The Ritual of the Reviewed Game
Sep. 1st, 2005 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rbandrewsAdvance Wars: Dual Strike:
If you haven't played Advance Wars before, it's a tactical RPG. It's more tactical than RPG, and getting more RPGish with each iteration. Individual units have no stats and are completely interchangeable, but the commanders have special powers and so forth.
You have a map, laid out on a square grid. You have some units on the map, and these can act once a turn. An action consists of moving and then attacking something adjacent, or (in the case of ranged units, like artillery) moving or attacking something in the range. Different terrain types cost more to move through, and offer bonuses to defense. Units are strong against certain other types of units, such as recon units kill infantry well, but tanks kill recon units. Infantry aren't strong against anything, but can be used to capture cities (which give you money each turn) and factories (which can spend your money to produce new units each turn).
The game is the third American Advance Wars game, and I believe the sixth Wars game overall (Famicom Wars, Game Boy Wars, and Super Wars). Between Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2, not much changed. A couple special buildings were added, and one new unit (Neotank, a large tank on legs that isn't a mech). This annoyed some people, including me, who refused to buy the game until it got very cheap. Apparently Nintendo got the message, because they added a huge quantity of things this time.
New units: The Piperunner is sort of like a train. It's a power ranged-combat unit that can only travel on pipes. The Black Boat is a boat that can repair things next to it one point worth, including land units it's next to. The Mega Tank is like the Medium Tank, only more so, and the Carrier is a ship that can carry two air units. The Black Bomb is like a V2 rocket; you move it like a unit but can blow it up, and damage everything in a radius. Finally, the Stealth Fighter can cloak. When cloaked, it can only be seen by units adjacent, and only attacked by other fighters.
New buildings: There are now "Communicaion Towers". When you capture them, all your units get combat bonuses. Capture more, the bonuses get bigger.
New gameplay features: This is where it gets really interesting. The most obvious change is that there are now sometimes two maps at once. The top screen is the secondary front and the bottom is the primary front. You have the option of controlling both or letting the AI control the secondary front. You can send units from the primary to the secondary, where they support the fight there. If you win in the secondary front, you get some bonus to the primary front, like the big flying fortress stops dropping bombs on you, or your secondary front CO comes and helps you out. Also, all the units left get added to the CO power meter (used for regulating when you can use your special ability) in the primary front, so you essentially get a free special ability use. The second thing, and the thing that improves the game the most, is the tag ability. You usually have two COs per battle. One is primary, one secondary, and they can switch at the end of your turn if you want. If both have their power meters completely full, then you can do a "Tag Ability", where the primary guy does a turn with his power, and then the secondary guy does a turn with his power, then the enemy gets to go. Taking two turns in a row is insanely powerful, but doesn't unbalance the game too much: after all, you have to wait a while before you can do it, and be kicking ass anyway to get your power meters full. The purpose of this is to end the game in a reasonable amount of time. If you've got enough units and enough power, you can completely crush them for a turn, and win the game before the computer can cheeseball as it is so wont to do. I've lost battles before because they had time limits and the CPU would hide one submarine in a corner, or make me chase a recon unit around the map or something. This fixes that, and removes the dull, mechanical endgame.
New gameplay modes: There are a couple of these. One is an RTS/action game mode. You get a set of units that you pick and you drive one around a map. The computer gets all his at once, but the AI is stupid, and when yours dies you pick another from your set. It's mindless, but fun for fifteen minutes or so at a time. If you don't have time to finish a map but you want to play something, you can play this. There are also wireless multiplayer modes I haven't played with, and a survival mode where you have to clear a certain number of maps with only x money, or in only d days, or something. The multiplayer isn't new but has a superset of the old maps from the last two games. As before, it works just great with one system, passing it around; it's actually better this way because you can play a double-blind game with line-of-sight turned on.
About the only bad things are that the graphics are the same (some slight 3D-ish tilt, but nothing spectacular), and some of the CO powers are too powerful. The graphics really have no reason to change though; they got the job done as it was before and anything really 3D would just make the map less clear. The CO powers, well, the campaign was thought through pretty well. There's a solution to every map, even if some are sorta puzzle-like. For multiplayer, it's easy to turn CO powers off (and I usually do), and it's possible to have multiple people pick the same CO, so it's not a game breaker.
This is by far the best game I've seen for the DS. If you have a DS and liked the other two games, you want this one. If you have a DS, you probably want it anyway. I think this game is worth buying a DS for, but then I also think the other two GBA games are the best two GBA games ever made. This is the DS's Lumines.
