General Gaming So I have one of those 50 - 1 DS carts...

[gamer.tv]

I will look past the moral ambiguity and assume Nintendo is fine with this as they're sold through wish.com and they haven't made the effort to stop them sooo...

 

 

Now, originally this was a 180-1 situation, but considering half of those games were the worst kind of shovelware, card games/board games or games I'd played before, I've deleted them. Now, more as a way of keeping sane today as I've already indulged in my hour of outdoor exercise and my wife has currently occupied the PS4, I'll write some mini-impressions of some wonderfully lacklustre DS games for you all. If you also wish to play some massively outdated games and write a small critique, please do. I'll update mine throughout the day. 

 

007 - Blood Stone: I've completed the first mission. It was exactly what you'd expect from a 3rd person shooter where movement is controlled with the D-Pad and aiming with the stylus. Not actually as shit as you'd think it would be. 

 

007 - Quantum of Solace: The exact opposite of the above. Plays like Phantom Hourglass with stealth and gadgets. I may actually play this for more than the training section. 

 

Adventure Time - Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal our Garbage?!!: So it's a 2D platformer (with some punching and kicking), with RPG elements and then when you enter the overworld it becomes a Tales game. Also much better than expected although I never really loved the series. 

 

Bangai-O Spirits: I remember seeing this (or the previous iteration) in N64 magazine and wanted it. It's a Treasure game, which is a developer I always forget I really like. Will try it out more although I sense I will be terrible. 

 

Burnout Legends: Annoyingly shit as I loved Burnout 2 and looks like a crap 3D0 game. 

 

Dementium - The Ward: I'm playing in alphabetical order, but I will come back to this one as I've heard good things and my heart tells me it will need more than a 5 minute play. 

 

Duke Nukem - Critical Mass: a 2.5D sidescrolling shooter. Looks and plays like a launch game for the PS1 that no one would have wanted in 1995. 30 seconds was enough with this one. 

 

Fifa 11: Well, it's Fifa and we all know how it plays. Though this version seems to handle quite well and doesn't look awful either. Knowing my ability to waste time, I'll end up playing a season of this over the weekend.

 

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time: Eh, honestly not very fun. I know that the Crystal Chronicles iteration of games focuses on multiplayer and I'm going to assume that's the fun way to experience it. Oh well. 

 

Ghostbusters - The Video Game: This looks and sounds awesome. You choose a mission you want to take on, drive over to it in a fully 3D realised world (including cars on the road the theme song playing) and then locate and take out the ghost. There's no GPS so actually finding where you need to go is a fucking chore but there are RPG elements and I'm guessing some tactics as you take all the Ghostbusters out for the trip. 

 

Goldeneye - Rogue Agent: The controls are just...off? The stylus controls don't seem responsive and at their default setting, you aim with the stylus, move with the D-Pad, throw grenades with the L button and shoot with R. This was corrected changing the control method to Stylus...but still played like shit. 

 

Goldeneye 007: It might have been the light in my room, but I could see fuck all. I used the stylus controls and annoyingly it wouldn't let me change to the alternative scheme, but I love Goldeneye and will try it again later. I tried it with using the face buttons to move and aim and it was shockingly bad. Switched it back and the game just wasn't very good which is a shame as I remember hearing good things about the Wii version of this. 

 

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Isometric, poor controls, poor graphics considering it was a massive IP. Noope. I did like the fact it used all three characters to puzzle solve, fight enemies etc.

 

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Better that GoF, but the opening parts of the game involved fixing vases and trying to find Ron's badges. It looked more like a PS1 game (compared again with GoF which looked like a reasonable GBA title) so I might give it another chance.

 

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Same sort of thing as Phantom Hourglass (and Quantom of Solace) where you hold down on the bottom screen to move Harry about. It started off promising (looks like the same engine as OofP) but then the missions were all "go find my spectacles", "try and find three wizard cards" etc. I can however see how in 2006, this would be a pretty good jumping off point for a younger person to experience the starting points of some more involved games. 

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1: Pretty much the same as the one before it, though with a shooting segment from Hagrid's motorbike where I just hammered the stylus on the same point on the screen and beat it. I just wish that the controls were a little smoother, as the idea of puzzling, adventuring etc in the Harry Potter universe isn't the worst thing, except for when you have to battle with the controls. 

