Category Archives: ds

Sonic Rolls A Natural 20

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on April 15, 2008 – 5:44 pm

Let’s not mince words here. As near as I can tell, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has been circling the drain for years now, with only a few bright points, like the expertly-designed Sonic Rush for the DS, keeping it afloat. It’s probably fitting, then, that the next Sonic game that appears to be on the right track is also a handheld game. That would be Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, coming this fall for the Nintendo DS.

With a name like Dark Brotherhood, I was hoping for some sort of assassin’s tale, where you eventually have to slit the throats of all of Sonic’s posse (yes, even Big the Cat) due to their constant disloyalty. After playing the game, though, it seems to be a bit brighter than that. That said, it also struck me as much deeper than you might expect, thanks to some signature touches from BioWare, who is handling development.

While we might not see Sonic get it on with an alien lady, the game does have its own form of BioWare’s branching dialogue trees, as seen most recently in Mass Effect. Text bubbles feature a series of icons on the left side when you have multiple choices for what to say next. The default responses are designed to get you back into the game as quickly as possible, but it looks like there’ll be plenty of information available for players who want to dig around and ask questions.

The hand-painted backgrounds look pretty snazzy, and they’ll also offer some different ways to navigate, depending on who you have in your party. Characters like Tails and Knuckles, for example, have flight capabilities, so when you end up near a gap that requires you to go airborne, a symbol appears on-screen, which you can then tap to activate. You’ll also need speed to tap dash icons, and so on.

Combat is turn-based with some real-time screen-scribbling action to mix things up. When you’re attacked, a timing minigame sometimes appears, letting you dodge attacks if you succeed. Your special attacks also make use of the touch-screen, letting you tap or scribble with some attacks for extra damage. Different party members combine differently to let you perform unique group attacks, as well. If Amy and Sonic are together, you can have Amy slam Sonic with her hammer, sending the blue ball directly at your foes. Speed also figures into the order of battle, with faster characters like Sonic being able to do more actions per turn.

Along the way, you’ll hear a lot of stuff about chaos emeralds, Dr. Eggman, and all of the sorts of things you’d expect to hear about in a Sonic game, though BioWare and Sega representatives were quick to tell us that the story would have a dark side to it. While we’re holding out hope for hand-painted shots of Sonic silencing Tails once and for all with a quick twist of the neck, it’ll probably bit a bit less harsh than that, as they’re seeking an E rating for the final product.


systems: ds games:

Guitar Hero: On Tour Comes Alive

posted by Ryan Davis on April 15, 2008 – 10:29 am

Activision has allayed some of my initial skepticism of Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS with its first live demonstration of the game at Nintendo’s recent spring media summit. The demo was prefaced with a little back story about the game’s development, which started a year ago as little more than a research project. It would seem that one of the most significant products of this R&D was the guitar grip, a four-button peripheral that plugs into the GBA port on the DS and wraps around the backside of the handheld.

The reasoning given for having four fret buttons rather than the series standard five was a practical one–with the fret board attached to the DS, you couldn’t really move your hand up and down without jostling the screen. Activision confirmed that the guitar grip would work with both the original and Lite DS hardware, and that a screen-flip option would make it accessible for lefties as well. The grip will also serve as storage for a guitar-pick-shaped stylus. Like the Guitar Hero III console hardware, you’ll be able to customize the appearance of the grip, though rather than hard plastic faceplates, it appeared to use a papery insert, which could potentially make it easier to fabricate your own customized look.

While I’m no more convinced that On Tour will provide quite the same guitareoke experience as the full-size Guitar Hero games than I was before, it certainly has the look and feel of the series down pat. I noticed plenty of familiar zips and pings in the menus, and was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality of both Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock”, the two songs played during the demo. Frankly, I was half expecting MOD or MIDI versions of the actual songs, though I can’t tell if I’m relieved or disappointed that they’re not. Either way, Activision claims there will be over 100 minutes of music in the final game, though no indication was given as to what the ratio of new songs to old songs would be like.

The bulk of the actual demo was spent showing off the guitar duel mode, which Activision is calling a new mode for the series, though it looks identical to the battle mode from Guitar Hero III to me. Like the battle mode, you and your opponent will trade hot licks back and forth, attempting to trip each other up by activating nasty power-ups along the way, the best of which made good use of the DS hardware. You’ll have to autograph fan t-shirts that obscure your guitar, pyro explosions will require you to extinguish your flaming guitar by blowing into the mic, and you’ll use the touch screen to restring your guitar when a string breaks. Whether it’ll be any more compelling than the battle mode remains to be seen, but at least the power-ups are pretty consistently novel.