If you haven't played Advance Wars before, it's a tactical RPG. It's more tactical than RPG, and getting more RPGish with each iteration. Individual units have no stats and are completely interchangeable, but the commanders have special powers and so forth.
You have a map, laid out on a square grid. You have some units on the map, and these can act once a turn. An action consists of moving and then attacking something adjacent, or (in the case of ranged units, like artillery) moving or attacking something in the range. Different terrain types cost more to move through, and offer bonuses to defense. Units are strong against certain other types of units, such as recon units kill infantry well, but tanks kill recon units. Infantry aren't strong against anything, but can be used to capture cities (which give you money each turn) and factories (which can spend your money to produce new units each turn).
The game is the third American Advance Wars game, and I believe the sixth Wars game overall (Famicom Wars, Game Boy Wars, and Super Wars). Between Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2, not much changed. A couple special buildings were added, and one new unit (Neotank, a large tank on legs that isn't a mech). This annoyed some people, including me, who refused to buy the game until it got very cheap. Apparently Nintendo got the message, because they added a huge quantity of things this time.
New units: The Piperunner is sort of like a train. It's a power ranged-combat unit that can only travel on pipes. The Black Boat is a boat that can repair things next to it one point worth, including land units it's next to. The Mega Tank is like the Medium Tank, only more so, and the Carrier is a ship that can carry two air units. The Black Bomb is like a V2 rocket; you move it like a unit but can blow it up, and damage everything in a radius. Finally, the Stealth Fighter can cloak. When cloaked, it can only be seen by units adjacent, and only attacked by other fighters.
New buildings: There are now "Communicaion Towers". When you capture them, all your units get combat bonuses. Capture more, the bonuses get bigger.
New gameplay features: This is where it gets really interesting. The most obvious change is that there are now sometimes two maps at once. The top screen is the secondary front and the bottom is the primary front. You have the option of controlling both or letting the AI control the secondary front. You can send units from the primary to the secondary, where they support the fight there. If you win in the secondary front, you get some bonus to the primary front, like the big flying fortress stops dropping bombs on you, or your secondary front CO comes and helps you out. Also, all the units left get added to the CO power meter (used for regulating when you can use your special ability) in the primary front, so you essentially get a free special ability use. The second thing, and the thing that improves the game the most, is the tag ability. You usually have two COs per battle. One is primary, one secondary, and they can switch at the end of your turn if you want. If both have their power meters completely full, then you can do a "Tag Ability", where the primary guy does a turn with his power, and then the secondary guy does a turn with his power, then the enemy gets to go. Taking two turns in a row is insanely powerful, but doesn't unbalance the game too much: after all, you have to wait a while before you can do it, and be kicking ass anyway to get your power meters full. The purpose of this is to end the game in a reasonable amount of time. If you've got enough units and enough power, you can completely crush them for a turn, and win the game before the computer can cheeseball as it is so wont to do. I've lost battles before because they had time limits and the CPU would hide one submarine in a corner, or make me chase a recon unit around the map or something. This fixes that, and removes the dull, mechanical endgame.
New gameplay modes: There are a couple of these. One is an RTS/action game mode. You get a set of units that you pick and you drive one around a map. The computer gets all his at once, but the AI is stupid, and when yours dies you pick another from your set. It's mindless, but fun for fifteen minutes or so at a time. If you don't have time to finish a map but you want to play something, you can play this. There are also wireless multiplayer modes I haven't played with, and a survival mode where you have to clear a certain number of maps with only x money, or in only d days, or something. The multiplayer isn't new but has a superset of the old maps from the last two games. As before, it works just great with one system, passing it around; it's actually better this way because you can play a double-blind game with line-of-sight turned on.
About the only bad things are that the graphics are the same (some slight 3D-ish tilt, but nothing spectacular), and some of the CO powers are too powerful. The graphics really have no reason to change though; they got the job done as it was before and anything really 3D would just make the map less clear. The CO powers, well, the campaign was thought through pretty well. There's a solution to every map, even if some are sorta puzzle-like. For multiplayer, it's easy to turn CO powers off (and I usually do), and it's possible to have multiple people pick the same CO, so it's not a game breaker.
This is by far the best game I've seen for the DS. If you have a DS and liked the other two games, you want this one. If you have a DS, you probably want it anyway. I think this game is worth buying a DS for, but then I also think the other two GBA games are the best two GBA games ever made. This is the DS's Lumines.
