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Harvest Moon (DS)
by Beth03
A game based on farming simulation? Sounds pretty dull until you really think about it, growing crops to sell, tending animals, meeting villagers, acquiring items. If you don't like strategy games then you'll want to avoid the harvest moon franchise.
Harvest Moon DS is the best game for anyone with a business mind, a fondness ... for animals or a desire to form meaningful relationships with fictional simulated characters.
The game begins with a series of cut scenes revolving round the goddess of crops and a witch princess who 'accidentally' banishes the goddess to another dimension/time. She then accidentally sends creatures known as Harvest Sprites to the same place. Ultimately you appear and after telling the witch princess your name she decides she wants you to retrieve the sprites by working hard at your farm.
Once at your farm the fun can begin, you are accosted by a few different characters who tell you information such as the mayor telling you when the shipping will be collected. A Harvest Sprite is rescued pretty much straight away to teach you the basics through a tutorial channel available to watch at any time throughout the game. A second sprite tells you what the weather forecast will be- and is amazingly accurate everytime.
Once the game begins you need to prepare the land for farming an activity demonstrated in one of the tutorial videos. It is not a bad idea to spend the first day doing this and exploring the surrounding town. To grow crops you need to order seeds from the supermarket via the phone in your house, the phone is your way to order other things such as upgraded tools, new buildings for your farm and animals to care for.
Time passes quickly with a clock displaying 10 minute interval based time as well as the day of the week and the season you are currently in. It also tells you how far through each season you are. All of this is essential to playing the game as any shipments must be made by 5pm after this time anything you store in the bin you will lose. Its also important to be aware of the days of the week as certain places are only open on certain days. The passing of each season means you can only grow certain crops at certain times and any crops that are unharvested on the first day of a new season will be lost forever. Once shipped your crops will bring in different amounts of money depending on what they are and how long they take to grow.
Another element to this game is the animal care, you shouldn't buy an animal until you have built an appropriate shelter as they will become unhappy and won't produce anything for you. In this game you can buy chickens, sheep and cows. All of which are lucrative purchases, the chickens lay eggs, cows produce milk and sheep can be sheared daily for wool. You will have to feed them daily as well as ensuring you say hello to check their health. If sick you will need to buy medicine for them. They cost you money to own, feed and heal but do produce something for you to ship daily which is especially useful in winter. Ducks appear at your farm when you build a pond for them to land in and you can care for them in the same way as chickens.
Building shelters is costly but worthwhile. To make building cheaper the best thing to do is to collect stone and wood otherwise you will have to pay for the material and the labour. Once built the buildings can be used to store your materials and animals. You can build from 4 different materials, fodder, lumber, stone and gold lumber. Choosing your material is important as if you don't choose a good material the building may collapse so best to try and save up to invest in a better material.
To build up relationships with female members of the town you will have to give them gifts, its a little sexist but if all men gave us gifts we'd fall in love too. You have to give them the right gifts and a lot of them to win their hearts. The colour of the heart in the bottom of the screen will change as they begin to develop an interest in you. Giving girls gifts is a good way to lighten your rucksack of things you find in the town.
The aim of the game is to manage your farm and help it to thrive, you also have the secondary aim of retrieving the harvest sprites. You can really only do this by carrying out tasks daily and eventually unlocking them. If you need help on your farm you can pay the sprites to do some work for you such as watering your crops.
The town consists of 2 islands joined by a bridge, you can visit all areas on the map during one day if you want to. Though your farm may be a bit neglected if you choose to do this. One thing to be aware of in this game is the way your character gets tired out very quickly and if a skull appears above his head you should stop work and find some food to restore his stamina. Even if your crops haven't grown you can forage for restorative ingredients in the town's open fields. If you don't eat and continue working you will end your day abruptly and lose some money as a forfeit.
The great thing about this game is that because each day only lasts for 15 minutes or so you can play it on a train or bus journey and achieve quite a lot. The phone option makes buying things a lot more convenient and you are able to store a lot of items at one time. Each time you play you can explore new options, such as improving your relationships or trying to maximise your profits as early as possible. The game has a great longevity because of this which makes it well worth the money you'll pay for it. The game is currently available for around £20 from retailers such as Amazon, you can also pick up a second hand copy for around £10.
Graphically the game is pretty good and I can't really fault it, it has chosen a style and sticks with it throughout the game. Everything is clear and the scenery is pretty detailed.
If you're looking for a DS game for a child this christmas, this game should give them hours of fun, the animals are very cute and it will teach them a bit about money management at the same time. It will keep them quiet for hours and isn't that why you brought them a DS? If its more for you, you'll be thoroughly entertained too unless as I mentioned earlier strategy games aren't for you.
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Star Trek: Tactical Assault (DS)
by illogicology
Star Trek: Tactical Assault is a strategic action game for the PSP and DS, released alongside the similar but separate Star Trek: Legacy on console and PC. These titles were both produced by the very experienced Bethesda softworks in 2006 to celebrate the 40th Anniversay of the Star Trek franchise. While Star Trek: Legacy was a somewhat ... buggy nostalgia trip through the series as a whole, Tactical Assault is a much more effective story that takes place around the same time as Star Trek II.
