Nintendo DS Games Roms [Archive] - DotSIS : Nokia, Symbian, Java Mobile Phone Discussions

zert

05-28-2008, 05:47 PM

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/3783/92560183016frontsb3.jpg

Much to the delight of Pokémaniacs the world over, Nintendo and Game Freak have finally brought a proper Pokémon game to the Nintendo DS with Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, and it delivers much of what a fan would desire—a richer, more detailed presentation, the ability to battle and trade Pokémon over the Internet, and of course, more than 100 brand-new Pokémon to collect. Like any of the core Pokémon games released since the original Red and Blue hit in 1999, Diamond and Pearl offer some nice upgrades, but if you didn't like Pokémon then, you probably won't care for it now. That said, it's a little surprising how well the formula holds up in Diamond and Pearl, which is a testament to the strong fundamentals of the series as well as the quality of the execution.

Sticking to the script, Diamond and Pearl start out the same as any other Pokémon game, and though the specifics are different, the story plays out in a familiar fashion. Playing as either a young boy or girl living in the out-of-the-way hamlet of Twinleaf Town in the Sinnoh region, you and your highly competitive best friend are sent into the world by Professor Rowan to collect as much data on the Pokémon that inhabit the region as is possible, which you do by capturing and fighting. During your travels, you will battle plenty of wild Pokémon and other Pokémon trainers like yourself, as well as face off with the leaders of eight different Pokémon gyms spread across Sinnoh. And, in the tradition of the nefarious Team Rocket, Diamond and Pearl introduce the shadowy and oddly self-righteous Team Galactic, a new Pokémon-obsessed organization for you to square off with. The plot doesn't tread much new ground for the series, and it generally keeps things real light and breezy. They won't dazzle you with the complexity or originality of their storytelling, but Diamond and Pearl are still packed with lots of sharp writing. There are hundreds of people for you to meet, and though they don't always offer lengthy conversations, they all have something to say.

The story is ultimately in the service of the gameplay, which fans and newcomers should be able to leap right into without much fuss. You start off with a single Pokémon companion by your side, which serves as your proxy in battle—you might be calling the shots in a fight, but it's your Pokémon that do all the heavy lifting. As you wander through forests, fields of tall grass, underground caves, and a myriad of other locations, you'll regularly be attacked by wild Pokémon, which, if you're able to wear down their health without defeating them entirely, can be captured in a Pokéball, effectively taming them and turning them into companions. You can have up to six Pokémon with you at once, and each of your Pokémon can learn up to four different abilities. These abilities can come naturally as they earn experience in battle, or you can teach them new tricks using technical machines and hidden machines, which can be earned in a number of different ways. As they grow stronger, many Pokémon can also evolve, effectively turning them into an entirely new and more powerful Pokémon.

The combat is turn based, and it's mostly about the rock-paper-scissors nature of the different types of Pokémon. The only difference between Diamond and Pearl is the Pokémon contained within each game. With the addition of 107 brand-new Pokémon, Diamond and Pearl raise the grand total of Pokémon to capture to well over 480. Every single one of them can be categorized by type. Some of these types are defined by elements, such as water-type Pokémon and fire-type Pokémon, while others are determined by more specific, functional differences, such as fight-type Pokémon and poison-type Pokémon. Each type of Pokémon is inherently weak to the attacks of another, so the key to combat is having a well-balanced team of Pokémon with you that will be able to handle whatever types of Pokémon get thrown at you. It's a simple enough concept to grasp, but there are enough different types of Pokémon out there that you'll find yourself constantly tweaking your roster of active Pokémon and laboring over which abilities you should be giving to which of your Pokémon. The fact that you're constantly running in to, and thus capturing, new Pokémon makes the process that much more involved. And that's just the basics. Aside from wandering around the Sinnoh region and getting into countless Pokémon battles, you'll fish, harvest and plant berries, cook up special treats for your Pokémon, enter your Pokémon in a pageant, set up a secret hideout, and more. These games are long, with the main stories clocking in at well over 40 hours, and those intent on hunting down the rarer Pokémon will spend far more than that.

