Yasawas

Dual Strike was the first DS game I ever bought and I loved it very much despite being arse at it. I have Dark Conflict sitting on a shelf untouched having been bought super cheap in a buying frenzy last year just after I got my 3DS, is it a good one?

You might know this already but I just found out you can apparently buy this on the Brazilian store if you change your region first. Each region requires its own wallet so you wouldn't be able to use any funds you already have on it but Brazil's handily lets you use card from any region whereas others require you to use one registered in that country.

I genuinely thought the 2DS was a lame joke when I saw it earlier but I see the point of it now, still far too expensive in the UK for what they're aiming for I think unless there's a bundle with Pokemon I'm not seeing. £150 would make it 50% more expensive than the original DS bundle with Nintendogs that won them Christmas that year, back when poeple had jobs and money to boot. It's weird they're still keeping the original 3DS going as well as that's not really much cheaper than the XL and the 2DS not far below that.

I know Treasure's not a huge team but it impressed me to see that one man was responsible for so much of Ikaruga. Good work sir.

I get 8 or 9 every day now, it's sweet. Passed someone from Tasmania today which is as cool as it is unlikely. "Congratulations"

This is true. IV was pretty rough on the PS3 but I still enjoyed it so I'm not too worried for this. I'm sure I also read somewhere that the footage of V that's been shown is from the PS3 version which is some damn fine work if so and hopefully indicative of it being the more gooder version.

Aye, I see that now. Bit of a missed opportunity not to use L and R for something unless they come into it later. Game is pretty good though! Put it on for a quick shot earlier and did about four hours of it, I never play a game for that long these days.

Added everyone from the last two pages and some folks from earlier who seem active in the 3DS thread. Let us Mario Kart, Street Fight or Animal Cross sometime. My code is 1349 4492 7603

Link's Awakening DX. First 2D Zelda game I've ever played (I completed Ocarina way back and played varying amounts of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker since) and holy shit what a game. I wasn't expecting much and think I only bought it back in November when I first got my 3DS for the novelty of it, never started it until last week, but for a game as old as that and on such limited hardware it packs so much in. There are exactly three things wrong with it, in increasing order of severity: 1) The text prompts. Due to the low resolution they can only fit a small amount of text on screen at once so scrolling through spoken or descriptive passages is a pain. It's forgiveable though as they had no way around it, what I don't forgive is the need to give me a notification every time I pick up an acorn or a power thing, or touch an ice block or a green block. Arghhhh. 2) The GameBoy only had two buttons and this game lets you map any of your items or weapons to either one which is cool. Continually having to press Start to remap the items you have on each of them is tedious though, especially with the way the overworld opens up as you gain items meaning to traverse any significant distance requires numerous swaps every time. It's an unavoidable hardware limitation but it's one of the reasons I'm most keen on playing the SNES one next. Six buttons, son. 3) I'm going to have to be careful not to burn myself out on these but I'm very much looking forward to playing A Link to the Past soon, and Majora's Mask, and possibly even the Oracles games. And I bought Hyrule Historia this week, won Phantom Hourglass cheap on eBay and just ordered Skyward Sword. Thinking about a Wii U for Wind Waker HD too. Gah.

Twitch chat is utterly horrific, like YouTube comments only worse and typed live before your eyes by actual people. Rime looks proper nice though, eh? 29th November launch, boo. I'm off the first week of that month for my birthday and I'd dared to dream.

I have it at full all the time. When I first got it I remember playing Ocarina of Time and the Deku Tree boss gave me my first double vision experience, I'm not sure whether I've just become accustomed to it or developers are a bit more subtle with it these days but I have no issues now with that slider being whacked up to 100%.

