Nintendo DS Game Reviews

New kinds of games are rare, if not non-existent, these days. All the respective game genres have been well established since the original Playstation and haven’t really changed much in the last ten years. However, the rise of hybrid games has added some much needed variety to the video games. One of the more popular hybrid games has been Puzzle Quest. In the game the developers crossed a Bejeweled match three game and an RPG quest. The gameplay worked well and offered a new and enjoyable change from the usual. Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel but with lots of personality and by combining gameplay types, a la Puzzle Quest, it seems fresh and fun.

In Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure you play as Henry Hatsworth, an old treasure hunter who goes spelunking and finds a golden hat. This hat is part of a suit worn by a man simply named The Gentleman. He used his suit to rule peacefully and seal away a chaotic world known as the Puzzle Realm. When Hatsworth puts on the hat he gains access to and simultaneously releases the Puzzle Realm and it’s creatures. From then on Hatsworth displays typical 2D action platforming on the top screen and a puzzle on the bottom screen. You can switch between these two games simply by pressing the X button. When switching from the action to puzzle the action even stops allowing you to focus on the puzzle at hand. What results from this odd setup is a game that has the Treasure hunting of Wario, the moves of Mega Man X, and the puzzle gameplay of Tetris attack (aka Panel de Pon). This seemingly odd mixture works well and is held together by the game’s style.

The game takes place around the time of the 1920’s. Monocles and plaid hats are in fashion along with English accents and Tea Time. Yet even though it seems like the 1920’s there are still massive robots and energy guns. It’s an odd combination but the humor and bright characters fill the game world. One of the things that Hatsworth has in spades is interesting characters. There’s a wife who uses her Husband as machine guns and attacks you from the top of a wedding cake. There’s also a pirate who looks like Fabio who attacks you with pelvic thrusts and musical notes. The characters are bizarre but are full of humor and wit. When you battle them they are well done as well because their battles span not only the action on the top screen but in many instances the action falls to the bottom screen as well. For example, when battling the Fabio look alike if you don’t hit his music notes on the top screen they get stuck in your puzzle and cause you trouble when trying to match pieces.

I may be getting ahead of myself talking about boss battles. The action in Hatsworth takes place on both screens and overall the combination of puzzle and action works well but there are some rough edges I wish had gotten worked out. The first thing is the action on the top screen. It’s a little boring sometimes. The enemies on the top screen are varied throughout the game and every other level seems to introduce a new enemy but they only thing the game has you do is kill enemies and then move them out of the puzzle on the bottom of the screen. This mechanic works but it can get repetitive throughout long play sessions. What’s also annoying is that the enemies on the top screen love to gang up on you. In the early going of the game there usually aren’t enough enemies to matter but as the game goes on there are too many enemies to keep track of. You have to upgrade Hatsworth to get anywhere in the game. It doesn’t help things that checkpoints only occur once you clear a room. As a result you may get to the end of a room and enter one of the typical arena battles and die. Then you have to do a whole room over again which can take fifteen minutes. This could simply have been fixed if a checkpoint occurred before these, ‘kill everyone to move on’ battles. Finally if you get hit by an enemy be prepared to get hit a second time. I found that most enemies can hit you twice before you can escape from them. In most games you’re given one to two seconds to escape but in Hatsworth that time is cut in half. It makes the game frustrating in many places, it’s also disheartening that upgrading Hatsworth doesn’t make as much of a difference as you might like.

In contrast with the fairly straightforward action on the DS’ top screen on the bottom screen the puzzling is responsive and quick. Enemies turn into different blocks so the gameplay changes as the game goes on and you’re not regulated to the same gameplay throughout the game. With the bottom screen you earn energy that powers Hatsworth’s gun, heals him, gives him special abilities, and also lets him earn extra lives. All this is nice but sometimes I felt like I leaned on this second game play type as a crutch to support the difficult main gameplay. The music that’s on the bottom screen is great too. It’s a cross between classy piano tunes and metal. It even reminds me of the soundtrack in Jet Grind Radio. To top all this off it’s available online for free. Download it if you want to give it a whirl, it’s definitely worth it.

Even with it’s rough edges I enjoyed Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. I did find the game frustratingly difficult and it’s refusal to slow down in giving you more and more to deal with to an almost impossible degree also didn’t help. However the game is still fun and makes up for these failing with its glowing personality, replayability through secret paths, and an unlockable Gentleman difficulty. I would have like to see some changes to make the game a little more manageable but for a first outing Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is an encouraging first game. As Hatsworth would say, ‘Good Show!’

Overall: 8.0/10

The original Puzzle Quest is one of my favorite games for the DS. I picked it up on it’s first day of release and remember spending many happy gaming hours plowing through the main quest, capturing creatures, and taking down Lord Bane. The original Puzzle Quest took place in a medieval setting but this new Puzzle Quest decided to change locales. In this version of Puzzle Quest you’ll be exploring Space rather than a medieval countryside. The game has also changed styles as well. You gain ship parts rather than spells and play on a hexagonal board rather than a large square one. You’ll still match mines, this game’s skulls, and collect intel, experience; the core Puzzle Quest experience is still here. However, the game doesn’t feel nearly as exciting as it did the first time which is a result of long load times, a seemingly empty universe, and a battle system that is boring compared to the original.