The bulk of the activities in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl aren't new to the series, so what separates these two from the Pokémon games that appeared on the Game Boy Advance? For starters, the presentation has been improved to take advantage of the superior DS hardware. Though the game is mostly still presented in 2D, there's improved detail to the 2D and you'll notice lots of nice polygonal touches. For example, buildings and windmills are rendered in 3D, and it's enough to give the 2D world a little depth. The game also has a bright, highly saturated color palette that makes it a pleasure to look at. When in battle, the Pokémon are still static 2D sprites—much of which appears to have been recycled from the Pokémon games on the GBA—but in general, the 2D art still looks sharp. The dynamic battle transitions look great, as do the numerous attack effects. Diamond and Pearl also feature some catchy music, and there's a whole lot of it, with a special theme for virtually every location or activity. As clean and upbeat as the music is, though, some of the sound effects from the Pokémon themselves sound screechy and lo-fi. It's out of place, considering how great the rest of the game looks and sounds.

There's also a little touch-screen support in Diamond and Pearl, letting you use the stylus to select menus during battle and play a few simple, rather forgettable minigames that crop up. During most of your travels, the lower screen on the DS is occupied by your Pokémon watch (Pokétch for short). In addition to telling the time, you can install a number of applications, some more useful than others, on your Pokétch. There's a calculator, a pedometer, a status screen for your Pokémon, a metal detector of sorts, and more.

What's probably the most significant new feature in Diamond and Pearl is online play, which lets you battle, trade, and chat with other players over the Internet. The trading system is surprisingly robust, letting you put any of your Pokémon up for trade on a global market, while specifying which Pokémon you'll trade it for. Once you define the terms of the trade, the Pokémon is transferred to a server, and you can set it and forget it. Your DS doesn't even need to be turned on for someone to agree to your terms and complete the transaction. The online battle options aren't as immediately accessible. Early on, you'll need the game-specific friend code for anyone that you want to battle online, and it will take dozens of hours of single-player action before you'll be able to battle with random strangers. The game also supports voice chat using the newly released DS headset, but you can only use it with other players whose friend codes you've already registered. Of course, you can also still battle and trade with other people through a local Wi-Fi connection. Diamond and Pearl also promise connectivity to the upcoming Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Nintendo Wii, purportedly letting you use your DS as a controller and take the Pokémon you've collected on the DS into battle on your TV.

Between the 100-plus new Pokémon, the improved presentation, and the online play, this is a must-have game for established fans. The new features also make this the most well-rounded Pokémon game to date, and if you've never dabbled in the world of Pokémon before, there's no better game to start with.

http://qshare.com/get/99730/1015_Pokemon_Diamond_USA_NDS-LGC.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a89959/

zert

05-28-2008, 06:03 PM

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/922/92560283015frontvj0.jpg

Much to the delight of Pokémaniacs the world over, Nintendo and Game Freak have finally brought a proper Pokémon game to the Nintendo DS with Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, and it delivers much of what a fan would desire—a richer, more detailed presentation, the ability to battle and trade Pokémon over the Internet, and of course, more than 100 brand-new Pokémon to collect. Like any of the core Pokémon games released since the original Red and Blue hit in 1999, Diamond and Pearl offer some nice upgrades, but if you didn't like Pokémon then, you probably won't care for it now. That said, it's a little surprising how well the formula holds up in Diamond and Pearl, which is a testament to the strong fundamentals of the series as well as the quality of the execution.

Sticking to the script, Diamond and Pearl start out the same as any other Pokémon game, and though the specifics are different, the story plays out in a familiar fashion. Playing as either a young boy or girl living in the out-of-the-way hamlet of Twinleaf Town in the Sinnoh region, you and your highly competitive best friend are sent into the world by Professor Rowan to collect as much data on the Pokémon that inhabit the region as is possible, which you do by capturing and fighting. During your travels, you will battle plenty of wild Pokémon and other Pokémon trainers like yourself, as well as face off with the leaders of eight different Pokémon gyms spread across Sinnoh. And, in the tradition of the nefarious Team Rocket, Diamond and Pearl introduce the shadowy and oddly self-righteous Team Galactic, a new Pokémon-obsessed organization for you to square off with. The plot doesn't tread much new ground for the series, and it generally keeps things real light and breezy. They won't dazzle you with the complexity or originality of their storytelling, but Diamond and Pearl are still packed with lots of sharp writing. There are hundreds of people for you to meet, and though they don't always offer lengthy conversations, they all have something to say.

