The Nintendo DS is probably the greatest handheld ever created. It's got some of the best games out there for any handheld. And those lucky enough to have a DS Lite can still enjoy those classic GBA games as well. Here's a list of the DS games I own, and a little bit of how I feel about each one!
I adored Wind Waker's art style, I did not care so much for the LONG ASS boat rides from island to island...no matter how beautiful the water was. This game took the look of WW and made it a more tratitional over the top view Zelda game. I played the hell out of it when I first got it, but as with many handheld games I have played, they almost always hook me for the first few weeks then slowly take the backseat to my console games. I'd love to get into this again, but it's been so long since my last play. I tried it not too long ago, but found myself in that main temple you go into over and over and remembered that was the main thing I hated about it. I could figure out what I was trying to do at that point, so I gave up. But I hope to pick it up soon, and maybe check out that Spirit Tracks one as well!
The GB crew expressed their distaste for this back when they were still a part of GS. Even though it isn't really a game and more like a group of fun little instruments to play, I still liked this one a lot. I never played it for more than 20 mintues or so, but it was fun to mess with each of the plankto and create some cool music. It was a major letdown that you couldn't save any cool sounds you made. Still a fun little toy to mess around with every so often.
I love the handheld Castlevania games. I didn't own Circle of the Moon for the GBA when it came out, but I played the hell out of Aria of Sorrow. I am a huge fan of the explorative platformer games. I'd probably say that either Aria or Dawn of sorrow are my favorites of them all. As for Order of Ecclesia...I don't know. Last time I played it, when it first came out, I got stuck on the crab boss that chases you up a tower. I tried that boss atleast a hundred times and could not beat it. I looked at online guides and YouTube videos. I could not do it. I got too frustrated and never touched it since. I may try again as I have recently gotten into my DS again, but I'm not sure.
I only found out about this one randomly on the internet. The art style looked pretty cool and the concept intrigued me. It reminded me a bit of Grin Fandango and Psychonauts, which are both two of my favorite games ever. While the art surely was cool looking...I couldn't stand the rest of it. It felt like a game that was made for the PC and ported poorly to the DS. It had so much potential but the combat and bad camera made it no fun at all to play. I really did like parts of it where you got to play detective, but this one was really just a big letdown. From what I know the PC version was released in episodes, but only the first of 3 came out as Gamecock went under. It's too bad, this one looked so promising! A little side note. The site for the game offered an art book and a mini toy gun from the game if you sent your info. I got sent both, but the art book was literally 3 pages of what looked like screenshots that were just ones released from PR and the toy gun looked nothing like the image on the site. I know it's a dumb thing, but I thought it showed overall how lazly put together all aspects of the game were
Got this one for Christmas a few years ago when my mom got me all DS games pretty much. Haven't played much of it at all, but it seems like a fun puzzle game. Some of the controls seem a bit bad, but I really like the style of the game.
I'm not sure where to start with this one. I really liked it a lot at first. It had a cool cartoonish art style and a decent blend of Tetris Attack like puzzle solving and an action platformer. It was fun for a while until the game starts to get super hard and unforgiving . The boss battles mainly consist of you barely being hit by each attack they throw at you and a life bar that quite possibly couldn't be longer. Each hit from Henry's sword/cane took like nothing off their life bars. I got lucky for most of them and was able to activate Tea Time where Henry dons a big steampunk robot suit while rock guitar plays in the background. The further I got in the harder the bosses got and it got to the point where the platforming levels got way too hard and way too long between checkpoints. I recently picked this one back up after beating Monster Tale, which was made by pretty much the same dev team. The platforming in each is almost exactly the same. Monster Tale makes a refrence to it's protagonist, Ellie, being the niece of Henry and that she learned all her moves from him. It makes sense, but it doesn't make up for having EXACTLY the same gameplay in two different games. I liked Monster Tale tons more, but even that game had some excruciating boss battles that nearly made me quit it for good like I did with Henry Hatsworth.
