Games Bought Thread 3

[Dark Jaguar]

I got a bunch of DS games recently. Bad news? The right "hinge" on my DS Lite busted tonight. I do say, the DS Lite is the most fragile handheld Nintendo's ever made. I've been treating it well just as I have all my other handhelds, and this is the first time it's happened. Further, this sort of breakage has been reported for this particular model for years now. In my case, it was the part where the lights shine through and used as a hinge for the entire clamshell operation (it doesn't house the lights, fortunately, so it's just plastic I can super glue back on). My GBA SP however has survived admirably, with no failing mechanisms at all. (The surface is scruffed up a bit, but apparently that's an issue with the sort of metallic paint they used on the SPs). Now fortunately, as I mentioned, the right hinge housed no electronics, the cable to the speakers and top screen coming through the left hinge instead. So, I could keep playing until I could save in the game I was playing when the hinge snapped off. I plan on repairing the system, but I also wonder about picking up a DSi now that I see the price on the things starting to drop. Yes, I have a 3DS, but the native screen resolution presents a bit of a problem there. At "full" view, the resolution of the DS is not a multiple of the 3DS resolution, so the image is blurry. At "native" view, the image shrinks down to a divisible matching point, so there is no jagginess, no blurriness, but the image is physically very small. It makes targetting things on the touch screen rather difficult. As a result, I would be satisfied perhaps if I were using the 3DS XL, but I'm not willing to spend that much on a size increase alone, so instead I've considered a new DS (I can still use this DS in very limited capacity as a "transfer" between those various GBA and DS games which have connection features between them, such as Aria of Sorrow (GBA) and Dawn of Sorrow (DS)). I'll be in a better position to decide when I attempt to repair the joint with super glue. If it works out well, I'll just keep on going as is. What I'm saying is this. ABF may have been on to something sticking with an original model DS. I think those were more robustly built (although my brother managed to utterly destroy his a few years back). As for my own original DS, well, I managed to get Best Buy to replace my original DS with a Lite model by waiting until the very end of Best Buy's warranty when they had JUST sold out of all their original model DSs, thus making sure they could ONLY replace my unit with the new model. As such, my old model is long gone. (I had to transfer my wireless data settings to another DS temporarily before the trade-in, then transfer those settings back into the new system, and that's how I kept my friend's lists. There you go, A FLAWLESS TESTIMONY!) I don't regret it, as the Lite DS served me well for many years until tonight.

So anyway, yeah, here's the DS games that stress tested my Lite recently:

Picross DS - Amazing game, and going online I can actually download all the puzzles from Mario's Picross. Unfortunately, there is not enough storage space on the DS cart for ALL the downloadable challenges. When Nintendo turns out the lights on the online support for DS games, whatever I've got on the cart, that's it, for good. This is an annoyance with the modern DLC era, and is really Nintendo's fault for releasing more content than can be stored in the free space made available on the cart itself. Perhaps it could be fixed with a packet sniffing and inserting downloadable program on the PC that intercepted "Nintendo Wifi" network requests?

Picross 3D - This is an amazing next step for the series. It certainly is better than just releasing new challenges for the exact same game over and over. You're right ABF, this game is incredible and very fun. I also love the MAGICAL PERSONALITY this whole game drips with. Too many puzzle games on the DS seem to have taken the Apple aesthetic too far and stripped away ALL their personality. Magnetica is one example! The game is fun, and I'd say the game is better designed than Zuma, the Popcap game that was "inspired" by this series, but wow, they stripped out all the charm from the arcade version with the DS release. The game design is solid enough, but everything feels so... sterile...

Planet Puzzle League - This is a game in a series I had completely avoided because Nintendo has no idea what to DO with this series in America. In point of fact, I had no idea I WAS avoiding it.

