THE BEST OF…SPRING

Having finally sprung in all it’s glory, what better time to coop yourself up in a darkened room in only your underpants than now? Let’s face it, spending time in the sun is only going to kill you anyway, and the more time spent indoors the less likely you are to see half-naked rude boys showing off their freshly Phillishaven chests – what is it in the British psyche that makes wandering around topless the immediate recourse for under-25 Innits when the weather is mere degrees warmer? On the plus side, this does mean the annual season of DivSpot can officially start:

// VIEW: ADVANCE WARS DS

One day, in the future, all wars will be fought like this. Infantry will move one or two squares a day (terrain and weather conditions permitting), Tanks will cost $7000 and be available in four models, ‘Tank’ ‘Medium Tank’, ‘Neo Tank’ and an enormous, bank-busting ‘Mammoth’. Capturing an enemy HQ will be enough to win an entire war in a matter of a few days. Generals will command from an omnipotent outpost high above the battlefield, and command their armies using a small plastic stick.

Okay, I’m being ridiculous. They’d obviously use the D-Pad.

// VIEW: ROUND-UP

I’ve been playing a lot of The World Ends With You lately, and while I’ll have a review of that up for the weekend, in-between sessions I’ve found my mind wandering to simpler pastures, favouring basic mechanics and simple rewards as a means to recharging before attacking the complex intricacies of The World Ends.

// VIEW: NINJA GAIDEN: DRAGON SWORD (NINTENDODS)

Ninja Gaiden, possibly the most mainstream ‘hardcore’ game ever released, is a huge favourite here at DYBS Towers. Leaping, bending and slashing your way through the Fiend hoard has never looked so good or felt so tactile as it did on the Xbox iteration of this venerable series. Can Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (anyone else get tired of tenuous ‘DS’ subtitles ooh, about 2 years ago?) hope to replicate the fast and furious precision of the classic Xbox title (which, incidentally, is well worth downloading from Xbox Live Arcade if you haven’t picked it up yet) using 4 face buttons and a touchscreen?

// VIEW: NINTENDO DS ROUND-UP

There’s plenty of choice out there for the DS gamer, as long as you like mini-games and maths quizzes. Alright, alright, there’s plenty of choice full stop (though surely we’re all sick to death of Improve Your Brain Power games by now?), but inevitably an awful of games slip through the general publics collective gaming catch-net. No promises; this won’t be a column of instant classics – no doubt there will be a few games covered in the coming months that are, frankly, utter shite. But that would be missing the point – they can go in here unashamed not because while they may not be good, they’re certainly interesting. Capiche?

// VIEW: EARTH DEFENCE FORCE 2017 (XBOX 360)

The ‘old-school’ gaming mentality has enjoyed something of a resurgence lately. Titles on XBLA and Wii Virtual Console have bought the old and the great to a new, open-minded audience. Earth Defence Force has been doing the same thing, largely ignored, for some years now. The EDF series (Chikyuu Boueigun in Japan), has been about for a while, following the same basic formula as yesteryears classics, to wit: SHOOT ALIEN x ’SPLODE ALIEN = DEAD ALIEN. To be fair, you’d be perfectly entitled to be totally ignorant of the series, with only the excellent second instalment, Global Defence Force, seeing a PS2 PAL release in 2005. Now publisher D3 have seen fit to unleash the glorious inanities of the EDF on an unsuspecting 360 public you have every opportunity to right that wrong.

// View: Sonic Rush Adventure (NintendoDS)

Let’s start with the obvious here: since the brilliant original quintet (1, 2, 3, CD, & Knuckles), the spiky blue one has had a terrible time of it. A few decent efforts launched to 8-Bit (as the formats died off) never really garnered the attention they deserved, and after that…eurgh.

Awful game after awful game followed these glory years (as a depressing aside: it’s 17 years since the original. There are now adult gamers with no recollection of Sonics’ Mega Drive debut), with the actual business of being Sonic and running really frigging fast becoming a secondary concern next to bloating the character roster with horrible creations and truly horrific voice acting. Less time platforming and more time walking, slowly, between ear-bleedingly poor cut-scenes. Sonic, once a platforming brand in astronomical credit with gamers, found itself bankrupt.

And that was that. All seemed lost, until the excellent Sonic Rush was released in 2005. Received with genuinely warm acclaim from critics and gamers alike, it showed that keeping things simple, bringing the character back to his 2-Dimensional roots was A Very Good Thing Indeed – as it is here in the sequel, Sonic Rush Adventure.

// View: The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (PC)

‘Good luck. You’re on your own. ‘

It’s not lying. After the basic RPG-staples of character-creation, aligment choice and movement/menu control pop-ups, you’re given this one last tip – a tip that will either send shivers of excitement tingling down your back, or, more likely, leave you bemused and bewildered.

Morrowind, Bethesda Softworks follow-up to the hugely-ambitious but deeply-flawed Daggerfall, just lets you get on with the job at hand. What job that may be is entirely up to you. You, much like your avatar, are dumped without explanation into the region of Morrowind (specifically, the island province of Vvardenfell) as a newly freed prisoner. This proves a suprisingly appropriate methaphor for your experience in Morrowind when taken in the context of gaming experiences thus far – unlike games before it, there is no path forced upon you – no big bad boss you’re forced to destroy, no Princess In Another Castle to save; there is only the choice to take on such challenges.

// View: Command and Destroy (NintendoDS)

The Red Alert/Command and Conquer series of strategy games, are, to this writers mind, the finest examples of the ‘old-school’ RTS. Build base, collect resource, build tanks, STOMP ENEMY. Tank rushes be damned; when it comes to strategy gaming only Advance Wars comes close to sucking up the sort of hours the C&C games occupied in my youth – so you’ll have to forgive me when I admit I was bouncing off the walls like a drug-spazzed toddler at the prospect of a DS RTS so clearly ‘inspired by’ Westwood’s legacy.

Between anticipation for this and fond memories of games gone by, I should be on a blissful high.

// View: Lost in Blue 3 (NintendoDS)

I’ve had a massively one-sided love/hate relationship with the Lost In Blue (formerly Survival Kids) series. I love them, they hate me. /Really/ hate me. I picked up the first instalment with huge anticipation – the idea of being stranded, apparently alone, on a desert island, with nothing to aid me but my own wits. Man against the elements. It appealed to the romantic in me – the idea that I /could/make a fist of survival if I had to, that I, as Man, could rise up as lord of my destiny and tame the unknown wilds of this mysterious island.

But it broke my heart. Turns out I would utterly hopeless at survival, primarily because I would be unable to stay awake for more than 5 hours at a time without eating and drinking constantly, but also because this constant need for nourishment of any kind would force me to feast on poisonous fungus. As you would.