Bomberman DS is nothing more but further proof that the series is in desperate need of going somewhere. There's your single-player mode, which plays exactly the same as the original NES Bomberman except there are bosses, and every item you collect isn't automatically used, but stored so you can choose it any time you want with the touch screen. While this sounds handy, there are at least twenty or so different items to choose, including about five bomb variations, but I only used about five items on a semi-regular basis during the game, as the rest just weren't all that necessary. If they could be used automatically I would've taken use of them, but since I had to do it myself, what was the point? They weren't essential to my victory, so why bother? It doesn't help that the effects of all but three items only last to the end of the level, giving players more reason to totally ignore them altogether.

Multi-player isn't too bad, but just like single-player and the items, it offers tons of game modes, but not many of them aren't all that fun, and you can barely customize them. The game default is two screens tall, with pipes leading down to the lower part, but there's a mode called Mini-Mini which just restricts it to one screen, and is much more preferable. However, you can't play the tile capturing mode in that screen size, or play Mini-Mini with the voice detonated bombs.

But yeah, I always need to complain about single-player, and this game takes the series nowhere. The only difference from this and the original NES game are the bosses and item collection, but none of those things are good, both the additions and core gameplay. The problem with the "kill all enemies" gameplay is simply that there's no difficulty curve. Enemies come and go as you progress, but they are never in such great amount or with such dastardly tactics that you feel outright challenged. Most of my deaths were because I misjudged my bomb detonation time or stood too close to an enemy that could change direction. Bosses are no different, and they even start repeating halfway through the game, the only different with them being different graphics and slightly more health. Even the final boss reuses the strategy of an older boss, with only minor additions that ultimately don't add up to much, making it beyond anti-climatic.

So yeah, the item collection was nice, but I'd much rather have had a port of Saturn Bomberman or an instalment of the series that was actually good and took it places.

| return to top |

How friggin' long is that title? Seriously, you could make peace between the Koreans in the time it takes to write it.

| return to top |

[no review]

| return to top |

I bought this for £13, and even at that price, I was still uncertain of getting it. It looked like a decent game, but I thought the same thing about Sonic Rush and Super Mario 64 DS, and look where they went. When it arrived, I played it, immediately wasn't enjoying it, and believed the only good to come of it would be that I could sell it for twice the price on Amazon. But after playing for a while, it grew on me. The talisman system was awkward, the enemies essentially raped you to death, and randomly generated levels still aren't fun at all, but it was quite possibly the best RPG engine I'd ever seen!

Instead of slowing down gameplay just to flash for a bit and bring you a side view of the battle, you just clobber enemies on the map here. Fling shurikens, lay a bomb or use some magic, it's all done with button shortcuts and through the item window, and even though it means other enemies can join in and batter you to death in a corner, it's ultimately a lot more engaging than menu based crap.

Which is a bit of a shame. The game itself is challenging and can be fun, but towards the end when you have to trek through over twenty identical looking floors just to reach the boss gets rather monotonous, especially the last dungeon that goes on for forty floors, and if you lose to the boss or even just turn off the game during the fight, you're booted back to the village stripped of your items. The only difference between dungeons are how many floors they have, what enemies occupy them and how much visibility there is in hallways, so it's not like you'll be getting any epic puzzles or anything like from Zelda. All you do is fight enemies, collect items and maybe land on a paralysing trap at an inconvenient moment.

This makes it hard to rate, as the game plays very well, offering possibly the best battle engine there is that isn't from Paper Mario, but the game itself, the dungeons and everything, aren't enjoyable. Wrap the engine around a traditional RPG and a similar script and maybe I'll be happy.

| return to top |

[no review]

| return to top |

Tons of tracks, including some from the previous instalments, and online play; sounds like a dream come true! It is a great little game, but there are some flaws. Namely, the character selection is severe drop from Double Dash!! and some of the choices are odd (Daisy and Drybones?), the online mode is severely lacking and more like an afterthought (and full of bastards), and some of the courses chosen from the previous games are odd choices. On the bright side, the Mission mode is interesting, you can play Battle mode in single-player, and offline multi-player allows eight players!

| return to top |

Other than some effects and the second screen being used to extend your vision, this could easily have been a GBA game. Regardless, this ditches the overworld in favour of Princess Peach's castle acting as a hub between time portals, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi are added to the team, and a race of aliens are now the main enemy. Despite those differences, it's just like the first, maintaining the comic humour, pretty graphics, and decent battles.

