TwiddleGeek

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New Super Mario Bros. is an interesting mix of old school and new, hardcore and casual gaming. One the one hand, the game is a complete throwback to the days of 2D platforming Mario. On the other, it’s been given a modern revamp with 3D models rather than sprites, new moves like wall jumps, and a few new power-ups. More interesting, at first glance the game feels so easy that even the most casual player could finish it in a single weekend with little difficulty. But if you play to collect all three Star Coins on every level, it suddenly becomes a lengthy and frustratingly challenging adventure.

If you loved Mario 1 and long for more side scrolling action, you’ll be right at home here. This isn’t a remake, rather it’s a new game in the 2D series that takes the gameplay back to its roots. It’s not even very much like Mario 3 or Super Mario World as there’s no flight, no Yoshi, and no real goal other than reaching the flagpole. If reaching the goal is all you care about, dashing through the 8 worlds is a snap. Too easy, in fact. I was severely disappointed with the game on my first play through due to how simple it seemed to be. But after you complete the game once, you gain the ability to save anywhere. Now it’s time to go collecting, and this is where things get interesting.

Hidden in every level are 3 Star Coins… collecting these can make your life very difficult. Sometimes they’re well hidden, but in many cases they’re tantalizingly just out of reach. Many require some perfectly timed jumps, some tricky use of an enemy head-stomp, or even the use of one of the new power-ups to obtain. To completely finish the game you need to not only find every one of these coins, you also need to unlock every single alternative path via secret exits on several stages. The casual players can easily ignore all this and still have fun, but the hardcore really need to take up the challenge to complete this game in order to get the full potential out of it.

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To picture Revenant Wings, imagine a game that’s a cross between the characters and action-based fighting system of Final Fantasy XII, and a sort of Final Fantasy Real Time Strategy game. That is, Revenant Wings isn’t a typical Tactical RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics, FFTA, Disgaea or so forth, it focuses more on a RTS style battle system of “capture resource, make units. Select group, point, click.” What this means is you’ll be less concerned with each individual unit, and more concerned with the group and resources of the map.

This isn’t Starcraft either though, in that the only “resources” you have to manage are basically the summon points and perhaps a soul crystal. Take your enemies’ summon points, and the tide of the battle slowly turns in your favor. Each group of subunits (healers, ranged fighters, melee fighters, flying creatures) are lead by a main party character, and these characters have some of the strongest battle abilities. Perhaps imagine something vaguely like the hero system of Warcraft III.

Revenant Wings is at times a little light on the strategy and heavy on the point-and-click mobbing with a swarm of units, but in the later levels of the game a fairly careful battle must be played or strong foes will easily overwhelm your units and wipe out the party. The frustration of failure is equaled by the joy of success though, and the game’s lengthy 18+ hour campaign clips along with minimal drag and only a little level grinding. If you like RTS games and the idea of one that continues the story of FFXII and stars familiar characters appeals to you, then check out Revenant Wings.

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Diamond and Pearl bring some new life to a series that was going stale from too many sequels. Making the jump to the Nintendo DS, Diamond and Pearl introduce some new features and refine some old staples, making good use of the new technology throughout.

For example, trading and battling friends is now completely wireless, a feature that many are sure to find worth the purchase alone. Touch screen battle commands speed things up and add a bit of creativity to otherwise dull menu commands. Online battling and trading is also included, though its execution is somewhat limited. Battling friends works well enough, but you won’t be having random trainer battles anytime soon. Trading is implemented a little creatively, with a Global Trading System where trainers can leave trade requests, like a Pokemon bulletin board. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these requests simply aren’t reasonable and clog the system.

The lengthy, at least 35 hour story and gameplay remain largely the same as previous outings, but new enough to be worth another visit for series vets. There’s enough places to see and enough new Pokemon to catch to keep anyone busy. If you’re new to the series then this is easily the best place to jump right in. Absolutely not just a kid’s game, even hardcore RPG fans can find something to love in the simple but addicting catching, training, and battling mechanics. While something a little more revolutionary would have been nice, Diamond and Pearl are still solid evolutions of a favorite series and great examples of portable RPGs.

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Puzzle Quest is what happens when you take a perhaps boring, strategic RPG concept and mix it with a fun, accessible game like Bejeweled. While travel and most of the game is spent on the over-world map and in dialog boxes, the combat is done entirely through a Bejeweled-esque mini-game.

What really helps Puzzles Quest to succeed is that the game is very, very long and in-depth — so far as DS titles go. You could easily spend vast amounts of time capturing cities, building your own citadel, training mounts, buying equipment, capturing enemies and learning their spells, searching for crafting runes, and doing more side quests than you could count. Even just completing the main questline is a lengthy, branching adventure. All these options give you plenty of ways to customize your character into the exact type of fighter / wizard you want him or her to be.

The main problem I had with Puzzle Quest is that the basic gameplay never really changes. While your enemies become much stronger, and your spells and abilities become much more damaging or able to do neat things, the core gameplay is still sliding gems around the board. No new pieces are ever added, no new rules or challenges, you’ll basically be doing the same thing against the last boss that you did against the first training dummy, except at a higher level. For a game of this length, it could have used something to keep things fresh.