Click for more screens from Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword
As you can imagine, many were worried when Itagaki showed off the DS entry in his beloved Ninja Gaiden series. Would the groundbreaking new control scheme set the bar for action games on the system or would it be an unresponsive and unrefined mess, causing you to contemplate throwing your DS against the wall? Well, I'm happy to report that none of these fears ever pan out in Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, which is a pretty great game overall.
It turns out, the game is pretty much everything we hoped it would be: a benchmark for how to do an action game on the DS and how other developers can create a great DS entry in their own respective franchises.
As you may or may not know, I'm a big fan of adventure games. That's one of the reasons I jumped at the chance to play Insecticide -- it looked like it would be one of the best in the genre this year. And the action parts? Those would just be gravy.
Crackpot, the development team behind the game, is mostly made up of people who used to work for LucasArts, and it shows. Insecticide contains the same kind of humor and adventure goodness of games like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. Yet, this title is not only an adventure game but also an action platformer, and when mixing genres, you have to be careful to do it right -- in a way that makes sense, and in a way that works. Unfortunately, though, Insecticide fails in those aspects.
Let me get this out of the way right off: I have always preferred the "older" Final Fantasy games. By that, I don't mean the older titles in the series (my favorites are scattered throughout), but rather, those that feature older main characters. Because of this, I approached Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates with a rumbling feeling of apprehension. It looked good. It sounded much improved, control- and gameplay-wise, over the GameCube's Crystal Chronicles. But would I be able to get into a storyline that revolved around youthful characters?
I need not have worried. Ring of Fates boasts a surprisingly rich coming of age story in a world that is beautifully realized and packed with dungeons just waiting to be looted. Even the most hardcore fans, who prefer a traditional Final Fantasy experience, will find little to disappoint here.
Big John Games' Spitfire Heroes: Tales of the Royal Air Force is a simple game -- and I mean that in a good way. I'm not saying it's an easy game (far from it) or that there isn't enough to do. Spitfire Heroes is simple in the way that arcade games are: the controls are intuitive and easy to pick up quickly, and the objectives are clear. Despite its appearance as a flight sim (one of the most complex genres of all), Spitfire Heroes is an action game through and through, more After Burner than Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Unfortunately, some fairly major issues prevent Spitfire Heroes from an unqualified recommendation. Right up front: the game is too hard, which may prevent you from seeing the majority of the content. While it's easy to understand how to play, it is remarkably difficult to play.
When you think about puzzle games, titles that involve abstract geometrical shapes (like Tetris) are probably the first things that come to mind. Professor Layton, though, is a different breed of puzzle game, one that you might not be used to. This charming title makes you solve actual brainteasers -- the kind that make you want to laugh and cry at the same time.
It's hard to imagine a game being completely devoted to puzzle solving. Usually, games will include puzzle-solving elements, but they won't revolve around the whole concept. Yet, Professor Layton manages to do this in a way that's enticing, entertaining, and addicting, showing us that even the simplest ideas can become the best of games if handled properly.
I was pretty worried about reviewing Homie Rollerz. I didn't really get into game blogging to discuss serious issues, and the Homies franchise seemed to involve one. Is Homie Rollerz a good thing because it is designed for a Mexican-American audience (which, as a goal, is very cool and laudable), or is it an insult to that audience with broad stereotypes? The toys continue to be popular, so I happily suspect the former. However, my own impression of the characters and storyline is that I might find them offensive if I belonged to the supposed target audience. In any case, further investigation of this cultural issue turned out to be unnecessary, because Homie Rollerz is not very good. The biggest issues with the game turn out to be with the game and not with the subject matter.
There's no doubt that, although niche, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series is beloved by many. Capcom had a great thing going for it with the first three games: a fun concept, compelling gameplay, and some ridiculous but lovable characters. After hearing that Capcom would be changing things around by introducing Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, I started to get nervous. Why mess with a good thing and change a winning formula?
Innovation is necessary to keep any franchise alive, but at the expense of characters that fans have grown attached to, I wondered if it was worth it. Could Capcom really pull this off without alienating either longtime fans or curious newcomers? The task seemed daunting. Yet, if any series could pull a transition like this, it would be this one.
Remember when you used to believe in the possibility of faeries, goblins, and other sorts of mythical creatures? If you do, games like The Spiderwick Chronicles probably appeal to you in some way, whether you like to admit it or not. Still, none of that means anything if these games based on fantasia aren't any good. Fortunately, that's why we're here – to review them.
The Spiderwick Chronicles game is based on a movie, which is based on a book. While normally that spells a recipe for disaster, it becomes evident while playing this title that it's not just a quick cash-in attempt. Stormfront Studios clearly put a lot of time into the game's development, and tried to utilize the features of the DS to the fullest. That's not to say that Stormfront always succeeded, however.
It takes a special kind of person to get into Barnyard Blast: Swine of the Night. It's an action platformer parodying the original Castlevania and starring a cowboy pig. If you're one of those readers who comes here every day to read about eccentric titles that hardly anyone else cares about, this one's right up your alley!
Even executive producer Yan Marchal wasn't initially fond of the game: "I was busy with other vital issues in the studio while this took place ... Our 3D artist likes designing pigs, while our 2D artists are fans of Castlevania and Ghosts'n Goblins. When I took the project back in hand, I thought it would be unmarketable as such, but the timeline was too tight to reshape it before San Francisco's [2007] GDC."