My only nags include some of the commands being somewhat complicated: it's hard to tell whether a projectile is falling towards Mario or Luigi; some of the mini-games are either not fun, pointless, or actually harder than the main game (case in point, the UFO segment before the final bosses); and that Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser look a bit ugly, both in appearance and animation. On the bright side, although the overworld being ditched for Peach's castle significantly lessens the exploration element, it makes getting lost or finding where to go next practically impossible, a problem I had trouble with in the original.

| return to top |

(reviewed Feb 24 2019)

[NEW!] A bog-standard, traditional, side-scrolling, 2D-platforming Mario game. As weird as it sounds, I was hyped beyond belief over this - it felt like this was 65 million years in the making! We hadn't seen a traditional Mario platformer in over ten years, with his last starring role in Super Mario Land 2 in 1992! I was champing at the bit for any and all 2D platformers, and this scratched that itch good.

It's not exactly anything special. It controls a bit like the original Super Mario Bros., only with wonkier traction. There's some bizarre new power-ups, among them a Mega Mushroom for demolishing blocks and tearing apart the level geometry; Mini Mushrooms, for becoming tiny, floaty, and getting into little secret passages; and a Koopa Suit for... turning into a shell. Mario's modern moveset is brought aboard, including the ground pound, the triple-jump and the wall-jump, the latter of which comes in great use for saving yourself from pits.

After Super Mario Bros. 3, World and Yoshi's Island took great steps evolving above each other, this game is very much back-to-basics. There's some fun new gimmickry, but nothing quite as senses-shattering as those games. The difficulty does ramp up near the end, but rarely feels as intense as SMB3's final worlds. It's satisfying to finally play a new 2D Mario game, but it's in a strange place between feeling fresh or a regression. It's perfectly serviceable, but after ten years you kind of hope for a new World to knock your socks off.

The game does make for ideal portable play, though. The levels are perfect for bite-sized sessions, and if you want something more long-form then hunting for the Star Coins can give some extra mileage, often requiring you to beat bosses or scour stages in the vulnerable Mini Mushroom state. The Koopa Suit makes for a fun personal challenge, and even the mini-games carried over from Super Mario 64 DS add good value. Where it lacks the imagination of past Mario titles, it's pretty satisfactory as a game to keep you busy on the go.

| return to top |

A zany love story involving ludicrous stunts to impress your girl, among the lines of parachuting calculating, shooting scorpions, retrieving turtles from a man's throat, and flinging pedestrians at vans. Crazy!

The game consists of doing such zany stunts as the aforementioned to impress your girl, and completing a task gets points, while failing loses some. 100 points and you go to the next stage. Everything in the game is done with the touch screen or microphone, which adds a new level of gameplay (oh god i sound like gamespot), and it's all pretty cool.

It's fun, but the flaws I find are that your hand can block your view in critical parts (Snake, for example), sometimes you just fail for no reason (especially Dance and that unicycle one) and it's hard to find a way to hold the DS so it doesn't get painful after a while, yet you can still use the stylus right. Since a lot of the mini-games revolve around precision, it seems it would've been better as a PC game instead. But since it isn't I guess I can do is say the obligatory GOLLY GEE THAT DS LITE LOOKS SEXXXY.

| return to top |

Sonic Rush is claimed to be the best Sonic game since the Mega Drive era, and some even claim it's the best one ever. It's certainly better than Advance 2 and 3, but I wouldn't go that far. The soundtrack is excellent in it's own unique way, the tricks are back and more important than before, and the boost function solves the problems of obstacles in your way at high speeds, and also speeds you up quickly. Plus, the special stages are really fun!

