Top 10 games of the Nintendo DS (A swan song)
Apr 2, 2011 14:17:44 GMT -5
Post by Weasel on Apr 2, 2011 14:17:44 GMT -5
The following is by no means a "top 10" list, and does not place one game over another. It is merely a "10 list" of games/series I thought were highly notable.
Ace Attorney series - The game that made me buy a Nintendo DS, the Ace Attorney series combines courtroom drama with a unique sense of pun and referential humor that doesn't (usually) patronize the player. While there is very little actual "game" to speak of, outside of knowing when to use each item on which person, the story has been enough to keep me engrossed in the series for five games and counting, and it's certainly the most animated visual novel I've ever seen.
Hotel Dusk/Last Window - Hotel Dusk was a detective story with a unique visual style and generally well-written characters. The pacing might have been off a bit, and some of the puzzles might have required walkthroughs, but I had plenty of fun just immersing myself in the world and figuring out just what makes each character tick. Its sequel, Last Window, offers more of the same, but also goes far enough to include a very nicely done novelization of the game that one can read during or after the story is complete, and a number of bonus information files that further flesh out the already deep cast of characters.
Again - While it at first felt more like a handheld Heavy Rain in story concept, and had a monumentally slow start rivaling the likes of MGS4 and Yakuza 3 in terms of "Get on with it!" factor, Again ended up being an immersive murder mystery with a unique gimmick: puzzles are solved not by using one item with another, but by using the protagonist's "past vision" to compare 20-year-old crime scenes to what they look like in the present day and triggering flashbacks by staging the "modern" crime scene like the "original" one. Like any good mystery, the finer details (like the reason for this "past vision") are deliberately left unexplained, thus not ruining the experience for those who like to pick at plot holes. My only real gripe with Again is that the dialogue isn't as well written as Hotel Dusk, in particular I kind of started wondering why the protagonist even had a partner.
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - While the US has received many Mystery Dungeon games, ranging from Chocobo's Dungeon and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon to the less enjoyable Nightmare of Druaga, nearly all of the MD games we've had localized are of the licensed variety. Shiren the Wanderer, originally a Super Famicom game, finally made its way to the states when its Nintendo DS upgrade was developed. I'm something of a fan of Rogue-like games, and while more hardcore Rogue-like fans dislike the persistent items, Shiren has just about all of the elements that make a good Rogue-like, ranging from a wide variety of items and enemies to the ever-present "The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything" mentality. If you think you've mastered the game, test your knowledge of the game mechanics by taking on Fay's Puzzles.
Giana Sisters DS - I admittedly like this more than New Super Mario Bros., which is strange, considering the original Great Giana Sisters was an unapologetic clone of the original Super Mario Bros. for the Commodore 64 and Amiga platforms, to the point where it was infamously taken off shelves after Nintendo caught wind of it. And yet, here we are, the remake of Giana Sisters is available for Nintendo DS nearly twenty years later. The combination of classical gameplay mechanics and level design made Giana Sisters every bit worth completing. My only complaint is that every world ends with the exact same boss - literally!
The Dark Spire - Etrian Odyssey has been mentioned numerous times. The Dark Spire is a similarly-structured classic style dungeon crawl which, unlike EO, brings back the element of absolutely unforgiving difficulty. TDS is structured as a classical Wizardry-style game to its very core, from the story to the ability to switch the game into "Classic" mode (even though this game is not a remake of a previous game). Where the Dark Spire wins the most awards for me, though, is in its audio/visual style. The Modern graphics look like a fantasy comic book, sporting a unique ultra-high-contrast look that makes the dungeons look more menacing, and character designs that don't just look like your typical 90's-fantasy-Todd-MacFarlane-gigantic-shoulder-pads-and-capes junk. The music is good enough that the US release included a (partial) soundtrack CD, which was reason enough for me to own it. The battle theme is the most intense I've heard in a DS game.
Picross DS - Never has a game about drawing pictures according to mathematical clues kept me so hooked. Picross's concept is simplistic but it kept me playing through more than 300 puzzles. Keeping things fresh is the option for a themed grid, changing between each puzzle category (Free Mode's "police" themed stage, for example, has you shooting the grid with bullets and paintballs instead of hammer-and-chiseling). The puzzles are not too obtuse, and look fantastic when you're done with them. It's well worth spending an hour on one of the 25x20 puzzles just to see what it looks like when you're finished.
Theresia - It's difficult for me to feel legitimately threatened in most "horror" games, moreso when the game doesn't contain any actual enemies, and yet moreso when the game is on an handheld system. Well, Theresia's trap-laden world managed to keep me on edge, where absolutely everything has the potential to damage or kill you. It's a survival horror game where the enemy is in the very puzzles you're attempting to solve. To me, this game has the most similarity to the NES version of Shadowgate, but only because Shadowgate scared me enough as a child that I tossed our copy in the garbage.
Space Invaders Extreme - Space Invaders as a concept is simple enough that it could literally be interpreted in any genre without losing its core game mechanic. Space Invaders Extreme takes the gameplay of the Original Shmup and melds it with a color-combo-based puzzle game, rewarding players for specifically singling out and picking off invaders of the same color to earn combo bonuses. It also borrows a bit from the famous Rez, in that all game sound effects are played "on beat" with the music, turning it into more of an experience than a mere game.
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure - A concept that really would only have worked on two screens: a combination of an almost classic-Castlevania style platformer and a variant on Nintendo's own Puzzle League, where actions in one half of the game influence events in the other half. Kill an enemy with Henry's sabre, then make sure they're dead by matching them up with other blocks in the puzzle game. Fire a few shots in the air from Henry's musket, then while they're still flying, switch to the puzzle and match some blocks until the shots are bigger than your head. This genius game mechanic is also combined with some pretty hilarious cutscenes and character interaction, and to be honest, I thought the "dialogue" sound effects made me laugh the loudest.