A few of those "special kind of people" took to the concept, however, so Yan and Sanuk Software were able to sell Barnyard Blast to a publisher, and the rest is history. History being a cowboy pig fighting the undead.
Over the Christmas period, yours truly spent a genuinely exhausting evening drinking with three friends, a Wii, and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. The drink flowed freely that night, and we were all fairly inebriated by the time we hit the sack, happy but tired.
The next morning, we were feeling less jolly.
It wasn't just the hangovers. Thanks to our exertions in Mario & Sonic, shoulders ached, arms were leaden, and simply putting a shirt on was a painful experience. Despite this, we all agreed we'd do it again. And we did. And yes, it still hurt the following morning. Why am I telling you this? Simple: because it underlines just what a fantastic social experience the Wii version of Mario & Sonic can be. Break the game down in the cold light of day, and it becomes easy to nitpick at its flaws. It's far from perfect. Yet it is immensely fun with friends. It's worth the pain, you could say.
And the DS version? Well ... not so much. In fact, as a social experience, Mario & Sonic at the OlympicGames on the DS falls a long, long way short of its bigger, stronger Wii brother.
Gamecock sent over a near-final preview copy of Insecticide, and I've been playing through it for the last few days. I haven't encountered any bugs yet -- except the ones that are supposed to be there, amirite? I previously played the game during the Penny Arcade Expo, but this time I had the benefit of playing a more complete copy, for more than ten minutes, while sitting down in a room with fewer than ten thousand people in it. I don't want to evaluate too much in a preview, but in the small portion of the game I've played, it's clear to me that this is exactly what people hope it is: the return of the funny 3D adventure game.
While the adventure genre (by which I mean the third-person, 3D-movement, point-and-click adventure game, as opposed to graphical text adventures like Phoenix Wright) hasn't quite died, it has been populated in recent years by games like Indigo Prophecy and Syberia: dour, dark, gritty, Serious Business. Insecticide is not that. It evokes something like a Grim Fandango or a Space Quest: interesting characters who have a lot of funny things to say, in a game that requires you to adapt to a unique world's somewhat joke-based logic.
Indianapolis 500 Legends isn't your average racing game. Instead of presenting the player with a series of circuits, this DS title focuses on one, and only one track. To state the obvious, in the game you race in the Indy 500, an event known as "the Greatest Spectacle in Racing."
Since Legends doesn't try to woo you with a bunch of different courses, it attempts too add variety with the help of history. Through the game, the player is not only able to experience the Indy 500, but also learn about it. One way in which the game achieves this is by letting the player race as (and against) famous drivers (well ... they're famous in relation to other Indy car drivers, at least). But, can combining history with racing really work in the context of a video game?
Back in the middle of 2005, a little game by the name of Advance Wars: Dual Strike hit the Nintendo DS. Followers of the franchise's previous entries on the GBA (developed by Intelligent Systems) remember plenty of hours spent, knee-deep in combat with their GBA SP, its body soaking wet with the sweat from their palms. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is an important entry in the series, perhaps more so than previous installments. For one, it's the first to be compatible with Nintendo Wi-Fi Connect, Nintendo's online matchmaking service for head-to-head battles (and custom map swapping). Another reason why it might be considered the most important installment in the series is the stark contrast in artistic style and game plot compared to past titles.
Ubisoft's Brain Challenge is an odd little game. Like their other training games that we've encountered, there's definitely a lot to love here, and that's quite an accomplishment when you consider that the brain-training genre is dominated by our beloved Dr. Kawashima and his endlessly-Photoshoppable head. But the game is far from perfect, and the problems we encountered were frustrating indeed. In the end, however, Brain Challenge just might edge out Brain Age and its sequel, though it's a close race.
But let's focus first on some of the positives. The first, glaringly obvious improvement that comes with Brain Challenge is the handwriting recognition. Calling it "incredible" may not even do the title justice; in hours of play, nary a single problem was observed, no matter how messily fours and sevens were scribbled in the rush to beat the clock. If that were the only thing Brain Challenge got right, it would be enough to give it a lasting place among training games.
Director Jared Hess has a 100% rate of movies turned into DS games. His latest film, Nacho Libre, was released in June of 2006; a DS game followed in October. Despite the fact that the movie featured the very video-game-friendly subject of wrestling, the game was not a major success, critically or financially.
Nacho Libre the movie was preceded by Napoleon Dynamite, which was about the very non-video-game-friendly subject of awkward people standing around. Now, three years after the release of the movie, Napoleon Dynamite is joining Nacho Libre on the Nintendo DS. It is something of a victory for developer 7 Studios that the Napoleon Dynamite DS game works as a game at all, despite the handicap of being based on a movie with no action of any kind. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a great game. In fact, Napoleon Dynamite is the very definition of a middle-of-the-road game. It isn't completely awful, and it isn't good. It doesn't inspire disgust and it doesn't impress. It's just kind of there.
Big John Games' 
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Over the Christmas period, yours truly spent a genuinely exhausting evening drinking with three friends, a Wii, and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. The drink flowed freely that night, and we were all fairly inebriated by the time we hit the sack, happy but tired.
Indianapolis 500 Legends
Back in the middle of 2005, a little game by the name of Advance Wars: Dual Strike hit the Nintendo DS. 
Ubisoft's Brain Challenge is an odd little game. Like their other training games that we've encountered, there's definitely a lot to love here, and that's quite an accomplishment when you consider that the brain-training genre is dominated by our beloved 
