Role Playing Nintendo DSs
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The World Ends With You (DS)
by TimStain Most game are very similar. Now and again there'll be a unique gimmick, or a new feature, but they're just minor additions to the same shooting game, same sports game, same RPG... But now and again a game comes along that's so innovative, so full of unique ideas that it just blows you away. The World Ends With You is one of ... those games. Set in Tokyo, you play misfit Neku who is locked into a deadly parallel world where he must fight monsters and take part in a sinister competition to stay alive. I won't spoil the plot here but needless to say that it's engrossing, full of twists and turns and one of the most moving endings you'll find in any game, DS or otherwise. Combat is done with the touch screen, scratching enemies to make Neku attack them with blades, shouting into the DS mic to cause sonic booms and drawing shapes on the screen to cast spells to rip your opponents apart. There are literally hundreds of different moves you can find and the enemy aesthetics are amazing. On the top screen, your partner battles enemies at the same time and you can control them if you want using the d pad. This means you can potentially be fighting two different screens full of enemies with two different characters at the same time! Hard to master but ridiculously satisfying when you do. The ideas just keep coming throughout. Reading people's minds, even people just shopping or thinking about nonsense. Eating food and waiting for it to digest before you can reap the benefits of it. You're clothes being more powerful in one area than they are in another, depending on how fashionable they are. Gaining experience for not playing the game. If some of this sounds ridiculous, it is, but weirdly almost all of it works. There is the odd idea or gimmick that feels a little uninspired or tacked on, but never game ruining. To have a game which tries so much new stuff, and gets almost all of it right is a rare thing indeed. I urge you to try it. Read the complete review |
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Pokemon Black (DS)
by Anti Pokémon Black and White are the latest instalments of the hugely popular 'Pokémon' series of video games, released in 2011. I've been a big fan of Pokémon since I was six years old when I watched the anime show and played the trading card games (sort of :S) and eventually started playing the games since Silver, having at least owned one ... game from each generation. I bought Pokémon White several months after its release and hearing positive things? But does this game live up to its predecessors or is the Pokémon franchise going stale? Well read on to see my view! ===---Aim of the Game---=== In Pokémon you play the role of a ten year old boy or girl who is a Pokémon trainer in the new world of Unova. Pokémon are creatures that inhabit the known world and be caught and trained by humans to help them or use in battle against others. In every Pokémon game there are two main goals. The first is, of course, to catch as many Pokémon as you can to fill your Pokedex- an encyclopaedic device given to you by your mentor-like figure of the game, Professor Juniper. During your journey you will encounter Pokémon while travelling and catch them with Pokeballs for them to be yours, but other Pokémon needed to be traded with a friend (or stranger's) game or from previous games in the series With over 600 Pokémon now available this is an increasingly difficult task and one I've resigned myself to never completing, but it certainly one that is a rewarding experience for young and old trainers alike! The second big aim of the game (and more important story-wise) is to become the best Pokémon trainer of all. Raising the Pokémon you catch, you will progress through the world of Unova beating the Gyms and their leaders- powerful trainers whom carry a certain type of Pokémon- in each city. Upon beating each gym leader they will give you a badge. Once you collect all eight badges you advance to Victory Road and then the Pokémon League where you beat the extremely difficult Elite 4 trainers and then the champion. ===---Story=== The stories of the Pokémon games are pretty formulaic: you're a trainer, a professor gives you (and rival) a starter Pokémon and Pokedex, you go out into the world catching and raising Pokémon, there's an "evil" corporation around trying to mess with the world but you sort them out and eventually become the Pokémon Champion. However Pokémon Black and White's story, whilst hardly at 'Final Fantasy' levels of storytelling, has much more depth than its predecessors. Your two rivals are your friends Cheren and Bianca, and I found that they are realistic characters with personality and development throughout the course of the story. Bianca for example is a bit of a naive ditz whose father subsequently disapproves of her going on her Pokémon adventures, but by the end she's a bit more mature and capable of being a trainer by herself. Then there is the mysterious trainer N, who you meet throughout your journey and has much more sinister opinions about Pokémon but is shown to be a very conflicted individual. The big bad corporation of these games are the rather dated looking (seriously- they're dressed as Knight Templars!) Team Plasma. They envision taking away Pokémon from their trainers so that they're "free"; the philosophy behind this is actually well-explained and treated with more thought than previous series. It is a well-enough told story and the ending, along with some surprising story battles and a predictable but decently handled plot twist, definitely held my attention. ===---Gameplay---=== Gameplay is more or less the same as other games in the series. At the beginning Professor Juniper lets you choose a starter Pokémon: Snivy (grass type), Tepig (fire type and my personal choice) and Oshawott (water type) and then you head off into the rest of Unova, beating gym leaders, other trainers and the occasional Team Plasma grunts on the way. Wild Pokémon are found in patches of grass, on