A number of lingering questions about the basic mechanics of On Tour were also answered over the course of the demo. Star power, for example, is activated either through the built-in DS microphone, which you can either blow your shout into, or by tapping an on-screen icon. With no physical whammy bar, you sustain notes by continuing to “strum” the on-screen guitar. Sadly, continuing the trend started in Guitar Hero III, the fret board does not explode when you finish a song. It seems worth noting that, while there were icons that could be touched to activate some guitar-duel-specific power-ups, the touch screen appeared fairly forgiving with where you actually strum. Hopefully this will prevent you from having to split your attention between the two screens too much, though I don’t want to make the final call on that until I actually get my hands on the game itself.

If nothing else, the live demo of Guitar Hero: On Tour left me with more faith in the ability of Vicarious Visions to bring Guitar Hero to the DS, and has ignited my desire to get some actual hands-on time with the game before its currently scheduled June release.


systems: ds games:

Aliens + Mountain Dew = Space Invaders Extreme

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 28, 2008 – 11:59 am

Even when I was a kid and Space Invaders was new, I knew that it was kind of cool, but also extremely plain. While it must have seemed totally revelatory when it first came out, I probably didn’t encounter it until well after more complicated and more colorful games, like Defender, were already out there. But I always found myself totally drawn to the actual design of the invaders themselves. They had a cool look to them that really stuck with me over the years, so much so that when it came time to start designing custom cars for Forza 2, one of the first things I did was study the pixels that made up the bottom row invaders so I could slap it onto a car.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t know, it seemed relevant at the time. But I really wanted to post about Space Invaders Extreme, a new PSP/DS release that’s currently out in Japan and will be heading to the US in June courtesy of Square Enix. I went ahead and got my hands on the PSP version and have been enjoying it a great deal… which is kind of weird, because for the most part, it’s, ya know, Space Invaders?

But it’s also pretty different than Space Invaders. It’s the sort of Space Invaders game that could only come out in a post-Lumines and post-WarioWare world. While it isn’t especially rhythm-heavy on the gameplay side, the game features a good soundtrack that properly pulsates with the action. And like WarioWare, it’s sort of crazy, occasionally whisking you away to different battles for a few seconds before tossing you right back into the main action. It also plays around with the conventions of Space Invaders a bit by occasionally tossing in shielded invaders that take more shots to kill, giant invaders that shoot huge lasers, and so on. The game also colors the invaders, and if you hit four invaders of the same color you get a bonus and a weapon power-up drops, giving you bomb shots with a wide radius on impact, a laser beam that devastates anything in your way, and more. The game keeps throwing racks of invaders at you until the level ends, at which point you fight a boss and move on to another area.

In addition to the single-player, you can also face off against another player or practice the two-player mode against an AI-based opponent. The multiplayer takes the Tetris approach, with each player having his own screen. If you do well, it sends more invaders over to the other player.

It’s not complicated, but so far, I’m really enjoying Space Invaders Extreme. It sticks to the Space Invaders basics while being just weird enough to keep me going. It’s mostly English, so you could import it now without missing out, but the domestic version is hitting in June for $19.99, which is around half as much as you’d pay to import it. Do your wallet a favor and wait.

Oh, and here’s a ten-minute video of the PSP version.


systems: ds, psp games:

Up Next: Guitar Hero VCR Game

posted by Ryan Davis on March 20, 2008 – 9:21 am

You gotta hand it to Activision, it really seems committed to bringing its wildly popular Guitar Hero franchise to every platform imaginable. After, what, maybe a good year of speculation and fake peripheral mock-ups, Activision has officially announced (IE, emailed me a press release) that it’ll be bringing Guitar Hero: On Tour to the Nintendo DS this summer.

In development at Vicarious Visions, the game promises songs by Nirvana, OK Go, and No Doubt, though here’s to hoping it’s not the same Nirvana, OK Go, and No Doubt songs we’ve already played in Guitar Hero and/or Rock Band. There will be local co-op play, as well as a guitar duel mode that will feature some DS-specific attacks. The examples given include using the microphone to extinguish malfunctioning pyrotechnics and using the stylus to autograph a fan’s t-shirt in the middle of the set. I know a lot of people weren’t fans of the whole power-up concept in Guitar Hero III, but I dunno, these actually sound pretty clever.

There will be six playable characters, two of which will be brand-new for On Tour, as well as five unlockable new venues, but the real pearl in this story is that the game will come packed-in with the Guitar Hero Grip. I’m definitely eager to try this crazy contraption out for myself, though at first glance it looks kind of awkward to hold, and I’m pretty sure that holding a DS really close to my face and scribbling on the screen in a rhythmic fashion won’t evoke the same rock-star fantasies provided by past entries. On the upside, it looks like lefties should be able to just flip the DS over and rock out.