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2: I'll try this later but I'm going to make a prediction, it will be the same as the last few...

 

Kirby Canvas Curse: It was good and well reviewed way back when, still decent now. 

 

Lego - Lord of the Rings: I really like the Lego games and I've finished a fair few of them. This however was shambolic. It felt like the framerate was capped at about 15FPS, the audio was gash and what should have been a great opening section was boring - such a shame. 

 

Lara Croft Tomb Raider - Legend: Not that bad at all. 2.5D with several paths to roam around and when it comes to combat, you auto-target an enemy, press the shoot button and then it allows you to jab the bottom screen to do the actual shooting. The actual version is better (naturally) but this isn't awful. 

 

Madden 2009: this has the same feeling of Fifa 11, better than it should be whilst looking like Madden 2001 on the PS1. Plays well, but it's been a while since I touched a Madden game and need to wrap my head around it again. 

 

Meteos: Good puzzle game and more importantly feels good to play. One to keep. 

 

Metroid Prime - Pinball: Of all the things, it makes the soundtrack more "rocky" and it's awesome. I'm not massively in to pinball but this was fun (my range of experience has been the free one on Windows 7 and Pokemon Pinball)

 

Mr Driller - Drill Spirits: More goodness, simple premise, good level of mastery...I will be back Mr Driller. 

 

Need for Speed - Underground 2: It's not the best racing game I've ever played, but it handles pretty well and I could have seen this being a good distraction 15 years ago. I might be back to this one at some point. 

 

International Track and Field: I've tried the 100m and the long jump and the fact it asks me to repeatedly drag the stylus across the bottom screen makes me feel like I'm going to rip it to shreds. 

 

Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest: So it's a slasher/adventure game and I'll assume once I get out of the training area, will involve some light puzzling. Rather than the PS1 look a lot of these DS 3rd party games had, this looked straight up Aiden Chronicles. 

 

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End: I'll try this later...

 

Puyo Pop Fever: Fun game, very colourful and bright and made by Atlus. 

 

Retro Game Challenge: Finished challenge completed (Cosmic Gate) and I already really like the aesthetic and tone of the game. 

 

Ridge Racer DS: This just seems to just be a port of the original, of which I had the N64 port and really liked. I'll be back to this one. 

 

Shin Megami Tensei - Devil Survivor: I enjoyed Persona 5, so it was nice to pop into the franchise again. I liked the combat and the look (though I would have enjoyed a stronger art style during the combat sections). The game seemed OK, but I think if I want an overtly Japanese RPG, I'll dive back into The World Ends With You. 

 

The Simpson's Game: The first stage was a 2D side scroller with light combat and jumping. Made better by some decent jokes and one-liners. Checking HltB it's only 4 hours, so I might give it a go this weekend. 

 

Spiderman - Shattered Dimensions: Vaguely Metroid-y, which is quite cool. The combat was simple, but fun and the general tone was good. 

 

Spiderman - Web of Shadows: Basically the same game as Shattered Dimensions, just not as good. 

 

Spiderman 2: Like Web of Shadows, except no dialogue. 

 

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed: Honestly kind of hoping for a 2D game with force powers, responsive controls and a mix of powers (essentially Super Star Wars). It's impressive that they made the game fully 3D, but it uses the D=Pad for movement and then the attacks and powers were mapped to the touch screen. It wasn't very responsive, to use attacks meant looking away from the stop screen and it ran like ass. 

 

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed 2: With the above in mind, will ignore it for the now. 

 

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008: It's like Fifa, so much better than I thought it would be. Honestly, most of the more notable developers that ported games to DS did a piss poor job, but EA have smashed it consistency. 

 

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land: Thankfully draws on the good aspects of 3, 4 and the THUG games. Also looks great with cel-shading. I'll be playing this on hangover days. 

 

 

 

UPDATE: So except for a Pirates of the Caribbean game and Dementium (which will be later on), I've given them all a go and based on my time with each game, I'll be: 

Completing: 

Kirby Canvas Curse

The Simpson's Game

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land

Mr Driller

 

Dipping into: 

Fifa 11

Madden 2009

Tiger Woods 2008

Meteos

Puyo Pop Fever

Retro Game Challenge

Ridge Racer

 

Fucking off everything else. 

 

Either way, what a terrible use of some of my time today.