DS Reviews - Page 5

A worthy entry in the classic puzzle series

Known by the less-than-cool moniker of "Bust-a-Move" in North America, Puzzle Bobble has been a fixture of the puzzle genre for over a decade, appearing on every console and handheld since the NEO GEO and Gameboy Colour. Puzzle Bobble Galaxy isn't the first Puzzle Bobble game on the DS, but it is far and away the best and potentially the..

Hog roast

In a perfect world, there’s surely only one score we could give the first fully portable collection of the hedgehog’s finest outings: a well-deserved 10/10. SEGA’s handheld equivalent of Super Mario All-Stars, Sonic Classic Collection features the first four Sonic titles along with Knuckles’s appearance in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, making a beefy portfolio of six games in total. But..

Harry who?

Rick Riordan’s tales of teenaged demi-god Percy Jackson’s adventures are a big hit in America. Following the success of 20th Century Fox’s adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief to the big screen, it somehow seems fitting that the Percy Jackson series makes a break for the UK market too by becoming one of the latest additions to the EA interactive books family..

Box clever

Longstanding nonogram puzzle fans will know that Picross games have been a part of Nintendo gaming for the best part of fifteen years. The excellent Mario's Picross appeared for the Game Boy way back in 1995, but this quintessentially Japanese pastime – where a matrix of squares is carefully shaded in to reveal simple, blocky pictures...

A winning combination?

God bless the common burglar. Without his sticky-fingered ways, the humble safe may never have been invented to keep important things in and unimportant people out. Sadly it also gave rise to Safecracker, a crime against gaming that has stolen something more important than jewels or money: our time and attention. The story goes like this: a wealthy and “excentric” (sic..

Jack of all trades, master of none

Having met considerable success on Wii with their sports game compilation series Deca Sports, Hudson has seen fit to bring their hit to the small screens with all new games and even more players. Living up to its name, the game sports ten games of varying quality: golf, ping pong, rugby, sepak takraw (sort of like a mix between soccer and volleyball), sky diving,..

Pocket rocket

Just like the Wii version, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing on DS is up against some stiff competition, but as with its bigger brother manages to carve out a fine racing line for itself. One remarkable aspect of the DS version is how faithful it is to the home console version. All the characters, cups and unlockables are present,...

A modern masterpiece, marred

When the GameBoy Advance launched back in 2002, it landed with a port of Super Mario Bros. 2, not exactly the most fondly-remembered of plumber outings but one that still hit the mark by fitting the platform to a tee. Come 2005, Nintendo hit on the idea of launching the DS with a revamped Super Mario 64, showing off all...

Eureka!

Although four installments long already, the Ace Attorney series has never really changed much in terms of gameplay. Every previous game consisted merely of showing the right evidence to the right people, or at the right time, with only very minor additions or alterations between each title, like the Psycho Locks in the second and third games, and the incredibly under-used "perceive..

A good adaptation with obsolete game design

It's tough to judge the classics, especially one like the original Resident Evil. Ground-breaking when it first hit the PlayStation in 1996, many of the game's mechanics are downright antiquated by now and can be off-putting to gamers who missed out on the series until Leon Kennedy shot up half the population in an unnamed European village. As a new game,..

The first tactical RPG for the modern manga classic leaves some to be desired

The 3rd Phantom is the latest Bleach game on the DS and also the first to depart from the fighting game genre. Instead, Sega have produced a tactical RPG resembling Nintendo's Fire Emblem or Sega's own Shining Force games, with players moving characters like pieces on a chessboard in turn-based combat, whilst a storyline..

Not even a master could disguise this mess

Wario games have always stood out as being excellent venues for experimental game design. He challenged death in games by going immortal for a spell, helped Nintendo test the waters with motion control across multiple games and platforms and for the most part boldly goes where Mario dares not. He’s seen a...

A classic DS mash-up is born

Mixing the heavy plot and masses of dialogue from an RPG with the instant gratification of a puzzle game might seem an odd choice, but Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes pulls it off with aplomb. Reminiscent of classic DS puzzler Meteos, Clash of Heroes offers a stylus-sliding take on the match-three genre. Each puzzle is a battle against enemy forces, with theirs on the..

The DS' first retro sci-fi MMO

Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast was a genuine revolution: the first-ever online RPG for consoles, it boasted an advanced translation system, free online play and stacks of action. The GameCube saw Phantasy Star Online: Episodes I & II that expanded the original game with all-new areas, weapons, monsters and quests, but never really took off owing to the..

The 8-bit classic returns

If you were gaming on home computers in the 8-bit era then it's very likely you came across a game called Pipe Dream. Originally published on the Commodore Amiga as Pipe Mania, it's a puzzle game in which the goal is to link together pipe sections on a grid to complete a route for a green (or blue) liquid called "flooze" from a starting tap to a drain. Lucasfilm..

Luchador's lament

Lucha Libre has an interesting history and place in Mexican culture and luchadores can be viewed in the same light as Japanese sumo (unsurprisingly Lucha Libre has a strong following in Japan as well): real-life super-heroes. Like super heroes, most luchadores wear masks and go to great lengths to maintain an air of mystery about their identity both inside and outside of the ring,..

A near-perfect translation of the console classic

Bizarre Creation's Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is something of a modern classic. The wireframe graphics and gameplay consisting of firing at enemies in every direction on a closed 2D playfield are like a marriage of arcade classics Tempest and Robotron, making for some addictive gameplay. Sierra Entertainment (now part of Activision-Blizzard and no..

Once you start, you'll need to call on the Ouendan to help you stop playing this game

In 2005, iNiS crafted Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan for DS. Rhythm games were hardly being made for the system, but they instantly proved that it could have amazing results when done right. People spoke so positively about it that it was popular both in and outside Japan,...

Herculean effort or Greek tragedy?

Role-playing game fans have to be excited to see the number of RPG releases appearing on the DS system continuing to grow. And while we've seen some very unique gameplay elements in many of the titles, we've seen almost as many titles take a much more traditional approach, choosing to stick to many of the familiar ideas that have become such a staple of the genre..