DS Reviews - Page 6

Kooloo-limpah!

When it was announced Japan would be getting a game starring the Zelda series' strangest character, Tingle, everybody pretty much agreed on one thing - it would never leave Japan. But, in a very surprising move, Nintendo decided to take the gamble and localise the game. Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland takes place before every Zelda game he's...

Sega’s African adventure bagged and tagged.

Jambo! Safari: Animal Rescue is a bold attempt at converting the popular Arcade title to something more palatable for the home audience. Quite obviously aimed at younger gamers, this conversion basically boils down to a few veterinary minigames tacked on to the central animal-wrangling gameplay sections. But is Jambo! Safari the big-game catch we were..

Family Game Delight?

Connect 4, Operation, Battleship and Bop It – games that have become household names with which we are all familiar. Translating Battleship and Connect 4 into digital versions for the Nintendo DS was always going to be an easy task; the challenge for EA was to digitize Operation and Bop It to try and emulate the success of their real-life counterparts. A further challenge was..

Cryp-ticks all the right boxes.

It's very rare for Nintendo to be beaten to the punch by other developers, but some of their recent DS releases certainly seem to be playing catch-up to the wealth of third-party support on the machine. Style Boutique (known as Style Savvy in the US) resembles any number of other titles, and now with Nintendo Presents: Crossword Collection they've got another product..

Not quite out of this world...

Well, by now you'd have already seen our review for Planet 51 on the Wii, so it's time to see how the dual-screen version of the new extra-terrestrial flick fares. Did Sega manage to blast this out of the stratosphere of gaming delight or did its cargo jettison somewhere in the atmosphere of the mundane? Just like the Wii version, Planet 51 revolves loosely around the..

On the right track or running out of steam?

Link’s last outing, 2007’s Phantom Hourglass, was a piece of portable paradise, showcasing all the DS’s features with some wildly imaginative puzzles and unforgettable moments, and still remains one of the console’s best titles. Spirit Tracks takes all that was good about Phantom Hourglass and...

Bewitching.

The DS has seen some fantastic RPGs released this year, with Valkyrie Profile, Nostalgia and of course Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and Luminous Arc II keeps the standard high with a quality Japanese RPG package that is sure to please anyone looking for a tactical fix. The game’s story takes place in the kingdom of Carnava, which has seen peace for over four thousand..

Belgian waffle?

Thank goodness for Nintendo consoles making it easy for gamers to pick a range of moustachioed characters from various spheres of the employment world. If you fancy something a bit more cerebral than plumbing in your portable plaything you might want to check out Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders, in which you play the world’s only famous Belgian, Hercule Poirot. Based on super..

Definitely not the life of the party.

Coming in the wake of its below average-rated predecessor, Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is a game that not only has a lot of potential but also a lot to make up for. As a concept it’s a good one: you get to draw your very own character as well as various in-game elements including platforms, falling blocks...

Cop a load of this.

With the DS now nearly five years old, you’d think there’d be no surprises left inside that flip-top wonder box, but here comes Ubisoft with something we probably didn’t even realise was possible on DS, under the rather off-putting title of C.O.P. The Recruit. The very talented (if unfortunately named) V.D. Dev have succeeded in creating a fully 3D city, running at a..

To arms! To arms! Lego Battles storms onto the DS in the very first Lego RTS, but is it a battling success?

Following the unquestionable success of the various Lego games of the past few years, Lego Battles is something of an oddity in the ever-growing stable of generally very good, solid adventure titles (and one rhythm game) from the Lego brand...

Too sexy for its shirt

When word leaked out that Sega's Sonic Team was working on a minigame collection for Nintendo's new DS system, many wondered why such a talented development group would be wasting their time creating something as trivial as a minigame compilation. Gamers got their answer with the release of Feel the Magic XX/YY (known as Project Rub in Europe), a game that was hands-down one..

Does the series’ DS debut rock or roll over and die?

DS music game fans have a pretty good selection for a portable, with Nintendo’s own stellar Rhythm Heaven and Activision’s Guitar Hero and Band Hero outings eager to put your rhythm skills to work. Harmonix’s Rock Band series has now taken the handheld’s stage for the first time in the bricked-out form of Lego Rock Band; should it stay..

One of the most unique and enjoyable DS RPGs to date.

The developers of Nostalgia have repeatedly stated that they've been putting the game together for the better part of a decade. While this might seem like an exaggeration at first, when you begin playing the finished product you'll quickly see the many different eras of RPG influences that make up the game. We've already seen quite a few solid..

Enjoy Winter Olympic fun on the move.

Refreshingly for a simultaneous release on Wii and DS, the handheld version is a completely different beast to its big brother: far from being a stripped-down conversion it’s a decent accompaniment to the Wii version, although one aimed at a completely different gamer. Where the Wii game looks to capture the...

A stomping good game?

MechWarrior. You’ve got to love it. The very concept of stomping around in your own personal giant robot, crushing things underfoot and blowing things up really is the sort of thing we gamers live for. Go on, admit it: every one of you has at some point had ‘the MechWarrior fantasy’. Up until 2002 however, the MechWarrior...

A bit of a mental lightweight

There’s something intrinsically addictive about the whole genre of ‘brain training’ games. Implicitly we all want to better ourselves to a greater or lesser degree. By being told just how much a success or a failure we are at intelligence-related tests, there is definitely a major hook in this whole genre of games that makes them nearly irresistible to anyone out..

Will DJ Star get your party started?

Sold as a sort of DJ-ing equivalent to the Guitar Hero franchise, DJ Star offers up the Guitar Hero concept for the Ibiza generation. You won’t find any guitars here: your instrument of choice is instead a set of decks, and your mission is to fill the dance-floor with as many dancers as possible. Loading up DJ Star’s career mode you could easily be forgiven..

Write your way to victory!

You don’t have to solve - or even begin - the included challenges to fully appreciate what Scribblenauts is trying to do. Right after the opening credits slide show, you are greeted by Maxwell standing in a field with nothing to do but smile as he always does. So you give him something to do. Anything. Type...