The first game was called Tetris Attack, and starred Yoshi and friends. It had nothing to do with Tetris (aside from being a block puzzle game), and in fact someone working for The Tetris Company said they regretted ever letting Nintendo use that name for the game, namely because the game was good enough to stand on its own. In Japan, it was Panel de Pon, known mainly in the US for that annoying flower in Smash Bros. Japan had adorable cutesy fairy princesses saving the universe as the theme, which was deemed unmarketable in the US of the 90's, so they went with adorable cutesy Yoshi and pals. (Huh? Well, at least it's adorable and cutesy in a boyish way I guess? Yay 90's NOA, stay classy. Today I imagine the fairy princess theme would be very popular to the "bronie" crowd.) Anyway, I avoided it then because I had my fill of Tetris and just thought it was a slight variation on that game. Then came Pokemon Puzzle League. I actually remember some peeps in the T-digs (that's Tendo City) saying how incredible the game was, but at the time I had sort of sworn off buying additional pokemon spinoff titles, saving my money for other things (I already had Snap after all). I didn't realize it was actually a pokemon skin on the ol' Tetris Attack. A GBA game had Puzzle League and Dr. Mario in it, but I skipped out on that because I HAD Dr. Mario, and didn't really see many good reviews for that GBA game. A Gamecube game also came out in Japan, but well, Japan only. So that brings us to the DS game. Guess what? They stripped it of all those skins and put a sort of Lumines inspired "look" over the game. However, it isn't pulled off nearly as well as Lumines managed, so while things change up enough to prevent boredom, I sorta wish it had kepts at least one of the various "outfits" the game has had over the years. THAT SAID, THIS GAME IS AMAZING! Where has it BEEN all my life?! Oh right, I just said where it's been all my life, but I didn't know, I DIDN'T KNOW! The game can be played either vertically or horizontally, which gave me two ways to stress out the hinge on my DS Lite! Horizontally, the blocks are much smaller to fit them all in on the screen space allotted, but I find the system easier to hold that way so I've stuck with that. (The blocks are still large enough to easily hit with my stylus).

I also got Phoenix Wright. Wow... Basically its A Few Good Men the game. Just as in A Few Good Men, the way courts ACTUALLY work doesn't apply here. Hiding evidence from the other team? Surprise witnesses? Why not!? Anything goes when the law is just what murderers have to worry about! The game painfully tries to claim it is set in America in this translation, even though at every turn it's as Japanese as it gets. Also, for some reason, there's ghosts in this game. It sort of prevents me from thinking realistically in solving these cases when I know as a FACT that ghosts exist. (For a while during one case, I was seriously considering that the Loch Ness Monster killed one of the victims (Gourdy instead of Nessy in the game world), as it was a possibility I could NOT rule out out of hand so long as I was in a world with spirit mediums and frickin' GHOSTS. Seriously Capcom, don't undermine your own premise! This isn't late 80's-early 90's cop drama television here! Let's ditch Maya in future games, 'kay?) Anyway, aside from Phoenix Wright's complete ignorance of court proceedings, the game is incredibly fun and well written (fortunately, the judge and prosecution don't seem to understand legal proceedings either). The important thing isn't the legal technicalities, it's figuring out whodunit using the available clues. Think Perry Mason, the game. Yeah, I'm sure everyone here knew how amazing this game was for years now, but I only just now got into it.

If there's one gameplay issue I have with it, it's the limited interface for interacting with things during the "exploration" phase of the cases. In court rooms, you're locked in place in a way that makes sense, but out in the world? It kinda sucks that I'm just a large character sprite layed over a big static background. I don't really get the impression that I'm moving around the game. Also, talking to people with that sort of system just feels... odd. Like, we're both talking in front of a blue screen effect or something, and also they sort of fade in and out and scroll about the screen to make room for others. The big advantage to this otherwise awkward style is that the character are massive and have a huge range of hand drawn expressions and movements. It brings them to life very well. It's just a shame I can't actually directly control my character and move about the environments, directly clicking items against things and attempting to "use" them like a normal adventure game. In that sense, it is limited. Fortunately, getting back into the court room the game shines through like a beacon. At that point, the lack of exploration stops being a problem and it is just you, the clues, and pure inductive reasoning.