water or in caves and can be caught with Pokeballs from your Bag, or defeated by your Pokémon, which grants them experience points. Gaining enough Experience Points lets your Pokémon level up so they get stronger, learn new moves and eventually evolve into another more powerful Pokémon! If you're Pokémon are injured or affected by one of the various status effects, then you take them to a town's Pokémon Center where they all are restored to full health. Some Pokémon are as common as mud and very easy to catch, some are only available in certain kinds of places, and some are even only available at certain times of day or year (the games introduce season cycles). but a few Pokémon are the one-of-the-kind legendaries who are much more powerful than regular Pokémon and are only available to catch once- if you defeat them you cannot find them again to catch them! So as always I found Pokémon Black/White's gameplay to be fun and very simple to get into. It's easy for anyone to learn about which Pokémon types work best against each and which moves are best to use in certain situations, regardless of age. However there's nothing really new or innovative in the core gameplay and it's very much more of the same, even with implements such as Triple Battles (3 vs. 3 Pokémon on at the same time), Rotation Battles (similar to Triple Battles but with only two Pokémon fighting with the opportunity to switch in/out with the third). I still find constant battling to be repetitive and the idea getting your Pokémon to the max level of 100 is too long and uninteresting a task for me to deal with. That said, there are no major changes that will annoy Pokefans either so I should be thankful. ===---Graphics and Music---=== Pokémon Black and White's graphics are huge improvement over its predecessors. Buildings, paths and landmarks have been 3D rendered to a great level that makes the towns and other places you visit truly fascinating for a handheld game such as this, especially when your character is travelling across bridges that extend into the distance or watch the coastline from a ship. They do lack polish when zoomed in (as found with some paths) but it's still impressive and it is still a large enough step from the previous games as it is that I can ignore it. In battles Pokémon have also been rendered slightly 3D and are animated too so they will move about slightly in battle instead of being a staccato image- neat! However, with regards to the new Pokémon introduced in these games, some of their designs are beginning to look stale. I'm beginning to think that the developers are taking the basis for other Pokémon and then changing their appearance and type to get a new Pokémon. They are even designing Pokémon that look like bags of rubbish (Trubbish) or having punny names (new Rock/Ground Pokémon Roggenrolla- get it?). It's pretty uninspiring and the creators need to think of some unique designs fast for the next games or start introducing less Pokémon next time. The music is very good as always, with fittingly atmospheric tunes for various cities and different kinds of battles. I don't think they're as catchy as the music from the Gold/Silver games but that might be nostalgia talking, and besides I'm happy to listen to it rather than put my DS on mute- even when the critical Low HP song is playing! ===---Replay Value---=== The main story game length is about twenty hours, which I find is a decent amount for this game. Fortunately after you've beaten the final boss story wise there is plenty of extra content to sink your teeth into; defeat more trainers (quite the difficulty spike here too), re-battle the Elite Four and Champion, find more Pokémon, complete your Pokedex...all this I believe adds another twenty hours to the game and perhaps longer if you're a total completionist. This isn't even counting all the minigames you can do in the various cities (no Game Corner however) such as having your Pokémon play in sports or participate in musicals. Personally those activities don't interest me but they should be fun for other players and add further longevity. Furthermore the multiplayer options are numerous too. You can trade or battle either wirelessly with another person's game on their DS, or go onto a network called GlobalLink and do the same with trainers all over the world via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Although I cannot access Nintendo Wi-fi myself (my DS Lite doesn't support my broadband connection), I like that the WFC has been expanded so that rare Pokémon can be received easily through special online events. ===---Overalll---=== Pokémon Black and White is an excellent addition to the series with some excellent improvements and plenty of challenges and bonus content to keep you interested. If you are a fan of the games I suggest you definitely buy this if you haven't done so already! If you aren't then by all means still buy it anyway- you shouldn't be disappointed. (Review also on Dooyoo under the username Anti_W) Read the complete review |
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Avalon Code (DS)
by Secre Avalon Code is a cute game I found via Amazon - I was doing my stereotypical impulse buying and it came up in the section 'Recommended for you'. Not the smartest way to buy computer games I will admit but I have found some absolutely fantastic games this way. This is to be fair one of them. My problem with writing this review is that I ... really want to give this game five stars, but I can't. The idea is original and compelling, the gameplay is intricate and amusing, the graphics are cute and quite stunning on occasions and the whole game fits with what I like in a game. I fell in love with the game. But there are too many niggles even for me to give it five stars. ===Concept=== I would say plot but it is more of a concept; the end of the world is nigh and it is your task as the chosen one to record all of the data in the world so that when the new world is created there is a record of what went before. This in itself is unusual as usually you are saving the world in an RPG rather than just accepting