The story is ultimately in the service of the gameplay, which fans and newcomers should be able to leap right into without much fuss. You start off with a single Pokémon companion by your side, which serves as your proxy in battle—you might be calling the shots in a fight, but it's your Pokémon that do all the heavy lifting. As you wander through forests, fields of tall grass, underground caves, and a myriad of other locations, you'll regularly be attacked by wild Pokémon, which, if you're able to wear down their health without defeating them entirely, can be captured in a Pokéball, effectively taming them and turning them into companions. You can have up to six Pokémon with you at once, and each of your Pokémon can learn up to four different abilities. These abilities can come naturally as they earn experience in battle, or you can teach them new tricks using technical machines and hidden machines, which can be earned in a number of different ways. As they grow stronger, many Pokémon can also evolve, effectively turning them into an entirely new and more powerful Pokémon.

The combat is turn based, and it's mostly about the rock-paper-scissors nature of the different types of Pokémon. The only difference between Diamond and Pearl is the Pokémon contained within each game. With the addition of 107 brand-new Pokémon, Diamond and Pearl raise the grand total of Pokémon to capture to well over 480. Every single one of them can be categorized by type. Some of these types are defined by elements, such as water-type Pokémon and fire-type Pokémon, while others are determined by more specific, functional differences, such as fight-type Pokémon and poison-type Pokémon. Each type of Pokémon is inherently weak to the attacks of another, so the key to combat is having a well-balanced team of Pokémon with you that will be able to handle whatever types of Pokémon get thrown at you. It's a simple enough concept to grasp, but there are enough different types of Pokémon out there that you'll find yourself constantly tweaking your roster of active Pokémon and laboring over which abilities you should be giving to which of your Pokémon. The fact that you're constantly running in to, and thus capturing, new Pokémon makes the process that much more involved. And that's just the basics. Aside from wandering around the Sinnoh region and getting into countless Pokémon battles, you'll fish, harvest and plant berries, cook up special treats for your Pokémon, enter your Pokémon in a pageant, set up a secret hideout, and more. These games are long, with the main stories clocking in at well over 40 hours, and those intent on hunting down the rarer Pokémon will spend far more than that.

The bulk of the activities in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl aren't new to the series, so what separates these two from the Pokémon games that appeared on the Game Boy Advance? For starters, the presentation has been improved to take advantage of the superior DS hardware. Though the game is mostly still presented in 2D, there's improved detail to the 2D and you'll notice lots of nice polygonal touches. For example, buildings and windmills are rendered in 3D, and it's enough to give the 2D world a little depth. The game also has a bright, highly saturated color palette that makes it a pleasure to look at. When in battle, the Pokémon are still static 2D sprites—much of which appears to have been recycled from the Pokémon games on the GBA—but in general, the 2D art still looks sharp. The dynamic battle transitions look great, as do the numerous attack effects. Diamond and Pearl also feature some catchy music, and there's a whole lot of it, with a special theme for virtually every location or activity. As clean and upbeat as the music is, though, some of the sound effects from the Pokémon themselves sound screechy and lo-fi. It's out of place, considering how great the rest of the game looks and sounds.

There's also a little touch-screen support in Diamond and Pearl, letting you use the stylus to select menus during battle and play a few simple, rather forgettable minigames that crop up. During most of your travels, the lower screen on the DS is occupied by your Pokémon watch (Pokétch for short). In addition to telling the time, you can install a number of applications, some more useful than others, on your Pokétch. There's a calculator, a pedometer, a status screen for your Pokémon, a metal detector of sorts, and more.

What's probably the most significant new feature in Diamond and Pearl is online play, which lets you battle, trade, and chat with other players over the Internet. The trading system is surprisingly robust, letting you put any of your Pokémon up for trade on a global market, while specifying which Pokémon you'll trade it for. Once you define the terms of the trade, the Pokémon is transferred to a server, and you can set it and forget it. Your DS doesn't even need to be turned on for someone to agree to your terms and complete the transaction. The online battle options aren't as immediately accessible. Early on, you'll need the game-specific friend code for anyone that you want to battle online, and it will take dozens of hours of single-player action before you'll be able to battle with random strangers. The game also supports voice chat using the newly released DS headset, but you can only use it with other players whose friend codes you've already registered. Of course, you can also still battle and trade with other people through a local Wi-Fi connection. Diamond and Pearl also promise connectivity to the upcoming Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Nintendo Wii, purportedly letting you use your DS as a controller and take the Pokémon you've collected on the DS into battle on your TV.