The first issue with Puzzle Quest: Galactrix are the long load times. When I played the original Puzzle Quest on the DS I felt that it was the definitive version and that it was made for the DS. When I play Puzzle Quest: Galactrix I feel that the game was ported down from XBLA. Every time you do anything in the game like traveling from universe to universe you are hit with a five second load time. This doesn’t seem like a long time when you’re waiting for the bus when it takes a grand total of three load screens to get to one battle you’ll quickly get annoyed by the load times. I think that it would have been better if Puzzle Quest: Galactrix had been simplified rather than maintain these awful load times. Going along with these load times though is a large universe for you to explore. To get from one place to another you first have to hack the Leapgates that connect each galaxy. This requires matching a certain number of colored gems, in a certain order, in a certain amount of time. Initially this mini game is quite fun but it gets tiresome after a while because you have to do it every time you want to travel to a new star system. Alongside Leapgate hacking there is mining. Mining provides you with different materials that you can use to make new ships, items, and also sell at the marketplace to make money.

What’s strange about Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is that the game offers lots of customization, quests, and items to collect; but the game feels empty. It may have been the space theme or the drab music but each galaxy in Puzzle Quest: Galactrix fails to make you feel like you are a part of a busy galaxy. To add to this there are interface issues with the touch screen on the Nintendo DS. It would seem that piloting through menus should be a breeze when you merely have to tap on a location to fly there but in Puzzle Quest: Galactrix something was lost in translation. You can’t simply tap a menu icon, you have to tap it and hope that the game reads your tap correctly. One out of every three times I tried to choose a menu option it would register the tap on another portion of the screen. I thought that it might be my DS but I tried it in another DS and the game was the same way. It’s pretty sad when a developer can’t get touch screen menus correct.

But all these things could have been overlooked if battles were fun, let’s face it what most of us enjoyed in the first Puzzle Quest were the battles. The computers cheated like crazy but the game had a certain luck factor where you could clear the entire board and broken moves were the name of the game. This game type gave Puzzle Quest a certain charm that has been entirely lost in this game. The game is very well balanced and the computer tends not to cheat as much in this game. While that might sound like a good thing to most people out there, it lessens the excitement value of playing Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. It doesn’t feel like you’re participating in a crazy battle but rather that you’re playing a quiet game of chess. And just like that game of chess this game requires lots of strategy. Even the most basic battle will give you trouble in this game if you aren’t properly equipped.

In total Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is less than the sum of its parts. It has a large galaxy to explore but it feels empty and load times hamper the experiences. The battle system has been largely refined but the game feels less hectic and less fun. The types of puzzles in regards to mining and Leapgate hacking are done well but they confuse the issue of whether this game is about battling or exploring. It seemed to me that mining and Leapgate hacking took up more time than battling, which is a shame. I was really looking forwards to Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and I did have some fun with the game but it didn’t live up to its predecessor, not by a light year.

Moon is Renegade Kid’s follow up to it’s 2007 game Dementium: The Ward. Moon has been highly anticipated because it’s a technical marvel on the DS and it represents a rare breed of game as well, the FPS. For some reason the FPS has never been very popular on the DS. When Metroid Prime Hunters released it proved that touch controls could work but not many companies have taken up the torch and decided to further explore how the DS could do a deeper FPS. Now Renegade Kid has decided to bridge this gap on the Nintendo DS and Moon is their second attempt on the DS. Dementium: The Ward had some nitpicks that kept it from greatness and it seems that Renegade Kid has ironed them out and attempted to polish Moon to a spacey shine. On the whole Moon is a fantastic title, there are some minor gripes with variety and length but neither of these things keeps Moon from being a title that every DS owner should try.

For one thing Moon has a cookie cutter story. You land on the moon, something happens and it’s your job to find out what it was and how it got there. Eventually aliens become involved and you have to fight them. While the base story in Moon doesn’t sound very interesting Renegade Kid did something different with the game structure. Rather than giving the player an entirely open world to travel in they sectioned Moon up into 20 or so missions. By doing this they were able to provide story in between missions and it helped fill in. Also in each stage there are kiosks that you can find and examine to read logs and various other source material that helps round out the game’s story. At first I wasn’t intrigued but I continued to read the kiosks and the story really picked up at the end. It’s the kind of story that will have everyone cheering for the main hero.

Besides these kiosks there are three alien artifacts hidden in each mission. If you collect them you unlock secret VR missions. I didn’t find them worth the extra effor though. They’re a cross between training levels and survival battles. I found that after completing the game I had no use for them because they didn’t offer any further information on the game or it’s story. That’s a problem with Moon, once you finish the main game there isn’t much left to do other than go back and play through the game on a harder difficulty.

