The Official "Countdown to DS Release" Thread!

[Dark Jaguar]

I've played it, and despite what a few have said, the small screen doesn't really hide the fact that this is certainly not PS2 level graphics. Oh well, it still looks good and better than N-Gage.

I only played the demo they had, Metroid Hunters. Honestly, I am not that impressed. It uses the D-pad for moving, the buttons on the right for aiming, L for shooting, and R for jumping. Works well enough I guess, but where's the touch screen support? I tried using the stylus to move Samus around, and as it turns out the only time that works is when you are rolled up into a ball, at least as far as I could tell playing it. I didn't try the top screen because, well, isn't the bottom one the only one with touch screen support? Anyway, it also let me change weapons and back and forth between ball mode. The game itself was rather dull. I ran around shooting very unimpressive enemies in the little tutorial level. Honestly I can't see it being much more fun in multiplayer... I dunno...

Anyway, my impression so far is that I'm not. Analog support would have been great. An analog stick wouldn't have fit on there of course, well not a normal one. Actually they should bring back the old analog... button looking thing... they had on laptops for the longest time before the (aweful) touchpad was adapted as the standard (that thing just hurts my wrist, and they ALL have this stupid "feature" that lets you tap on the pad itself twice for a click, which sucks because a lot of the time I'm just moving my finger around to get a better position for dragging the cursor). That old... whatever it was was a pretty great thing. I never had problems with it. Putting it next to the stick would have been a good choice. Another option would be PS2 style analog button support right in the cross pad. That would give you plenty of analog control. Pressure on it would let you walk at any speed, and any angle could be done by simply getting the difference in pressure between, for example, down and left, so if you are pressing harder on down than on left, you go more down than to the left in the game.