Games That Aren't GTA IV

So the entire Internet seems to be afire with one particular acronym that needs no introduction. So allow me to buck the curve here a bit. I actually rented two game recently in the hopes that The Girl would get into them. Fortunately for her (and possibly me), I tried them out a bit first.

First up was Sims 2: Pets for the DS. We found two player Sims 2 almost strangely addictive on the PS2 ... a kind of multiplayer Animal Crossing with a lot more sex, as it were. I figure that if a game removed the coop but replaced it with a puppy that maybe everything would be OK.

What the resulting math actually turns up is a bizarre corner of the Sims world where a person lives in a tiny house, shoves animals in to a big blue container, seems to need either nap or wash a lot, and occasionally tortures the animals with horrific mini-games. There's nothing quite like spraying down some stranger's dog with a hose or trying to force a cat to do a backflip in order to really get your sadism on. In general, the normal Sims micromanagement just gets in the way and the pet mechanics are just troublesome and unrealistic.

Round two was Samurai Warriors: Katana for the Wii. Having read next to nothing about the game, I was kinda hoping for the normal Dynasty Warriors play with Wii graphics and perhaps some change up in the controls. Instead, it's basically a warped rails shooter with a sword ... a rails slasher if you will. Thanks to a weird mashing of gesture schemes the game is mostly just waving the controller around while mashing the A button. The only two player here is that exact same thing, only split screen so that it can happen for two people (separately) at once.

What's weird is that the game highlights one of the odd things about the Warriors franchise. It does a handful of things really well - like allowing you to take one hundreds of enemies, and some things really bad - like character customization, game objectives and voice acting. Katana has more pick and play potential and gold to boost your character - but nowhere to go with it afterwards. Why nobody has taken this concept and made a two player RPG with the traditional trappings still confuses me.

So we might join the HD revolution in the near future - at which point I'll probably buy GTA IV about three nanoseconds later. I'll keep you posted.

Talk About Fan Fiction

Could I try writing 250 words of Orcs & Elves fan fiction for a chance at a Carmack signed DS?

Yes, yes I could.

Wii To Get Downloadable DS Demos

A while back I pondered on whether Opera DS would ever allow downloadable demos for the platform. Nintendo now meets that ability half way by a demo channel for the Wii, which if the reviews of Opera DS are any indication is probably a better solution anyway.

Hopefully this channel won't take long to get released.

Game Play: Puzzle Quest

I'm probably the last DS owner on the planet to try this title, but I'm really glad I did. Essentially Bejeweled shoved into a light RPG - I'm completely addicted to it. And honestly, I was never that big of a Bejeweled fan.

Mechanically speaking, my favorite part is that it is one of those games you can play for any period of time. Play a little combat, flip off the DS. Or quest around for an hour. It's simple, it's addictive and it's fun.

I had some prototypes of interactive fiction which used a card game for combat - I might take some notes here as I was considering moving that concept to Flex (which technologically speaking has taken over my world).

Game Play: Star Trek Tactical Assault

Tactical Assault is a Star Trek game for the DS which doesn't feature much in the way of tactics but is something of an assault. While the overall concept and mission framework is decent and gives someone the feel of having been handed the command of a Federation starship - combat is basically just a hideous button mashing affair while strafing repeatedly against a target. It's jarring, actually, to go through these mission and dialogue pieces which make you act like you are in the captain's chair ... only to be reduced to a boring polygon shooter.

Rent with severe caution - this one is rated meh.

Game Play: Phoenix Wright

I finally got around to playing this last week. I'm rather glad it came shortly after I abandoned Hotel Dusk to whatever strange little fate lay for that delivery guy. It's almost like someone realized all the things that annoyed me about that game and fixed them. The basic format of the two games are actually remarkably similar, but Wright is far less frustrating. The interface is straightforward and the puzzles are mostly based strictly on reading and logic - not trying to figure out what some unknown game designer thought you were supposed to do with a pen.

Even though this is exactly the kind of title I would just rent, I went ahead and bought so that I could take loads of time finishing the game.