Star Trek doesn't have the best track record in the video game world but Tactical Assault is surprisingly well put together. The story takes place over two campaigns, one seeing you control a federation crew, the other a group of Klingons. Both campaigns place you in command of a small crew and a small vessel, as you work through a series of loosely connected mission, your crew gains experience while you are upgraded to a series of better craft. As your crew matures, you gain points to spend on departments such as engineering or weapons. This will unlock new abilities (emergency turn, phaser overload etc.) and keep the game interesting. This approach is Tactical Assault's best feature, flying s starship does not feel like zipping around in a stuntplane but managing a naval operation. It's a nice change from other Star Trek games that haven't really been able to get this right.
While this game is available on the PSP, having played both version I can tell you that it was clearly designed for the DS. The touch screen is the most intuitive way of performing most actions and is styled much like a movie era Starfleet interface (a nice touch.) Where the PSP version is fiddly and requires memorising some fairly complicated button combinations, on the DS the game is almost without a learning curve. The touchscreen displays a blueprint of your current vessel, around it are your weapons systems and your shield. To the left is a bar representing acceleration and an ark above the craft that represents your angle or rotation. A simple tap is all it takes you speed up, slow down, flip 180 degrees or fire all phasers. As a control system for a spacecraft sim, it's absolutely perfect and great fun. While I was very happy with the touch screen interface, I was also pleased to see Bethesda providing button controls for all functions too. Precision touch screen controls and bumpy bus rides don't mix. The game also incorporates the typical range of scanning, hailing and warping mechanics to investigate the universe around you. However, these are context sensitive, only performing any kind of function when it's part of the story. An element of treasure hunting or secrets to be found by warping to unexpected areas or scanning supposedly unimportant planets would have been nice but the game never tip-toes from the main line. It's a shame but not a big loss.
The story itself is an exploration of Starfleet's uncomfortable relationship with the Klingons. Not too much of any lasting effect happens and most of the missions seem unrelated at first, only when you've completed the game can you step back and see the wider sequence of events. It's nice and keeps the game feeling somewhat casual, some missions can feel routine and repetitive however.
Graphically, Tactical Assault is nothing to shout home about. Models are simple and while the DS usually outpaces the old Nintendo 64, these models would have looked primitive back in 1996. Possibly the most disappointing move is the decision to show space in all it's empty glory. It might be accurate but flying around in a universe that consists of nothing but the occasional isolated planet and stars off in the distance isn't as captivating as the developers seem to think. It's not all bad though, the power they save on the models is used to give Tactical Assault an exceptional draw distance, you can always make out ships from an incredible distance and that's pretty valuable for a game set in the vastness of outer space.
At times this is a game that feels a little dated, there's a lot of dialogue going on before missions and a lot of information to take in if you want to fully complete your missions. However due to the limitation of the DS cartridge size, the game makes no attempt at voice acting (unless you count William Shatner's voice over in the opening cut scene) and instead gives you a lot of text to read. It's a bit tedious and occasionally I found myself tapping through long runs of text to get into the level and the discovering I'd missed something important. Also, if you're a graphics obsessive then you'd probably be better off with the PSP version which looks much prettier. Personally I find the sacrifice of the touch controls to be a poor trade off however, the PSP version is far too fiddly.
Star Trek Tactical Assault can be found pretty easily on Amazon, eBAy, at Game or Gamestation. In fact, I recently saw a copy in CEX for £2.50. A bargain for a game that really does offer a lot of fun. If you're a Star Trek loving gamer then I think you'd get a lot of fun from this but it also offer a lot to those uninterested in the franchise. It's one of the best space-sims on the DS and offers a surprisingly deep and lengthy campaign for a handheld. There's a lot of replay value here and if you get the chance to pick up a copy for a good price, no reason not to give it a go.
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Zoo Tycoon (DS)
by DavyMichelle
Zoo Tycoon for the DS is one of those games which you just know was probably great on the PC - but shouldn't have been put onto the DS. We paid a couple of pounds for this game off ebay, and I could see right away why it was so cheap / not very popular. The retail price on Amazon is only £9.95, so it's not an expensive game brand new ... even.
When I first turned on this game I was frankly shocked by the graphics. If you've ever played the old PC games from the early to mid nineties, like Theme Park and Transport Tycoon etc, then you'll be able to imagine exactly what the graphics for this game look like. To make matters worse, I played this on the DSi XL and so I saw all of the terribly graphics flaws blown up.
Despite this obvious initial off-putting flaw, I carried on and gave the game a try. Well, by try I mean I spent about two hours desperately trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing before giving up and re-listing the game on ebay.
The point of the game is... Well I'm still not sure. I mean I guess that it's to build and run a successful game, as that's the lines that all Tycoon games follow. However the game gave me no clear indication of this! The instruction manual was no real help either. It told me how to access vary functions, but not what those functions could or should actually lead to!!
I ambled through for a while setting up enclosures and following the red and green visual signals to guide me through what I should where, but thereafter I got both stuck and bored. I had no idea what half the functions in my control panel bit did, and I had no idea what I was supposed to be aiming for. I didn't know how many stalls and enclosures I needed and couldn't work out when I should raise my prices etc.
I bet that with a proper instruction manual and decent graphics this could be an enjoyable game. The premise is good enough after all. This is badly (and cheaply) designed though, and very confusing and hard to work out. If you're already familiar with this game from the PC version then you might get on okay with it. If you're totally new to the game though, give it a miss or be prepared to put a lot of time and effort into figuring out how to actually play it.
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