In between Link's Awakening dungeons I have been getting very much into Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, anyone played this? I did about 60 hours of FF7 back in '99 (never did finish it) and increasingly less of the next few up to 10 which I didn't like at all so I'm hardly an enthusiast and know almost none of the music but this is excellent. I'm approaching it a bit like a more varied which is easily one of the best games on the DS and was also full of music I didn't know at first. For each game in the series it offers a battle theme, an "event" (cut-scene) theme and a field theme, each of which play slightly differently and are all bookended by opening and closing credit pieces you can just watch or skip so you basically get to experience legendary JRPGs in supercondensed ten-minute edits. If this was Nintendo music or something else I actually cared about presented in such a slick way it might be my favourite thing. Animal Crossing in five words. I never got the series at all, tried really hard with the DS version, and after a few hours of this one I was equally mystified by its popularity. I got it free so didn't feel too bad about neglecting it. Went back to it about two weeks ago and rather than try to amass a fortune and do major things and approach it like a regular game basically I've become utterly smitten by it and pop on every day for a bit to buy a piece of furniture and catch some fish and talk to a mouse in a Nirvana T-shirt about fireworks. It's become a Street Fighter IV replacement for me of all things, that became a game I put on daily without any expectation or intention of improving in, just something I can do with my hands of an evening while I listen to a podcast or have the football on in the background. Dip-in/dip-out, laid-back, relaxing gaming with no penalties and always something new and adorable happening, I have a space for this in my gaming routine it turns out. Very refreshing.

I might still play it if I'm not burnt out by the end of Awakening. I managed half an hour on the SFC version and it was just ludicrously pretty, sounded great and seemed very appealing but the idea of having to set up the Wii and pay for it again were off putting. I've decided I want to play Majora's Mask sometime soon too though so I'll need to do it for that anyway so aye, maybe.

I bought it for the Super Famicom recently but I underestimated how big a deal the language barrier would be and didn't want to play through it with a guide. I was thinking about getting it on Wii VC but the new one using the same overworld (think I heard this somewhere) put me off a bit and all of my friends who've played both cite Awakening as the better game overall so here we are.

I think I'm going to bin Mario & Luigi. I've done about six hours and am starting to get a little bored, according to reports it lasts around forty which has sapped any enthusiasm I had for continuing. I'm not cut out for the series it seems, I had a similar run with Superstar Saga (I think, the GBA one anyway) but I got suckered in by the hype on this one and it was a quiet July release wise. Live and learn. I've a big pile of 3DS games sitting waiting for their moment and yet i'm thoroughly consumed by Link's Awakening DX. I completed Ocarina back in 1999 and put a good chunk of time into Twilight Princess but those are the only Zelda games I've played. Trying to catch up a bit before the new 3DS one.

Oh definitely, I meant more that you could use play coins to hire another few and you're not getting a worse deal for it. I always used to go in with five or six a least. StreetPass Quest, Mansion and maybe other games are a little different in that if you keep passing the same people they get more powerful/useful which is a bit unfair for people who struggle to get passes. That Mario and Luigi is pretty good, was not convinced by the art style at first but after a couple of hours it's really grown on me.

10 StreetPass hits again without really trying, this relay business is great. I completed Mii Squad just now and greatly enjoyed it, a lot of content in there for your five pounds or regional equivalent. Even if you live in an area where you don't get many passes I'd still recommend it as unlike a few of the other games there's no added bonus for using a Mii whom you've met a number of times before so the hired mercenary cats are just as viable. A little relieved it's over now as the latter stages were a bit stressful after a day at work but nonetheless highly enjoyable.

I have this on in the background while I play Animal Crossing. The first time I saw this a palette-swapped Hugo from Third Strike utterly ruined Winnie the Pooh and nothing has been as good since. The fights with the MS Paint guys are always enjoyable though and the time that Leonardo from TMNT pulled an amazing timer scam by flying off the top of the screen and remaining out of sight once he had a life lead was pretty sick.

I think I'll cut my losses with this one then. I'll still end up buying Ace Attorney 5 if it comes out at retail.