Between the 100-plus new Pokémon, the improved presentation, and the online play, this is a must-have game for established fans. The new features also make this the most well-rounded Pokémon game to date, and if you've never dabbled in the world of Pokémon before, there's no better game to start with.

http://qshare.com/get/99678/1016_Pokemon_Pearl_USA_NDS-LGC.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a27007/

zert

05-28-2008, 06:33 PM

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/4629/93979788730frontjb4.jpg

Though the following for the Naruto cartoon and comic series has been steadily growing in English-speaking countries for a few years now, video games based on the popular franchise have been slow to arrive on portable game systems. A good case in point is Naruto: Path of the Ninja. This role-playing adventure based on the first half of the Naruto saga was released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan way back in 2004. Now, some three years later, D3 Publisher has finally brought the game to our shores, only we're getting it on a Nintendo DS cartridge with a few trivial touch-screen features added in.

If you've watched any of the animated episodes or have been reading the comics, you're already familiar with much of what happens in Path of the Ninja. When the game opens, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura have just finished their training at the Ninja Academy. As full-fledged, albeit lower-level, ninjas they now have to go out and perform missions to earn their keep. In the comics and cartoons, these missions send Naruto and his friends through the five lands of the world and ultimately put them up against some deliciously evil ninja villains. The game is organized in similar fashion, except that you have to do a great deal of role-playing-game-style item collecting and experience leveling in the meantime.

As role-playing games go, Naruto: Path of the Ninja doesn't stray too far from the Final Fantasy blueprint. In villages, you talk to people, buy and sell items, and receive missions. When you're walking through the forests, swamps, and deserts between towns, you frequently participate in turn-based battles against random enemies and scripted villains. These battles reward you with experience, gold, and items that you can use to outfit your characters and augment their abilities, along with the occasional chunk of dialogue that helps to move the story along. All of the usual RPG "stuff" is here. During battle, your party members trade turns with the CPU's party members. You pick a command (attack, defend, use item, use jutsu magic, or flee), and the command plays out. Then, your opponent picks a command, and so on, until one side is eliminated. Magic uses mana, or chakra energy, as it does in every role-playing game, and all of the jutsu magic attacks function pretty much like the fire, wind, lightning, and other stereotypical attacks you've seen in other RPGs over the years.

In battle, you can change the formation of your party members to enhance their defense or strength as a group. You can also perform team jutsu attacks, provided you've taken the time to bribe Naruto's friends with candy, sushi, and ramen during your travels. Those little wrinkles are nice, but they don't bring much strategy to the battlefield. If you've spent a ton of time in the wild leveling up your characters, your attacks will be strong, and you'll win. If you haven't, you'll lose, and you'll need to fight some lesser baddies to build your stats first. Either way, you'll participate in thousands of repetitive turn-based battles during the 20 hours or so that the game lasts. As for the story itself, the missions tell you where to go and guide you through each section of the world in order. There isn't much reason to stray from the "path," though you can add some spice to the overall quest by checking previously visited areas for special scrolls, which unlock secret characters and rare jutsu magic.

Suffice it to say, people who have played dozens of role-playing games over the years will be probably be bored by Naruto: Path of the Ninja, because it is repetitive and brings absolutely nothing new to the table. However, that doesn't mean Naruto fans won't have a good time. All of the characters, story scenes, attacks, and magic abilities depicted in the game have been ripped right out of the Naruto comics and cartoons. The towns recreate numerous locations and scenery features that fans will recognize, and you'll constantly find yourself running into secondary characters that make in-jokes referencing events that happened all the way up to the beginning of the Shippuden story arc.

Generally speaking, the characters look and sound like they're supposed to. The audio is understated, but the music has a pleasant Asian flavor about it, and there are plenty of recorded voice comments sprinkled in for good measure. The hand-drawn cutaways used for jutsu attacks and dialogue scenes are also very stylish. Unfortunately, on a technical level, the graphics fall short of what we've come to expect on the Nintendo DS. The characters are tiny, their animations are simplistic, and there's hardly anything moving in the top-view backgrounds. To make a long story short: The developers ported the game from the Game Boy Advance to the Nintendo DS and didn't bother to improve the animations or add life to the backgrounds.