So while Moon has a fairly interesting story and well-paced episodic gameplay it does suffer from a lack of diversity. Once you play through the opening couple of missions you’ll find that the rest of the game plays in the exact same manner. You are introduced to a new area where you are given the world map. The map shows waypoints that you must get to and once you arrive you fight a boss. Along the way there are side paths where you can explore the level further for health and ammo upgrades but these side paths are clearly marked on the map. In addition you can use RAD, also known as a Remote Access Droid, to explore the air ducts in the level and open doors. You also get to travel from place to place in a dune buggy but you’re limited from running from point A to point B. This is a serious problem in Moon. Because you are placed on a very linear path throughout the game I found that I never got to do much exploring and I felt that the game was over simplified.

Renegade Kid did change some things when coming from Dementium. In Dementium you were limited to how many times you saved and your ammunition was also finite. Both these things withstanding enemies respawned infinitely. Moon contains the exact opposite extreme, enemies don’t respawn, ammo is plentiful, and you are allowed to save as often as you want. This left me with almost no reason to die. When I was just outside a boss chamber I could easily back track to the last save point because no enemies would respawn. I could go and get fully healed and then come back to defeat the boss. The basic setup of Moon encourages you not to die. It left me feeling like I wasn’t being challenged by the main game enough. Aside from these minor quibbles with the gameplay Moon kept my attention and I had a great time. I just felt that the game could use a more creative touch. Allow me to explore and give me more to do and I’d be one happy gamer.

As I mentioned earlier Moon is a technical masterpiece. The game runs at a crisp 60 frames a second and the game never slows down. It’s also a beautiful game with lots of environmental detail. Finally, the game controls wonderfully and almost attains the coveted mouse and keyboard feel that PC FPS games adore. I did feel that the game could have used some more in game music but since it took place on the moon I can understand why Renegade Kid choose to keep the background music to a minimum. So overall Moon is a great FPS on the Nintendo DS. The developer also left it open to a sequel so maybe they’ll fix up a few more things with this game and give us another fabulous game. One can hope the wait isn’t going to be too long.

Overall: 8/10

How do you classify Big Bang Mini? It’s a game that has hardcore and casual gamer stylings. It’s got beautiful graphics and seems easy at first but only the really dedicated will see the game threw to the end. I tend to classify Big Bang Mini as fantastic, magical, and challenging. In Big Bang Mini you control a ship on the bottom screen of the DS. You grab it with the stylus and dodge incoming enemy projectiles. When you aren’t dodging enemy shots then you can make a flicking motion towards the top screen of the DS to shoot fireworks at your enemies located on the top screen. But be careful, if your shots don’t hit an enemy then the shrapnel from your fireworks will rain down on you and make it that much harder to dodge your enemies weapons. Once you finish a level you also get to try your hand at a bonus stage. In these stages your job is to try and uncover and fly threw numbered orbs that make a pattern in the stars on the top screen. Once you finish a bonus stage fireworks shoot up into the top screen and show what object you were making. These stages aren’t entirely necessary but they’re fun and pretty. So how do you describe Big Bang Mini, for most people you can just call this a Shmup, or Shoot ‘em up.

What makes this game special though is not it’s game mechanics. Shooting into the top screen of the DS and moving a ship in the bottom screen has all been done before. However never before has a game like this been done with so much style and with such great care taken to make sure all the game mechanics and controls work perfectly. What Big Bang Mini has above any other shooter on the DS is the originality of its level design. In Big Bang Mini you play through multiple worlds, all of them themed with a different area. You will play in a level reminiscent of Paris, Hong Kong, and even original levels like Luxor [a Tron like world]. All these levels not only look and sound, we’ll get back to sound later, great but they all introduce new ways of playing the game. For instance, in Luxor you gain the ability to shoot homing missiles and also to draw a line that reflects shots back at your opponents. But that’s not all, while you get to change scenery, weapons, and music you also get to change the way bonus stages are played.

Big Bang Mini would have become very boring very quickly if the bonus stages had simply gotten harder as the game went on. Instead, with each new world the way you beat the Bonus stage changes. In Paris you have to dodge falling Leaves to get to all the numbered orbs. In the ice world you have to tap the orbs out of ice they are frozen in. Each world changes what you are used to in the game and that keeps it fresh the longer the game goes on. The game is made up of 9 worlds that have one boss in each and a final boss. In addition to this Arcade mode there is also a Relax, Challenge, Mission, and Alarm clock mode. All of these modes unlock as you move on in the game and add extra legs to a game that takes about five hours to complete the arcade mode.

What amazed me about Big Bang Mini aside from the ever-changing worlds and gameplay was the sense of discovery and destruction that I encountered. The change in worlds and styles allowed the game to feel like you were discovering it anew with each new world and it made me feel like the developers spent a majority of their time making sure this was the case. It also caused destructive feelings because no matter how hard the game got I always came back to it. There was never a point where I threw the game down in frustration due to difficulty. The game is very fair and never makes you feel cheated. In a shooter this is necessary and Big Bang Mini does this with the best of them. Big Bang Mini completely surprised me when it came out. I played the demo on the US Nintendo Channel and loved the game. When it came out at $20 I couldn’t say no. It’s a creative, challenged, and beautiful shooter for the DS that anyone can enjoy. You don’t have to be a shooter fan to appreciate this game. If you’re still unsure I suggest trying the demo. Pick this game up while you can, it’s the first DS gem of 2009.

Overall: 9/10