Can Guitar Hero: The Ride at Six Flags be too far behind? The whole thing kind of just makes me think of Coupon: The Movie.

systems: ds games:

My Top Ten Video Game Ghosts

posted by Ryan Davis on March 19, 2008 – 3:51 pm

Inky (Pac-Man)

Pinky (Pac-Man)

Boo (Super Mario World)

Nova (Starcraft)

Clyde (Pac-Man)

Manny Calavera (Grim Fandango)

Liquid Snake (Metal Gear Solid 2)

Ghost (Gauntlet)

Sue (Ms. Pac-Man)

Bruce Willis (The Sixth Sense)

systems: arcade, ds, pc, wii, xbox 360 games: , , , , , , ,

Professor Layton and the Curious Village - Review

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 7, 2008 – 10:51 am

I want to be Professor Layton when I grow up. There, I said it. But there’s really no shame in that, because Professor Layton is easily the smartest guy in the world. Or, at least, he is when it comes to brain teasers. His DS game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, combines a compelling-but-basic point-and-click adventure game with 135 logic puzzles and riddles. The combination of its charming presentation and tricky challenges makes for a terrific end product that fits perfectly onto the DS.

It’d be easy to forgive Layton for a substandard storyline, because the puzzles and challenges are what give the game its lasting value. But the story, which has Layton and his young apprentice Luke scouting around a strange, puzzle-loving town in search of the mysterious treasure of a deceased noble, is great, too. There are just enough twists and turns in the mystery to keep you interested in what will happen next, and even though you may start to suspect where things are going before you reach the conclusion, getting there and seeing it for yourself is definitely worth it.

The game’s puzzles are jammed into this standard adventure game structure. You’ll encounter plenty of different characters on the streets, and more often than not, they’ll drop a new puzzle in your lap. Don’t they understand that you’ve got mysteries to solve? While you don’t need to complete all of the game’s puzzles to finish the game, you’ll occasionally encounter roadblocks in the story that prevent you from moving forward until you’ve completed a specific number of puzzles. The puzzles are almost never related to what you’re actually trying to accomplish in your investigation, so you may occasionally wonder why these goons are getting in your way with some mind-bender about wolves, sheep, and a raft when you’re trying to get to the bottom of a murder. Layton, being the type of gentleman that I can only hope to become someday, patiently solves these puzzles, as opposed to open-hand-slapping them while shouting obscure early-90s rap slang.

If you’ve ever encountered a book of brain teasers, many of the puzzles in Curious Village will seem pretty familiar. Old standbys, like reorganizing matchsticks to change one picture into another, or Die-Hard-3-style liquid pouring challenges, or trying to place queens on a chessboard in such a way where no queen can attack any other queen are all present and accounted for.

While the puzzles at the front of the game are a bit easier than the ones you’ll face near the end, the challenge comes from within. Even if you think you’re reading things closely, you’ll probably get tripped up here and there. If you do get stuck, the game offers three levels of hints for each puzzle, though you’ll have to spend a hint coin each time you want to see one. Hint coins are hidden around the town, and you can usually find more by tapping garbage cans, doors, and other out-of-place objects. While the three levels of hints are supposed to become more and more helpful as you burn through them, one of the more frustrating moments in Professor Layton comes when you’ve seen all three hints for a puzzle and still have trouble figuring out the answer. But with a healthy helping of perseverance, most players should be able to complete enough tasks to see the game’s ending without resorting to a FAQ. Once you’ve exhausted the main game’s puzzles, you can go on to try a series of harder bonus puzzles that unlock as you complete certain in-game tasks. Or you can get online, as the developers are offering up one new downloadable puzzle every week. The downloadable puzzles are of roughly the same quality as the ones found in the main game, but when you remove the puzzles from the adventure, they aren’t quite as meaningful.

All this adventuring and puzzling is wrapped up in a neat audiovisual package that ties it all together. You’ll get full-motion video for the bigger story sequences, complete with some great character voices. Outside of that, though, the hand-drawn still images for characters and backgrounds look great and give the whole game a very warm feeling.

That’s not a trait that one would commonly associate with a puzzle-based game that, when you break it down, probably has more in common with Nintendo’s long list of brain training games than anything else. But that warmness is something that really sums up the entire experience. Professor Layton and the Curious Village has a certain warmth to it that makes it easy to love, even when you’re up against a particularly annoying puzzle. Personally, I found this first adventure so strong that I’m already getting antsy just thinking about the next game in this planned trilogy.


systems: ds games: