There were so many ways that the DS could have evolved. Nintendo could’ve made the top screen touch-sensitive. The whole thing could have been compacted to fold up into a convenient Gameboy SP-sized package, like one of those shoop’ed ads circulating the interwebs from long, long ago. But no, they had to come up with the Nintendo DSi, which is basically a re-designed DS without the GBA port and dual 0.3 megapixel cameras. Well at least the screens themselves are bigger, and there’s some potential with homebrew ( the DSi also offers SD card support and internal storage as new features ). We’ll take what we can get.

Anyway, IGN seems to be on the vine with the latest regarding the latest model of the Nintendo DS, citing numerous but unnamed sources in their report that the redesign would cost around US$ 179.99, and will be launching in the Americas on April 4. That’s a bit of a hefty price, but it’s a good thing, considering that the Nintendo DS lite is still selling like hotcakes (selling 1.5 million units in November), making the DSi more of an optional upgrade than anything else. I’m sure I won’t be plunking money down on it.

Yes I realize I’m a little late on this, but give me a break. If you’re feeling a little dried up from the overabundance of casual brain tests, and Pokemon collecting on your DS then you might want to try out The World Ends With You. The World Ends With You (Or TWEWY) is a very hip and stylish action RPG from the minds of Square Enix and Co-Developer Jupiter. (Holy shit they did Golden Sun)

Like many Square Enix titles, the story revolves around a teen with a heart full of angst, a mind diagnosed with amnesia, and too much hair gel. The story takes place in Shibuya, Japan which I didn’t learn was real until a few days ago. Neku awakens in the middle of Shibuya with a pin that grants him the ability to see peoples thoughts. It turns out that Neku is playing The Reapers Game, a game that is privileged to the dead who have received Player Pins. Soon after awakening Neku meets another player named Shiki, a girl with a skirt that defies the laws of gravity and hip bones like spartan spears. As it turns out, the Reapers Game isn’t friendly. The premise is to survive the week by completing a mission sent to your phone each day by the Game Master. (I’m not making this shit up.)
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Zombies, magic, a variety of weapons, many, MANY breakable lamps, and, best of all, Dracula. These are just some of the things that come to mind when one sees the title “Castlevania“. The difference with Order of Ecclesia is while keeping these staples of the series in mind there are aspects of it that take the title that extra mile beyond just another “Castlevania” title.

Created and published by Konami, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia was released in North America on October 21, 2008. Order of Ecclesia is the newest Castlevania title for the Nintendo DS, promptly following Portrait of Ruin and Dawn of Sorrow. While each Castlevania title on the DS shares extremely similar game play mechanics for movement, as well as enemy sprites and concepts, the games still manage to stand far apart from each other. (continue reading…)

Anyone who had the original Neo-Geo handheld probably at least heard of the original card themed SNK vs Capcom games. Recently SNK Playmore revived the series, and brought it to the DS, and it’s….. well…… blah.

There’s just really so much more that could have been done with this game, as it’s just riddled with things that make it appear like the people that made the game just did a rush job.

For starters, the Story mode is about the equivalent of one of those half-assed Sunday morning cartoons that they show and hope 6 year old kids can get into, since they don’t know crap when they see it anyway. It’s basically the same scenes repeated fifty million times, and they consist of “OH NOES YOU’VE BEEN BRAINWASHED I DO CARD BATTLE TO WAKE YOU!” then follows with “ZOMG YOU SNAP OUT OF IT LETS BATTLE SOMETIMES LAWLZ!”

Okay, so it’s not exactly like that, but it’s pretty damn close. This is repeated god-knows-how-many times as you progress through the game. Hell, even the NPCs you run into are the same damn kind repeated over and over, only with different color swaps. Seriously, did they think anyone that wasn’t a chimp with down syndrome wouldn’t notice? The AI isn’t exactly the most challenging thing on the planet either, and you’ll find yourself losing more to just bad luck with drawing the right cards instead of actually being beaten by the computer. Sometimes they’ll just sit there when you’re health is in the red and let you rebuild your defenses, or allow you ample time to plow through their own. Thankfully the game has an option for online battles, which lets you go against, you know, humans that are (hopefully) smarter than a Preschooler.

To make things worse, the in-game text is a scrambled mess. It’s not bad enough that the dialog has to be a grammar Nazi’s worst nightmare, and the script the equivalent of an English report done by a 6 year old. The card descriptions, thanks in part to terrible translation work, will leave you scratching your head in confusion, as some of them are incredibly vague in telling you what the damn-hell-crap the card you’re looking at does. You’ll find yourself getting frustrated when you find that a card that you think is supposed to deal 500 damage to all character cards ends up doing 500 damage spread out.

Really, the only saving grace for this game is the card battle system itself, which actually works fairly well. It’s actually rather addicting too, you know, once you get past the horrible grammar, decide to ignore the storyline, and just try to enjoy the whole mess. It’s like finding that one Avril Lavigne song that doesn’t make you want to smash your face against a brick wall.

It’s really hard to recommend this game for any reason because of all the problems that infest it, despite the good battle system. It would be nice though that if SNK decides to do another part of this series, that they actually put some effort into making it instead of this half-assed thingy.

Graphics: 3.5
Sound: 2.5
Gameplay. 3.5
Entertainment: 2.0
Overall: 2.5
Analysis: Not exactly a Yu-Gi-Oh! killer.

Note: Earlier this year, SNK Playmore ended their recall of copies of the game that had a severe glitch that stopped progression on the second playthrough. Bug-free copies of the game should be available at stores, though whether you want to deal with it is your call.