I played a crap load of the original Game Cube Animal Crossing when I was younger. It was a game I found myself playing endlessly at times. I always thought that AC's gameplay warranted a portable version you could play wherever you go. Playing the GC version felt like too much to sit down and devote time to, rather it felt like it should be something I can play in my hands for short 20 minute spurts. I enjoyed Wild World as much as I could before I hit a dead end pretty much. I had done most of what I could and most of my play time was just devoted to getting a lot of coin from fruit I had planted. Pretty much ever tree in my town had fruit from a friend's town which was worth more than the native fruit of mine. It took me probably 45 minutes to shake all of the trees and collect. It got me tons of bells and I payed Tom Nook off pretty quickly. Got all of the house add-ons and collected some cool furniture. After doing that for a while I got bored of WW. It was neat to do the special events, but I always missed them and cheated by changing the internal clock to see them. It became a chore more than a game I enjoyed. All of my neighbors who I liked would try to move every other week and I had to convince all of them to stay. It had it's fun, but it didn't last. I'll check it out here and there, but my town is as full with weeds as I can and I don't want to pick them all. I'd probably be up for a 3DS one if I ever get a 3DS, but even then I doubt enough will be added on for me to keep going back to it every so often.
Moon was the first, and only FPS I have for my DS. I played the Metroid Prime Hunters demo and liked that one a lot (though I never got around to buying it). Moon looked like it had a cool concept and a great look to it. While it has those two things going for it, the overall game has to be one of the most boring ones I have played. I'm not far into it mostly because I really have no urge to play it at all. The enemies take a lot of damage to kill and the save rooms are too far apart at times. If you die right near the end of an area before a save point, you are boned. If it was fun shooter with more variety (i.e a FPS Metroid game) and wasn't too hard I'd be inclined to play the part again. But so far it has deemed to be too tough. Maybe I'l attempt it again, but I'll probably go and find a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters from eBay.
A Metroid-vania exploitative platformer made by the same team who made Henry Hatsworth. If you're reading this list you know my feeling about Henry Hatsworth already. Monster Tale is a much better game overall compared to HH, but it's not without it's fault. HH and MT share the same combat system. A melee weapon attack that has the same combo. A weapon that shoots in the exact same fashion. And enemy types that are pretty much exactly the same. Where HH has levels that get too insanely hard towards their end, MT is a bit easier. It still has some of the most frustrating boss levels ever in a platformer, but if you are patient you can beat them. It does get a bit hard towards the end when they throw many enemies at once towards you in each room. But luckily your companion Chomp can prove helpful in these situations. Although there are a few sections towards the end where it locks you on the screen and bombards you with enemies that can stack up and become nearly impossible. I liked it overall, but majorly pointless backtracking really made it a longer game than it should have been. The game will have you go to the complete end of a map section just to get one power up that needs to be used in the place where you started all the way on the opposite side. It felt like the devs added these just to make the game longer. And unlike Metroid and Castlevania there are NO warp rooms in each section of the map to get you to the other side quicker. Like I said I liked it overall, but it does have many faults that make it fall short of being as great and replayable as the DS/GBA Castlevania and Metroid games it borrows heavily from.
I loved the hell out of this game, despite having yet to finish it. I love adventure games from back in the day when it was all Lucas Arts made. This one reminded me heavily of those games, although a bit different in gameplay. A dialogue driven mystery story is something I wanted the DS to have for a while. I never was interested in the Phoenix Wright games, so when I saw this one I was immediately interested. I also really like detective stories and this is pretty much a handheld mystery. Everything from the art style (despite how much it looked like Ah-ha's Take Me On video) to the characters are superb. This one sadly got thrown on the back burner as I got stuck in a part towards the end of the game. I'm glad it has a “Last time on Hotel Dusk” type re-cap when you boot it up again, but I'll have to look up how to beat the specific part as it is a timed one that causes your guy to die if not completed. I hear the same team made that terrible similarly played Again game that GB did a funny QuickLook of...it's too bad since Hotel Dusk was so great.
As stated before I love 2d Castlevania games...well atleast ones I don't get stuck it! This is definitely my favorite of the ones on the DS. I wasn't a fan of the big shift from the more gothic art style of it's predecessor for the GBA Aria of Sorrow (which is probably my favorite Castlevania overall). But this one probably has the best and most finely tuned gameplay up to it's time. It really is fun exploring Dracula's castle and getting all of the hidden weapons. I remember like this and Aria the most as it let you choose your secondary powers that you picked up from killed enemies. It is a really great concept that the other games suffer a bit from having slightly less interesting ways of setting powers.
