June 22, 2006

Advance Wars DS Picoreview

by peterb

Can't write — too busy playing Advance Wars DS.

Posted by peterb at June 22, 2006 05:39 PM | Bookmark This
Comments

Oh no! We've lost another one!

My copy of Advance Wars DS registers almost 200 hours of play time. Yet so far we've played it far, far less, relatively speaking, than the GBA's Advance Wars 2, which has been out a lot longer. We've probably clocked at least two thousand hours on that....

Posted by John H. at June 22, 2006 08:45 PM

Er, yeah, about that. I just bought the two first GBA Advance Wars games too. And the most recent GBA Fire Emblem games. So I guess you won't be seeing me for a couple of years.

If you like these games, you should install an SNES emulator and hunt down a copy of Earthlight. It was only released in Japan, but the interface is pretty straightforward.

Posted by peterb at June 22, 2006 10:12 PM

Yeah, and it's good for YEARS, too. So much stuff to do. I'm still working on Survival, and Hard Campaign, and War Room...

Posted by Thomas at June 22, 2006 11:07 PM

The thing I was most pleased with the Game over previous versions was the vastly improved AI. It plays a lot more aggressivly and seems to better distiguish your weakpoints.

I beat both normal and hard campaigns, leveled all characters to 10 and now I'm working though the individual pre-set maps. Trying to do it with just one General sans their four bonuses only got me so far, some of those maps are pretty tough (I'm thinking specifically of one of Grit's where you play on a tiny island with trees and moutains forming a nice natural barricade for the guy. I couldn't beat it without using the 'move though trees at 1 cost' bonus.

Some of the maps designed for previous versions also got a lot tougher, since the game they were made for needed the resources and terrain stacked in their favor, but the new AI just crushes you with that same advantage.

Favorite Shogun is Sasha
Favorite bonuses are the Terrain Movement (reminds me of playing Sturm)

Although, I must note that I've been playing New Super Mario since it came out, so my AW:DS has gotten a little dusty.

Posted by Wladyka at June 23, 2006 12:43 AM

I picked up AW:DS and NSMB at the same time and played the first 10 or so levels of AW:DS before cracking open the seal on NSMB. I haven't looked back since. Sadly, I've almost finished NSMB (even though I'm searching for all the secret exits and hidden star coins before advancing to each world), so I'll get sucked back into Advance Wars before too long.

Can I interest you or Peter in a copy of Super Monkey Ball DS? It's just not my cup of tea.

Posted by rlink at June 24, 2006 08:06 PM

I had to give my copy of AW:DS to a friend, as it was the time-sinkiest code I have laid my hands on since ... Hrm. Ever?

Posted by Lorien at June 29, 2006 01:43 AM

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