About the only obvious upgrade the game received in its transition from the GBA to the DS was the implementation of touch-screen support. You can use the stylus to guide Naruto's movements in the world and to select menu options. There's also a scribbling minigame that appears when you cast certain jutsu magic abilities. You must scribble fast or draw specific shapes to increase the damage output of the attack you've chosen. The characters on the show have to make hand signs to use their magic, so it's kind of neat that you have to do something similar in the DS game to be more effective.

Naruto: Path of the Ninja isn't something that diehard RPG nuts will enjoy. It's formulaic, it's repetitive, and it's technically a GBA game running on the DS. However, it still manages to deliver enough of the franchise's atmosphere that fans who have been waiting forever to finally be able to play through the story on the go will probably feel like they got their money's worth out of it.

http://qshare.com/get/97358/1550_Naruto_Path_of_the_Ninja_USA_NDS-XPA.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5b52ba/

zert

05-28-2008, 06:36 PM

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/7057/92466383009frontbw0.jpg

Naruto: Ninja Council 3 for the Nintendo DS is a fighting game where as many as four people can duke it out as Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, or any of 25 other characters from the Naruto universe. The game offers plenty of visual and vocal fan service for followers of the Naruto comic books and animated series. Thanks to its easygoing controls and multitiered arenas, it also bears a striking resemblance to the Super Smash Bros. games that Nintendo has produced for the Nintendo 64 and GameCube. However, Ninja Council 3 doesn't yield the same depth as a typical Super Smash Bros. game, which means that the game is ultimately best suited for diehard Naruto nuts and people who don't take fighting games too seriously.

Four players can compete in treasure hunts and battle royal matches.

Because this is a fighting game, the main idea here is to beat your opponents senseless and drain their life meters until you're the last one left standing. This is a 2D fighter, but the arenas are as tall as they are wide, and they have multiple tiers from which you can easily jump up and down. You can smash boxes or rocks to uncover health items and weapons that you can throw at your opponents. Some arenas also play host to booby traps, pits, and flying debris that will chip away some of your health when you come into contact with them. If you've ever played one of the Super Smash Bros. games, this should all seem very familiar to you.

The character sprites and animations have mostly been recycled from the previous Ninja Council games (which were made for the Game Boy Advance). But all of the backgrounds and attack cutaways are brand new. The 2D characters looked like tiny renditions of their TV counterparts, and they look fine on the DS as well. The backgrounds are nothing special compared to other DS games, but they're twice as large as the backdrops in the GBA's Ninja Council games. They're also more colorful and flaunt a better variety of cute details, such as flying birds or crumbling walkways. The action largely takes place on the top screen while the bottom screen serves as a radar and a collection of "buttons" for initiating special Jutsu techniques. When you perform a Jutsu technique, a dramatic cutaway put together with the game's characters and hand-drawn artwork will temporarily fill both screens. Fans of the Naruto animated series will really appreciate these flashy attack sequences particularly because they employ the voices of the show's actual voice cast. The music and sound effects that make up the rest of the audio are fine, but they're also generic and forgettable.

Jumping around the multitiered environments and trading blows with other people is fun, though Ninja Council 3 does suffer from a lack of depth. The D pad moves your chosen character around, and the system's six buttons matter-of-factly allow you to run, jump, guard, teleport, perform a throw, or perform a single attack. Defensively, you can roll out of a throw or grab on to walls to propel yourself higher. Offensively, you can press the attack button a couple of times to dish out a combo, or you can tap one of the four designated spots on the touch screen to initiate one of your character's special Jutsu techniques. Jutsu techniques are the same as the special attacks you've seen in other fighting games, except that you have to complete a brief minigame on the touch screen for them to work. Most minigames involve scribbling or tapping symbols, but a few require an additional quick scrawl of the stylus or a puff into the microphone. While the inputs aren't all that time-consuming, fumbling with the touch screen just to perform a special attack feels counterintuitive when you otherwise spend the rest of the time using the buttons to control your character. It's easy to get the hang of Ninja Council 3, which may be good or bad, depending on what you look for in fighting games.