I've always been a big fan of the Advance Wars games. I remember really loving the original GBA one and playing it all the time, despite how bad I was at it for a while. I never finished the story of any of them as I just loved playing random skirmishes and making my own impossible for the CPU levels. This one I will still go back and play a map or two when I feel like it. The DS ones work super well with the touch screen and I think I'd have a hard time going back to the GBA ones without the stylus to order troops around! Also a big fan of the art style. Haven't picked up the newest DS one, but from the looks of that one they lost the cartoonish art. Still will probably get that one eventually!
Got really excited for this one as it let you draw many aspects of the game. Now only if the game had some fun platforming and action to add it would have been a pretty great game. Instead it is a highly repetitive and boring plaformer that lets you draw certain aspects of it. It was cool to make a character pretty much whatever you wanted, but that's about it. This is definitely aimed for children as it is super simple. Not sure if the other installments have better gameplay, but I don't think I'll take the risk and waste some more money on a childish platformer!
Yes, the last Castlevania DS game on here. This one was fun and I liked the switching between characters aspect. Though this one was kind of forgettable as I cannot remember much from it other than that it wasn't Dracula you were fighting against at the end of it. I can enjoy any 2D Castlevania game...unless it has a really early boss that I can't pass no matter how many times I played it!!! Still frustrated with that Order of Ecclesia boss!!!! Dumb crab!!!
Chrono Trigger was one of those SNES games (as with many) that I loved, never finished, and was too young and dumb to not trade in to the local Gamestop for an Xbox. After watching the GB Members only SNES Marathon I really regretted selling ALL of my SNES games for an Xbox. While I probably wouldnt have gotten an Xbox when I did, and possibly determined how I bought the rest of my consoles, I kinda miss the SNES. I was super excited when they announced that Chrono Trigger was going to be on the DS. I got it the same time I got one of the Castlevania games...Order of Ecclessia I think. I got pretty far in Chrono Trigger and fell in love with it again...but yet again it got kind of forgotten over my PS3 games. I really want to get into it again though where I left off I do not remember. I usually don't like RPGs but this one stuck with me. I did kind of play it less as an RPG and just more as an adventure.
When I got this I wasn't too big on puzzles much like the ones presented in the game. I was more into it because it reminded me of those adventure games from the 90's. I really got into it and started to have fun with the puzzles as I went along. Kinda lost intrest in it for some reason. Definately one I'd love to go back when I find the time. But seeing as most of these games on this list are also unfinished It'll take time to start this up again.
Finally got around to picking this up for $8 at Target. Glad I did becuase it is fun as hell..but it's something I really need to be in the mood to play. Definately something that will work well on long drives!
First time coming back to the Pokemon series since the original GBC Silver version. Grew out of it over the years, but my recent surge in DS play got me looking for more games and this one was constantly at the top 10 of most review sites. Figured id give it another go since I played Blue, Yellow and Silver for hours and hours as a kid. Boy did I miss this series. Once I popped it in and this whole world opened to me I felt that excitment I used to every birthday that I got another of the Game Boy ones. Have played it for over 50 hours and it's only been two weeks. I just beat the final gym leader and am headed to the Pokemon League. I do find it a bit easy in some parts, but it is primarily a game played by younger people. There are still some challenging parts that get me going. But overall most of my fun out of this is just exploring the world and catching me some Pokemons! From what I read there is still a ton of content after beating the Elite Trainers and that also ALL of the Pokemon from past generations become available when you get a special Pokedex! I plan on playin this baby until I get all 649!!
Just got this on Amazon for $15 and I am super excited to play it. Looks like a classic DS game!
Got this one on the cheap too for $15. Looks like a cool crime solving game which the DS can do really well. Also OBJECTION!
Loving this so far, but I probably came to it a year too late as I'm sure people really aren't creating much for it. Got it for $10 at Target in it's clearance section, along with about 30 other copies. So it looks like this wasn't a big hit, but I still like the quick minigame aspect of it. I think it was to heavily rely on the user created ones as the main character ones each only have like 25 games or so. Still some great fun and really keeps you ready to do whatever crazy action it asks. I may create some of my own, but with many many other games to play on my DS and PS3, this one may just bee a play for a few sessions before going back to Skyrim.
Picked up this badboy on clearance on $14!!! Gotta beat the first game before this!
Got this for Christmas this year and I cannot wait! Gonna re-play Phantom Hourglass as I never quite finished it. But this one looks cooler because trains seem like the most random thing to add to the Zelda universe!
Can't wait to mess around with this game!! My recent DS intrest has gotten my a bunch of cool games that I have backlogged and need to finish!