what is about to happen. You have found the Book of Prophecy and everyone and everything you meet on your journey can be 'Code Scanned' into the book, and this book is what is going to be used as the reference for the new world. Ok, I'll admit it's a little bit of a morbid idea, but it makes for quite an entertaining plot device. Each person or item or animal that you scan will have its own page in the book that records it, and the main aspect of the game is that every item has natural codes and a grid. You can change the codes in the grid to effect how the item, enemy or person is and this is a main aspect of the game. You are creating the world which you want to be recorded and used to create the new world. Using the book you can make enemies weaker than they are, heal sickness in people and generally mess with the order of things. To help and guide you on your journey are four bound elemental spirits who can get very, very irritating, but tend to have very good attacks at least which kind of helps. ===Gameplay=== Let's be honest, this game is heaven for anyone with OCD tendencies like myself. The whole idea of the game is that you are following a fairly weak storyline that involves freeing the elemental spirits, but the main point of the game is record data about everything. The storyline is just trying to give a reason for this to happen! This involves walking up to people, enemies and interesting objects and the thwacking them over the head with the book of prophecy. Once you have the data you then can then fiddle with the codes in it to make things better or weaker. This is however the main failing of the game because although it's a new and interesting idea, it's a complete and utter faff. Basically, each item or person has their own grid which has codes in it; some are elemental like fire or ice, some are metals or materials like copper or stone, some are animals like dog and cat and some are attributes/skills like wisdom and illness. Some are just weird like fate. By swapping and changing these codes between people and animals you can change key attributes of the person/critter. So for example you come across a really strong enemy that you can't seem to defeat; you code scan it, remove all of the strong codes like stone or iron and replace it with illness thereby making the creature much weaker and easier to kill. Or you meet a really sick person and by playing around with the codes that this person is made of you can remove the sickness. Because the game is made to be suitable for the under 12's none of this is actually all that complicated, but there are very few instructions or explanations making the entire thing something of a trial and error game of guesswork. But even that's forgiveable. What is such a pain in the backside is that by the end of the game the book is huge, there are many, many pages and each page is filled with codes. So when you are trying to mess with codes you have to trawl through the entire book to find the one code that you need, and needless to say you can never remember where you put it. This is a complete ballache if we're honest, and the game could be much better if it was easier to navigate the book, particularly as the game insists on you spending so much time messing around with it. It doesn't help that you can only hold four codes in your hand at any one time which means that you have to regularly ditch codes into random squares just so you have enough space to fiddle. At the beginning of the game this isn't so much of a chore, but by the end of the game you really want to scream at it as you have to spend five minutes to find one code. The actual moving through the game is easy enough you spend part of your time in towns speaking to and hitting random people with the book, and you spend part of your time outside fighting with and hitting random creatures with your book. All the way through you are expected to hit anything that sparkles with your book and find hidden places on maps so that all of the pages in the book are worth the most amount of points. The characters you talk to are often intriguing and funny, although strangely none of them seem all to put out by the fact that you are whacking them with a gigantic book. The fighting style is simple - button bash the Y or the X button until your enemy is dead. This does however make it rather repetitive but it is in real time and most of the enemies die fairly quickly and easily. Particularly if you infect them with the illness code first. But the other main problem with the gameis that the dungeons that are interspersed quite frequently through the game are made up of irritating challenges which you need to complete to get to the next room. These tend to be things like hitting all the switches or defeating all the enemies and there are extra bonus points if you fulfil added criteria like defeating enemies of a certain type. This has two problems; firstly it involves even more delving into the book to change your weapons element or your enemies for that matter and secondly they get repetitive and mind numbing very quickly. They rarely offer too much of a challenge and so it is simply a time killer. ===Graphics=== I think one of the reasons that makes the game so loveable is the fact that the graphics are 3D and really, really pretty. Someone has put a lot of effort into making all of the various scenario's that you find your character in look realistic, whether it is a desert scene or a lush and verdant forest. The people you meet are drawn well and all look unique, there is no chance of you forgetting which character you spoke to last! From the small children to the elf lord they all look gorgeous. All of the enemies you meet on your travels are well drawn and again they seem to have a life of their own. Likewise the book itself is nicely presented and everything is clearly set out. It's just a pity it's so unwieldy! You cannot fault the game on graphics, and it is very, very clear that a lot of time and effort went into making this game look special. I can't really comment on sound because I find all game music drives me insane