Same director, eh? Ghost Trick definitely made me think of Phoenix Wright and it’s what put me in the mood to start it but I loved the dialogue and characters in that game, there was literal laughing out loud at points, whereas in this it’s really clunky and full of forced wackiness that just irritates me. Some of it will be the translation but I guess another part of it will be that the first two Phoenix Wright games are really old now by comparison. Does the series get any better once you get past the GBA games? I bought Gyakuten Saiban 3 before I even started the second one because it was cheap and I was so sure I’d be into it, not sure if that’s still a GBA conversion though. Look at me, trying so hard to like a thing even when I’ve already got hundreds of hours worth of other games to play.

I played about the same amount of the first game back in 2006 or so and didn't like it much then either. I thought that maybe as my taste has changed so much since then and I've thoroughly enjoyed some vaguely similar, very wordy games since (999, VLR, Ghost Trick even) that I might get into it this time but it was quite the opposite clearly.It is the Japanese release I have and I got it for free which is why I started with it rather than the first one again. I'm sure I read somewhere the translation used in the first couple is the same that was used in the US and European releases? Could be wrong though. It's littered with spelling mistakes but I've read enough poorly-OCR'd Kindle books by this point that I'm immune to it.

Ah nice one thanks. I'll just pick my favourite letter then, I think it's Y. I'm expecting some kind of sweet StreetPass features with this, wonder if that'll tie into the trading aspect.

Here's the type of question I'm having increasingly more these days that makes me feel like my granny - what's the difference between X and Y? I've never played a Pokemon but I kinda want to and I've noticed they always release two related versions simultaneously. Help me understand.

I like this thread. There are times when I'm playing through something and not really feeling it but trying to justify a purchase and the title, word for word, pops into my head and I feel empowered enough to bin it and not feel bad about it. Gyakuten Saiban 2, aka Phoenix Wright: Something or Other - I don't get the appeal of these at all. I played through two cases the first of which had no evidence-gathering stage and was alright, the second did and was a tedious journey from screen to screen scrolling through unfunny dialogue trying to keep my mind focused on what I was learning and not on what I could be playing instead. The humour and attempted characterisation falls very flat for me which is maybe why others seem so into it but I dunno. The rare moments when you are presenting evidence to break "psyche-locks" or prove something in court are fantastic but are so few and far between, the remainder of the game I found utterly excruciating with nothing to recommend it.

I can try, although I don't write well which is why I usually don't bother. I bought this mainly off the back of universally positive tweets following release and the video on the eShop (2D videos on the eShop, whyyyyyyy) made it look like a very pretty late SNES game which is entirely my bag so I took a chance. You play as a wee, steam-powered robot miner who inherits a claim in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. There are a handful of residents for you to interact with and some semblance of story but the dialogue is mercifully minimal and quite amusing for what it is. The meat of the game is in the diggin'. You start digging this mine while a map on the lower screen marks out your next objective, along the way you will encounter enemies and ores, the latter of which can be sold to a character on the surface to buy health upgrades, bigger bags, better picks etc. The freedom is pretty amazing - there are very few areas it prevents you from digging through and whilst you're always heading down the route you can take is entirely up to you. The marked objective is a cave where it becomes a bit more like a traditional platformer, with added digging, and you will likely earn some kind of new skill or tool to aid overall progress in the accepted Metroid style, however in the main mine area there are also other bonus caves that have sweet loot in them you might discover. Where it clicked for me was after about an hour and a half of this it stopped putting the red objective marker on the map and gave me the following simple instruction to proceed - "explore the depths". I did and spent the best part of an hour just digging, scrapping and mining around this increasingly hostile environment not really sure where I was going, convinced myself a few times I'd gone too deep, then finally found my next objective. The sense of relief and feeling of achievement when I got there was something else, the area is HUGE yet it cleverly funnels you toward the next critical location without feeling like it's doing it. Every time you pick it up you make some progress and you're never at a loss for where to go - down - so it never becomes frustrating working out what you need to do next, it's a great-looking game with some lovely use of parallax scrolling in a fairly subtle 3D and offers 4-5 hours entertainment for the price of a cinema ticket. You can keep exploring once you've finished and apparently it introduces different enemies and upgrades when you do although I haven't tried. Best eShop game since Crimson Shroud/10.