DSiWare Reviews - Page 14 of 29

Tank Defence

The GO Series already had a tower defence-esque game with tanks, but there's already another one now in the form of D-Tank. In Defence Wars you got a bunch of turrets, cannons and tanks to defend you against oncoming armies, but D-Tank takes its name quite seriously and only has one of those, the tanks. You control one single tank at a time as you roll around arenas of varying size,..

Dance club calibre headaches without the fun

Among the applications that have made it to DSiWare so far is a handful of music mixing and writing programs, none of which are particularly bad. From the mighty Rytmik and its rockin' follow-up to the slightly more basic but still solid Rhythm Core Alpha, DJs on the go have had their fair share of...

Another lump of coal for this year's stockings

Last Christmas, the European DSiWare service received the karaoke title Just Sing! Christmas Songs. As you might expect, it featured a Christmas theme and asked you to sing along, but it only included two songs and proved itself as nothing more than a waste of time. Sadly, Just Sing! Christmas Vol. 2 is pretty much the same story. Everything is almost..

A strong defence, or will it just offend?

Here is it, folks. Yet another entry in the ever popular tower defence genre on DSiWare. With a focus on arcade-style high score achieving rather than plot-driven level advancement, Dairojo! Samurai Defenders makes for a slightly different experience while still retaining the same basic formula. Enemies are attacking and it’s your job to defend the..

Rocking rockets

Most people are familiar with arcade classic Missile Command. In it, you control a bunch of anti-air batteries and have to shoot down the incoming enemies before they manage to destroy all of your cities. Rocks N' Rockets can pretty much be considered a revival of sorts of that game, although it does add a few unique twists of its own. Not much is different about the very basics of..

Jedi school dropout

Originally released to arcades in 1984, Space Ace sought to recapture the magic of its predecessor, Dragon's Lair. And by "magic" we mean "ability to eat money." Gameplay was not high on the list of priorities for the team that designed these games, but flashy presentation certainly was. As a result, we are left with a visually stunning artifact of the golden..

Spot It or Ignore It?

Spot It! Challenge, if nothing else, has to be commended for making an incredibly boring idea (that's usually relagated to children's books that you'd find in the waiting room at the pediatrician's office) frantic and fun. At its core this is is still very much a portable version of the Spot It! search-and-find books on which the game is based — you're presented with a..

DodoGo! Hard Mode

A little over half a year ago, Neko Entertainment released DodoGo!, a charming, decently sized puzzle game not unlike Lemmings. Now they're back with a new instalment, but is it worth another go? The basic premise of DodoGo is still here. Your objective in each stage is to safely get at least one of the present eggs safely to the end, and you'll get better medals if you can bring..

Cave Story on the go

With the release of Cave Story on WiiWare earlier this year, Nicalis gave Wii owners a chance to experience a game that's become one of the most popular indie PC titles of all time. Now it's decided to give gamers a chance to own a portable version of the game that they can take with them on go. And while the game hasn't changed...

Frenzied

We're used to quality from Two Tribes so far, with excellent titles like Toki Tori and Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy: RUSH available on WiiWare getting good scores all around. With its latest game being an iPhone port for DSiWare, can it keep up this streak of entertaining titles? Frenzic is a fairly simple game, but it can get deceptively hard very fast. On the playing field are six circles, each..

It's electric!

There are distinct advantages to an electric versus an acoustic guitar, such as being able to play for a larger audience using an amplifier. Unfortunately, a title that emulates the instrument on your DSi won’t offer any of these advantages, with the exception of manipulating the sound with various effects. Unlike a real axe, the...

A pretty good sale

There's plenty of games available on DSiWare which are nothing more than glorified Flash games, which you could find playable for free online if you searched for just a few minutes. At first, we suspected that Supermarket Mania would join their ranks, but thankfully it offers a little bit more. As a single player-only experience,...

Ruff

Playing fetch is a great way to bond with a canine companion. There's nothing like going to the park on a nice summer day and tossing a ball for your favorite four legged friend. When you first hear of a DSiWare release based on this you might imagine that you'll be guiding a puppy along with the stylus, avoiding obstacles and retrieving balls. That's exactly what you'll be doing in Go Fetch!..

Online Tetris for people on the go

Let's face it, we've seen hundreds of Tetris releases on various systems over the years, some obviously better than others. Hudson released the original Tetris Party on WiiWare almost two years ago, but with the release of the game on DSiWare, they're now giving gamers a version to take with them on the go. As a...

Fast and (mostly) furious

Need For Speed: Nitro-X has a lot going for it. It's a racing game on a download service that's saturated with puzzlers, for one thing, but it's also part of one of the most long-running and successful racing franchises around. Is it a stripped down version of a retail game? Well yes, but it's a stripped down version of a good retail game, and despite some pacing issues..

Strong suit or bad bet?

The time has come for blackjack to take its place among solitaire and Texas Hold 'Em as a card game that can stand alone on the DSiWare service. The objective, as the name gives away, is to get as close to 21 as possible in card value without going over. We've already seen a couple versions of the game in two slightly lacklustre compilations, 7 Card Games and Clubhouse Games..

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!

There's a reason slot machines are successful: they tease the player with the chance of winning it big. The idea that you can walk in to a casino with only a few pennies to your name and walk out a rich man has enticed people for decades, and the game remains a staple at nearly every casino in existence. Once...

Rock solid

The original Rytmik completely surpassed our expectations of what a portable music studio could do within the constraints of DSiWare. Now the follow-up Rytmik: Rock Edition is here with a very different sound and new features, but crucially more of the same surprising control and musical freedom. If you haven’t dabbled with Rytmik yet, it’s a music studio that lets you create your..

Not quite gene-ius

Every now and again a really great game comes down the pipe that is fun, engaging and exciting to play. Sometimes, as was the case with Ivy the Kiwi?, it even gets released on multiple platforms to accommodate those players who might not have one or the other. Unfortunately, sometimes the games that get released feel like shamefully stripped down and uninspired ports of other..