SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS: A Vicious Hurrah
But what some people, particularly my classmates in grade school, middle school and high school never understood was that it was never a disability, it was something that made me proud to be who I was. Sure, I wasn’t out to catch any footballs or climb to the top of the rope in gym class, but I could outperform you academically, kick your ass at Mario Kart and annihilate you in a friendly game of Magic: The Gathering.
Which brings me to SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS. When this game was first introduced to me by a hopeful best friend looking for someone to play multiplayer with, I was apprehensive, if not a skeptical douche if for no other reason than it was something I hadn’t played before and the concept of playing a card game in video game form filled me with a taste of distain.
But as I started and continued playing, the game grew on me.
I won’t burden you with the plot other than there is a problem, there are bosses and obstacles and it’s all the hell up to you. The important thing here is, without a doubt, some good goddamn gameplay.
Let me break it down for you. Before a card battle starts, you roll a digital die to see who attacks first. From there, the game will deal out cards to you being either SNK or Capcom characters. The cool thing about the game is that it will allow you to check the fluff on the respective character with as easy a move as tapping the right bumper on the DS so you know who the hell you’re actually looking at. Beyond that, each card has a specific amount of hit points; attack power and can activate special abilities that range from knocking out an opposing card to allowing you to draw additional cards. But you best keep that shit in mind, because those cards will keep you from getting knocked out before you have a chance to do the same to your challenger.
And they will be trying to knock you the hell out. Starting each match with 2000 hit points, those will fly away surprisingly fast if you fail at the basic strategy of staying alive, attacking and defending. Point being, this is like Magic for people who have a deep, ingrained love for SNK and Capcom and it’s like a digital form of heroine that must be injected directly into one’s eyeballs for maximum enjoyment.
I do have a caveat for the other gamers out there – and this goes for everyone – if you don’t enjoy card games, this game will not make you fall in love with them. On the contrary, it just might make you hate them with the disdain of a fat man and an empty plate of cake. I cannot stress this enough, if you don’t like a card game, you’ll hate this like a flaccid boner that, due to the physical constraint of becoming too tired, you cannot beat hard enough.
There is a bit of replay value here, but beyond the initial 20 – 30 hour investment, unless you have someone to play this with in multiplayer after gathering a ton of cards in the single player mode, you’re not missing much.
So, definitely a specialist sort of DS game, but it does bleed a lot of geekiness into my handheld, reminding me of the days when I first started asking if I had to tap land for mana or not at the beginning of my turn. It’s now available relatively cheap and can be bought from just about anywhere, however, if you want to give it a spin and just can’t find it. Go ahead and PM me
In the meantime, I’m going to get one last go in with it.