...that probably wasn't exactly ten, was it?
Ace Attorney series - The game that made me buy a Nintendo DS, the Ace Attorney series combines courtroom drama with a unique sense of pun and referential humor that doesn't (usually) patronize the player. While there is very little actual "game" to speak of, outside of knowing when to use each item on which person, the story has been enough to keep me engrossed in the series for five games and counting, and it's certainly the most animated visual novel I've ever seen.
Hotel Dusk/Last Window - Hotel Dusk was a detective story with a unique visual style and generally well-written characters. The pacing might have been off a bit, and some of the puzzles might have required walkthroughs, but I had plenty of fun just immersing myself in the world and figuring out just what makes each character tick. Its sequel, Last Window, offers more of the same, but also goes far enough to include a very nicely done novelization of the game that one can read during or after the story is complete, and a number of bonus information files that further flesh out the already deep cast of characters.
Again - While it at first felt more like a handheld Heavy Rain in story concept, and had a monumentally slow start rivaling the likes of MGS4 and Yakuza 3 in terms of "Get on with it!" factor, Again ended up being an immersive murder mystery with a unique gimmick: puzzles are solved not by using one item with another, but by using the protagonist's "past vision" to compare 20-year-old crime scenes to what they look like in the present day and triggering flashbacks by staging the "modern" crime scene like the "original" one. Like any good mystery, the finer details (like the reason for this "past vision") are deliberately left unexplained, thus not ruining the experience for those who like to pick at plot holes. My only real gripe with Again is that the dialogue isn't as well written as Hotel Dusk, in particular I kind of started wondering why the protagonist even had a partner.
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - While the US has received many Mystery Dungeon games, ranging from Chocobo's Dungeon and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon to the less enjoyable Nightmare of Druaga, nearly all of the MD games we've had localized are of the licensed variety. Shiren the Wanderer, originally a Super Famicom game, finally made its way to the states when its Nintendo DS upgrade was developed. I'm something of a fan of Rogue-like games, and while more hardcore Rogue-like fans dislike the persistent items, Shiren has just about all of the elements that make a good Rogue-like, ranging from a wide variety of items and enemies to the ever-present "The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything" mentality. If you think you've mastered the game, test your knowledge of the game mechanics by taking on Fay's Puzzles.
Giana Sisters DS - I admittedly like this more than New Super Mario Bros., which is strange, considering the original Great Giana Sisters was an unapologetic clone of the original Super Mario Bros. for the Commodore 64 and Amiga platforms, to the point where it was infamously taken off shelves after Nintendo caught wind of it. And yet, here we are, the remake of Giana Sisters is available for Nintendo DS nearly twenty years later. The combination of classical gameplay mechanics and level design made Giana Sisters every bit worth completing. My only complaint is that every world ends with the exact same boss - literally!
The Dark Spire - Etrian Odyssey has been mentioned numerous times. The Dark Spire is a similarly-structured classic style dungeon crawl which, unlike EO, brings back the element of absolutely unforgiving difficulty. TDS is structured as a classical Wizardry-style game to its very core, from the story to the ability to switch the game into "Classic" mode (even though this game is not a remake of a previous game). Where the Dark Spire wins the most awards for me, though, is in its audio/visual style. The Modern graphics look like a fantasy comic book, sporting a unique ultra-high-contrast look that makes the dungeons look more menacing, and character designs that don't just look like your typical 90's-fantasy-Todd-MacFarlane-gigantic-shoulder-pads-and-capes junk. The music is good enough that the US release included a (partial) soundtrack CD, which was reason enough for me to own it. The battle theme is the most intense I've heard in a DS game.
Picross DS - Never has a game about drawing pictures according to mathematical clues kept me so hooked. Picross's concept is simplistic but it kept me playing through more than 300 puzzles. Keeping things fresh is the option for a themed grid, changing between each puzzle category (Free Mode's "police" themed stage, for example, has you shooting the grid with bullets and paintballs instead of hammer-and-chiseling). The puzzles are not too obtuse, and look fantastic when you're done with them. It's well worth spending an hour on one of the 25x20 puzzles just to see what it looks like when you're finished.
Theresia - It's difficult for me to feel legitimately threatened in most "horror" games, moreso when the game doesn't contain any actual enemies, and yet moreso when the game is on an handheld system. Well, Theresia's trap-laden world managed to keep me on edge, where absolutely everything has the potential to damage or kill you. It's a survival horror game where the enemy is in the very puzzles you're attempting to solve. To me, this game has the most similarity to the NES version of Shadowgate, but only because Shadowgate scared me enough as a child that I tossed our copy in the garbage.
Space Invaders Extreme - Space Invaders as a concept is simple enough that it could literally be interpreted in any genre without losing its core game mechanic. Space Invaders Extreme takes the gameplay of the Original Shmup and melds it with a color-combo-based puzzle game, rewarding players for specifically singling out and picking off invaders of the same color to earn combo bonuses. It also borrows a bit from the famous Rez, in that all game sound effects are played "on beat" with the music, turning it into more of an experience than a mere game.
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure - A concept that really would only have worked on two screens: a combination of an almost classic-Castlevania style platformer and a variant on Nintendo's own Puzzle League, where actions in one half of the game influence events in the other half. Kill an enemy with Henry's sabre, then make sure they're dead by matching them up with other blocks in the puzzle game. Fire a few shots in the air from Henry's musket, then while they're still flying, switch to the puzzle and match some blocks until the shots are bigger than your head. This genius game mechanic is also combined with some pretty hilarious cutscenes and character interaction, and to be honest, I thought the "dialogue" sound effects made me laugh the loudest.
...that probably wasn't exactly ten, was it?