However, the level design hasn't changed much, the storyline is stupid and pointless, and Blaze has got to be one of the most pointless characters I've ever seen. The game feels a bit more polished in gameplay than the last two Advance games, and the boost system sorts out some of my nags with them, but it still doesn't solve the pits problem.

So yeah. It's better than Advance 2 and 3, but not up to the level of close-to-the-Mega-Drive-games as the first Advance. Good to see that the special stages are finally fun again.

| return to top |

[no review]

| return to top |

(reviewed November 2018)

[NEW!] There's a certain novelty in playing Super Mario 64 on a handheld - seeing those big expansive landscapes and freedom of control in the palm of your hand is mighty nifty. All the game is there, and then some - new playable characters, new power-ups, new levels and a whole bunch of dumb extras to show off the DS touch screen!

It takes some getting used to, though. For one, the new control scheme had me falling off ledges constantly, thanks to a run button that jettisons you forward and D-Pad movement that prefers wide u-turns over simply turning around. Abilities are now spread across the four playable characters whom you have to unlock first in obnoxious new boss stages, which adds a myriad of fussy complications, from swapping characters in the castle dressing room, to entering a level you can't complete because you're missing the right powers. Don't even get me started on the caps now used to transform into other characters!

That's ultimately the problem. For every positive change - the sharper graphics, tweaks to the level design and additional content - there are alterations that just don't pay off, or even things I'm shocked they didn't change. The original game was ideal for short pick-up-and-play sessions, but there's so many little things that make this game just feel sluggish. Converting the game to the DS must have been an incredible feat, surely, so it's understandable the game has hiccups -- it's just a bummer we still couldn't get the 100% ideal Super Mario 64 experience.

A sterling launch title for the handheld, no doubt, and its bevy of silly mini-games are a terrific little side feature. It's an intriguing new way of experiencing the game, but I'll stick with the original.

| return to top |

(reviewed March 03 2019)

[NEW!] Peach finally gets her own title, sporting a cute umbrella and a literal whirlwind of emotions to clobber foes and solve basic puzzle elements. Although a relatively straight-forward platformer, there's always a fair amount of optional exploration that hides caged Toads and unlockable goodies; finding all the items is arguably the core of the game's challenge, as there's no shortage of mini-games, music tracks, jigsaw pieces and other gubbins to collect.

It's much more of a kiddies game than even regular Mario titles; its music is excessively bouncy, its graphics are bubbly and twee, and its difficulty is close to non-existent. There's no instant-death traps, you can extend Peach's health metre to outrageous lengths, and she's coming down in overpowered abilities even before you factor in the mood abilities, which allow her to refill health at will or fly anywhere on the map. Nintendo may as well have packaged the game with all the save files completed.
Not to say it can't be bothersome - a couple of bosses are obnoxious, though the game will straight-up tell you how to beat them before you even encounter them. Underwater segments and pre-boss mini-games sport some gammy touchscreen and microphone controls, though the only major stumbling block is when the game suddenly tells you you need to find all the Toads to access the final boss - something which seemed purely optional until now. Cheers for the heads-up, lads.

The game has none of the intense platforming challenges of Super Mario Bros., or even the crafty puzzle-solving of the Wario Land titles... it's so lacking in difficulty and challenge you might as well wonder why you're even playing. Despite that, I confess I can't bring myself to dislike the game. It's ideal handheld fluff, something to pop on for short sessions even if just to find Toads or play mini-games, and something guaranteed to never spike your heart rate.
That, and it helps that the game has perhaps the nicest 2D graphics since Yoshi's Island, with Peach and baddies alike brimming with personality and animation - holy crap, Peach's dress isn't just a static broom, but actually flutters like a dress should! Paired with the surprise reappearance of obscure enemies who haven't been seen since the SNES games, the game is a pleasure to watch... even if it may not be exciting.

| return to top |

With the exception of Wario Blast and Wario World not really being as good as it could've been, I've loved every Wario game there's been, and so has the realm of video game reviews, apparently, up until this game where everyone was flinging average comments and mediocre remarks all over the place. And then I discovered it was a third-party title.

