// 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.

TOUCH GOLF (NINTENDODS)

Good walk spoiled, yada yada yada. Truth is, I find Golf to occupy a similar sporting niche to Formula One, or cricket: fundamentally boring, but impossible to ignore. Whether it be through the generally oxymoronic Sports Personality votes, being hugely drunk on national news or young prodigies defying expectations, you end up in the strange position of carrying quite a wealth of trivia and statistics about people and teams you have no interest in whatsoever. Equally strange, I find, is that often the games of such sports can be infinitely more entertaining than the activity itself. (is that sad? I don’t know.) Geoff Crammonds’ F1 series, Brian Lara Cricket (Mega Drive, of course) are the standout titles of this bizarre Should-Be-Dull-But-Aren’t collection. The simply brilliant Touch Golf now joins them.

It’s been knocking about for some time now, first seeing release a few months after the DS itself, way back in 2005m, so I realise I’m quite late to the party, but in case you haven’t yet joined, consider this a formal invitation. Brilliant, simple touch screen controls determine your swing power/direction, and while this kid of interface has become the norm for DS golf games, it’s never been better than it is here (Tiger Woods 08, I’m looking at you). It looks surprisingly good for a generation 1 DS title, the 3D engine smoothly rendering perfectly decent and varied courses. Even the character models look good; your player character avoids the DS ‘block-itus’ that seems to afflict 90% of human models on the system.

It’s probably a perfect game actually. It wears it’s Touch Generations tag with pride; the menus are simple and an excellent help system is available at all times to help Granddad out. Multiplayer is excellent, with download play an essential venture for anyone with friends. (Obviously, this means I’ve had scant chance for extended play) It’s seems strange and disturbing to say it, but man, Touch Golf is probably the best sports title on DS.

BOMBERMAN LAND TOUCH 2 (NintendoDS)

Bomberman occupies similar territory to Sega Superstars Tennis, reviewed in brief a while back. The basics of the game seem so refined, so perfectly poised that all a new version need do for success is give you more. We’re fussy about Bomberman here at DYBS. As far as we’re concerned, it’s the perfect multiplayer game. It’s up there with Quake 2, Mario Kart and Halo 3 as one of the best multiplayer games on any console. Ever. While the greatest version, in our opinion, is the superb 10-player Saturn version released way back in 1997, the DS versions have come close to recapturing Bombermans’ past glories.

The single-player game, such as it is, has you guiding Bomberman between mini-games, collecting items to progress (tokens, shovels, etc.) and repeating in a different zone. The games vary from the pretty-fun-actually (the ‘air hockey’-style bomb throwing) to the pretty naff (blowing into the mic to float Bomberman skyward). Honestly, it’s throwaway stuff, but even the poorest games in the selection are over quickly enough to not become a chore. The real meat of the game is in the 8-player wireless battle mode. The game comes alive, and charging through the classic green and grey arena lobbing bombs at your foes still holds the same appeal it did all those years ago. Wisely, rather than tinkering with the formula (Act Zero, get back in your corner), Hudson have wisely opted to once again allow complete customisation of your multiplayer experience, from round length to item varieties. AI is passable, posing a reasonable threat on Hard difficulty and certainly being no pushover even on ‘Normal’. While demonstrating a frustrating lack of ‘killer instinct’ at times – more often than not they’ll prefer to run the clock down in a bore-draw than go all out in a 1v1 endgame – they’re decent opponents though, and worthy practice for the real thing.

This may all sound rather familiar to you, dear reader. It certainly did to me, since almost that entire paragraph could be written about the first Bomberman Touch title. That is to say, they are exactly the same game. The differences are strictly cosmetic, with only the zone themes and mini-games differentiating this version from its older sibling. It’s not a criticism per se, but it could still be considered poor form from Hudson. If you’ve not picked up the original Touch title, or Bomberman DS (the first one, from way back), Touch 2 comes highly recommended for the multiplayer element alone. Otherwise, unless you really need another minigame collection on a Nintendo console, £25 seems a lot to ask.