so my gameboy is perpetually on mute. From reading other reviews it's supposed to be very good though. ===Longevity=== Well, providing you haven't smashed your DS out of sheer exasperation and irritation - trust me, this is at points a serious and valid concern - the gaming websites tell me that you should have 20 hours of gameplay. To this I say bull. It may be 20 hours if you were not fiddling with the book every 10 seconds! If you run the game through as quickly as you can without doing any of the side plots, levelling up any of the pages or in fact doing any of the things that make the game interesting then yes, you probably have 20 hours of gameplay. If you are going to play the game properly this can probably be made into 30 hours minimum...and if you're me then it's 40 hours! ===My Opinion=== Without a doubt it is an appealing game. If you look on other review sites there is a major difference between how critics have rated it and how the ordinary player has rated it - for the critics it is 5.5 and for the ordinary Joe it's 8.2. I think this is due to the conflict which I have; I loved this game but it was a complete chore at times. It's bulky, unwieldy, mashy and a complete pain in the backside but I loved it. The constant flicking through the book and manipulating codes that you could never remember where you'd put became too paperworky even for me, particularly once you'd built up the pages in the book to a high number. The having to find spots on the various maps to build up the pages value was fine to begin with but quickly grew to become a chore, and the mini-quests through the dungeons became mind-numbingly boring and repetitive. With the amount of flaws this game ended up having it should have been unplayable, it should have been put down and quickly forgotten about but somehow it has something about it that is endearing and charming and kept me and many others playing until the bitter end. And strangely, enjoying it! This is why I struggled so much with the rating, because for some reason, despite all of its flaws, or perhaps because of them, I really wanted to give this game five stars. Somehow the appeal of the game outweighs the irritation. But then I remember how much time it took flicking through the Book of Prophecy to find one pesky code that I had no idea where I'd put it but was currently vital for the storyline. Or how much irritation was caused by having to complete inane mini-quests for each and every level of the dungeons. Or how much time was wasted trying to recover MP in the only way available; bouncing enemies up into the air until they explode. It's a pain in the backside. But somehow it still has a hold on me, and I can't not recommend it. I quite happily wasted many hours trying to get the book to the highest level possible, and to be fair thoroughly enjoyed most of it. It's just that because of the unwieldy Book controls and the sheer amount of time you have to spent in it, it's not going to appeal to many I think. This could have, should have, would have been a truly fantastic game if it had been less unwieldy but even as it is it's still a remarkably playable and amusing game. You need to be able to hold more than four codes in one go, the dungeons need to be less monotonous and boring and however fantastic an idea the Book of Prophecy was there needs to be a better way of getting around it...and of locating individual codes. I will be expectantly awaiting the sequel because this was an original, innovative and amusing game that was let down by unwieldy controls. ===Conclusion=== Without a doubt the critics are right. For every flaw they expose they are dead on the nail. But for some reason the appeal of the game goes beyond the flaws. Don't ask me how, but it does. It's not just me, the results can be seen on any of the review sites like gamespot - as an ordinary player, however irritating the flaws, this is a game that caught our interest, amusement and somehow we want to rate it as better than it really is. On the other hand I would not say it's worth the Ł25 Amazon is currently charging, so although I'd happily say give it a shot...not until it's come down in price again! Read the complete review |
Role Playing Nintendo DS Game |
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Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / To Be Announced / ESRB Rating: Everyone / Release Date: 2009-02-06 / Published by Square Enix |
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1 review Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Release Date: 2010-03-26 / Published by Sega |
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4 reviews Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Video Game for Nintendo DS / ESRB Rating: Rating Pending / Release Date: 2010-07-23 / Published by Nintendo |
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Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Release Date: 2010-04-30 / Published by Sega |
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Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Release Date: 2010-02-12 / Published by Sega |
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Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Release Date: 2010-04-16 / Published by Foreign media |
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6 reviews Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Video Game for Nintendo DS / ESRB Rating: Everyone / Release Date: 2010-03-26 / Published by Nintendo |
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5 reviews Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Video Game for Nintendo DS / ESRB Rating: Everyone / Release Date: 2010-03-26 / Published by Nintendo |
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3 reviews Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / Release Date: 2009-02-13 / Published by Rising Star Games |
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Genre: Role-playing / Nintendo DS Game / ESRB Rating: Everyone / Release Date: 2008-11-21 / Published by Nintendo |
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