Sunday, 30 July 2006
Nintendo DS Lite
We got a Nintendo DS Lite about a week after its European launch (technically it was Emilie's anniversary present from me), and are very satisfied customers. So far we've got four games, although Emilie spends all her time (at least 3 hours a day I'd estimate) on Animal Crossing. It doesn't do it for me but she's really into it which is fun. I had thought she'd have gotten more into Mario 64 DS (since in high school that was the only game mom really liked to play), but so far she hasn't gotten into it. I've been replaying it avidly though, since to this day it is in my opinion the best 3D action platformer ever made. (And the game got a few nice improvements in the DS version as well, and isn't hard to control without the analog stick the way I thought it would have been). I'm sure Emilie will get into it eventually because I told her we can't get New Super Mario Bros. until she beats it :-)
Those were the games we got right away, but we soon caved in and added Nintendogs to the mix, because we were both interested (in my case, because I only had a few minutes to play every evening and so I didn't want anything too involved). And indeed, Nintendogs is just perfect for playing in 5-minute doses. And it's nice to have a game that uses the microphone.
We stuck with those 3 for a while and all was well. There are a ton of games we want to get (Sonic , Mario Kart, NSMB, Castlevania DS, Advance Wars, ...) but you have to take time to appreciate each game. Still, I was a little bothered by the fact that all our games were a bit childish. (Well, I think Nintendogs is aimed at adults, but it's not exactly macho either). What would I do if a PSP-owning friend wanted to check out the system? I wanted a "show off" title, as well as something a little more oriented to the traditional gaming crowd. Having done my research, I got what seemed to me to be the graphically most impressive on the system, as well as what promised to have the best control setup of an FPS ever to make it to a console (not to mention on-line multiplayer with voice chat): Metroid Prime Hunters. So this weekend I picked that up and have been having a lot of fun with it. It's no PSP-level graphics, but it is beautiful, the gameplay is great, and the Metroid universe has always appealed to me ever since Spaceman Spiff.
UPDATE 20.08.06 Moved links onto Amazon affiliate pages