The game's play control is pretty interesting, as all movement is done with the D-Pad and the stylus is used for performing actions like attacking, changing form (which are gained from treasure chests and infinite, unlike the Wario Land games) and so on, though that latter action causes a spot of bother. Since the icons you're supposed to draw to activate them are in reality more simplistic than they are, it means the game gets confused with what you've chosen, meaning I've often become Genius Wario when I meant to be Arty Wario, even though Arty's square with a line is pretty different to Genius' magnifying glass. Dragon Wario involves drawing a triangle on his back as a tail, while Wicked Wario involves a differently proportioned triangle made as his wings. Considering Dragon Wario falls through narrow floors, and Wicked Wario is primarily used to fly up narrow floors, it's a severe bitch and could easily have been accomplish with just a quick button shortcut or something intelligent. On the bright side, making yourself a heart as Arty Wario simply requires a triangle that doesn't meet up with it's starting point, which saves a lot of hassle.

The game itself has a less consistent goal in comparison to the older games; sometimes you merely have to find the exit, more often you'll just need to find a key or several, told through story scenes with rival treasure hunters, and although slightly engaging, the inconsistent goal and the fact there are treasure chests containing unimportant items along the way means that things take longer than they should. Most stages take half an hour to finish the first time, and the last one took me an hour and a half just to reach the boss, not counting the frequent times I played and got nowhere so didn't bother saving my progress.

Speaking of treasure chests, they suck. One must accomplish a mini-game to open them, which makes them vaguely interesting, but one of those mini-games is downright impossible to accomplish, and it involves tracing an image while lasers try to zap your stylus. Get zapped too many times, you fail! Draw the image perfectly, you fail! It's much quicker to just get zapped and open it again with a different mini-game, as the fact it remained despite it's hazards and tight time limit and overall sloppy stylus work is a bitch and a half.

The main game, although slower paced and clunky, is enjoyable the first time through, but once it's complete there's no drive to play it again. You can revisit old levels with new abilities to get new treasures, but the fact that the levels are just so long, huge and monotonous is a good reason not to go through them again. Treasures are ultimately useless aside from their humourous descriptions, and the levels unlocked at the end of the game are merely the same ones but with a strict time limit and the goal is to find the treasures in the correct order, each one adding a minute to your time. The game actively makes itself difficult to enjoy after it's done and dusted, and that's terrible.

It's a hard game to recommend. I enjoyed the game from start to finish, although varyingly from level to level, but going back to it just isn't fun. For a game with replay value that lacks real value to it's replay, it's hard to justify buying it at all, or at least for full price.

| return to top |

Yoshi's Island, to summarise my thoughts on it (and thus further delay any possibility of me actually reviewing the game properly!), is a very awesome game and it is near and dear to my heart. It's may not be the most inventive game in the world or even the most challenging, but there's a certain something that makes it an overall brilliantly refined product. There's a lot to the game and even the minor features gets their fair amount of mileage; it feels like they did all they could to make it well-rounded and enjoyable, and I love it for that very reason.

So say hello to Yoshi's Island DS! Released a decade later and produced by an entirely different team, it appears to try hard to leave a good impression and look like it's adding something significant to the formula, but instead it feels hollow, cumbersome, and amateur-ish.

Most notably are the various babies - Baby Mario was just a load in the first game, an object you'd have to take safely to the exit and that was that. DS has five babies in total, each of which has various abilities - Peach can float on wind currents, DK can use ropes and vines, Wario has a magnet, Bowser can spit flame, and Mario can make you run faster and eggs will bounce off walls. Although only Peach is the only one of real significance (the others are used significantly in like one or two levels each, but wind currents are seen quite frequently throughout the game), I personally don't see the point for any of them. Peach and Wario are reasonably inventive, but Donkey Kong's unique abilities are never given the chance to proper shine, and instead he's little more than a key that lets you reach a higher platform; Bowser is particularly pointless, as he exists only as a replacement for the fire breath Yoshi can already acquire, and that is one of my main beefs about the game - it never utilises anything to its full extent. Well, that, and it ditched a lot of cool stuff.

