...