Remember the transformations from the original game? The helicopter, the car - all that cool stuff? Three transformations are retained, but they are never seen more than twice throughout the entire game; the burrowing mole tank is the only one that gets a second appearance, which is the very vehicle nobody likes. Remember the melons, among which were the ice and fire melons and it acted as your rapid-fire projectile when you weren't in the mood to throw eggs? They're gone. Don't suppose you recall the item cards, and the fun mini-games associated with them and how satisfying it would be to get a flower on the end-of-stage roulette? The item cards are ditched entirely and anything related to them is replaced with extra lives.

My primary concern with the game during the whole of my play-through was simply... it wasn't challenging me. It wasn't throwing anything in my way that made me go "hmm, how will I get past this?" Nor did it do anything to actually keep me engaged, either. Yoshi's Island could be trusted to present an interesting boss at the end of each world that would have a unique means of defeat using the various capabilities of your eggs, while also demonstrating some mighty fine sprite special effects. The DS game would almost consistently deliver a lacklustre fight that required no unique thinking, no real strategy, very little situational input. I will give it credit that the free-falling boss of World 4 is interesting, but even the final boss offered no real challenge besides the fact that you need to hit more than three times. The first half of World 5 is actually moderately interesting - nothing incredible, but given how dry and lifeless the rest of the game felt, even the slightest bit of interesting level design and challenge gave the game a spark. And that is my concern: The game spends the entire four worlds being dull, lifeless and remarkably easy. When it finally gains a bit of spunk, it just makes me weep that so much time is wasted before the going gets good.

Also, seriously, the game loves to slow you down. I have never been fond of auto-scrolling levels, but this game seems to love them, especially when there's absolutely no need for them. I'd struggle to say I enjoyed those types of stages in the SNES version, but at least they usually had some threat to justify the scrolling such as falling rocks, lava or speeding up the rate of scrolling. The DS game seems to do it for the sole purpose of breaking your spirit, and has checkpoints few and far between - I cannot emphasise how dreadful they are in mere written words. Also, stilts. Who the hell thought those were a good idea? If you're going to give me a time-based trek before a lava flow starts, I'd rather do it in a cool manner like hopping over platforms above spikes.

Lastly... the SNES game was beautiful. My brother did not like the cutesy crayon-style appearances, but I, personally, love it. It adds a fittingly whimsical style to the game and really makes the world come alive - everything has roundedness and edge to it, like it's a natural environment rather than the grid-based appearances of the previous games. The music isn't incredible, but it's suitable and adds to the moment, fitting in with the theme while maintaining a degree of pizzazz most of the time. The DS game doesn't really seem to have a style. It almost looks like it wants to maintain the thick-edged crayon style, but when you've got crudely-outlined enemies, creatures with no outline, smoothly drawn playable characters and stuff plucked straight from the original game without even the slightest touching up, it's nothing but clashing. The music was particularly bothering to me - I continue to throw vague and ill-defined terms around while describing the original game, but for the most part the basic tunes had some bounce and life to them, even the likes of the caves. The DS music I can only describe as "sleepy" - it's quiet, twinkly, and even in foreboding castles it's hideously out of place. There is one distinct tune I can only describe as having a bouncy wild west vibe that vaguely captures the tone of the original game's music, but otherwise it is as flat and dull as the rest of the game, and even during story scenes, no matter what's happening, the same minimalist tune plays. It's rather pathetic.

It's kind of hard to rate. I found it to be a cumbersome and amateur-ish product, unlike Super Princess Peach which is a refined and reasonably polished game, but Yoshi's Island DS, as unimpressed with it as I was, it'll likely intrigue someone more than I did. It didn't offer me anything that I couldn't have lived without.

| return to top |