Besides making use of the touch screen, the other thing this new game does differently from the GBA's Ninja Council games is that it allows you to assign any of the Jutsu techniques of the other characters to your own character. For instance, you can mix and match Naruto's wind and toad magic with Orochimaru's snake magic. This feature doesn't really inject any additional strategy into the game because all Jutsu attacks fall into the same two categories with respect to recharge period and damage output. However, it is useful if you pick a character that doesn't already have a full set of four Jutsu techniques. It's also useful if that character normally only has a couple of first-level Jutsu techniques but none of the stronger second-level techniques.

Flashy Jutsu attacks are performed by tapping and scribbling on the touch screen.

Incredibly, the game doesn't offer a traditional single-player battle mode. The only way to play against CPU opponents is to do so in the mission mode. Unfortunately, out of 62 different missions, just a few provide a level playing field and a fair set of rules. Most missions involve defeating a certain number of respawning enemies, using a specific Jutsu technique to finish off another character in a short amount of time or beating an opponent in an arena loaded with hungry animals and painful hazards. You have to play through the mission mode to unlock characters besides Naruto, but that is literally the mode's sole redeeming aspect. You'll see the same mission goals constantly, there's no story to speak of, and the CPU falls into the same patterns all the time. If you want to enjoy some fair competition and truly see the game's best qualities, you have to do so in the multiplayer party mode. The party mode lets as many as four players link their systems together to participate in treasure hunt and battle royal matches. Unlike the battles setup in the mission mode, matches played against human beings are crazy and fun, especially if you can link up with two or three other people. The problem with the party mode is that everyone has to have their own copy of the game, but this probably isn't the sort of game that your friends are going to buy without major prodding on your part.

You won't like Naruto: Ninja Council 3 if you prefer your fighting games to be finely balanced and packed with depth. However, if you're freaky for Naruto and simply want to make some mischief with your favorite characters, then you should be able to enjoy the frenzy of fists and fan service that this game dishes out. Just make sure you can convince at least one of your friends to buy the game so you can take advantage of the multiplayer party mode and see the game at its best.

http://qshare.com/get/99767/1096_Naruto_Ninja_Council_3_USA_NDS-XPA.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/e7e45c/

zert

06-01-2008, 07:57 AM

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9121/93568998195frontin2.jpg

It's pleasing to see that Square Enix--despite having the Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts megafranchises in its lineup--is still willing to go boldly into new frontiers with the release of original games like The World Ends With You. This role-playing game eschews the company's tried-and-true swords-and-sorcery settings and instead transports the action to modern-day Tokyo. Although there's nary a chocobo or keyblade to be found here, The World Ends With You still incorporates some of the company's best-known trademarks and wraps plenty of innovative new gameplay around them, particularly an initially mind-bending dual-screen combat system. The result is a game that manages to feel familiar and yet strikingly new at the same time, and one that deserves to be ranked alongside Square Enix's best works.

At first glance, the game seems little more than a pastiche of all the things that have made the famed Japanese developer's RPGs massive successes in the past. Angsty teen hero with an absurdly angular haircut? Check. Complex, team-based combat system? You betcha. Detailed customization options with weapons and armor that border on the anal retentive? Fer sure. But The World Ends With You merely uses these Square Enix conventions as a launching pad for a unique experience that is both impressive in its use of the Nintendo DS's capabilities and compelling in its storytelling.

The most apparent difference from previous Square games is location. The World Ends With You is set not in an imaginary kingdom, but entirely within Tokyo's fashion and shopping hub, Shibuya. Several real-world landmarks from Shibuya are re-created within the game, such as the train station, Shibuya Crossing, Hachiko's statue, Dogenzaka, and more. However, this shift to a modern setting isn't mere window dressing, given that it greatly complements the game's overall design. Developer Jupiter Corp has stuck to a character look similar to that found in the Kingdom Hearts series, and though the far-out fashion seemed somewhat out of place within that game universe, here it seems entirely appropriate to the fast-paced and fashion-conscious world of trendy Tokyo.

The story itself is a little The Matrix, a little Battle Royale. The game follows main character Neku Sakabara as he's forced to play The Reapers' Game, a sinister competition in which the (mostly) evil Reapers assign players like Neku a task every day for seven days. Fail to complete the task within the set time limit and the player is completely erased from existence. Strangely, none of the other inhabitants of busy Shibuya can see Neku or the other players, although a mysterious pin that Neku finds on his person when he first wakes up in Shibuya lets him read people's minds. What's even more disconcerting are the large groups of strange creatures now roaming the streets. Although normal people can't see these creatures--called the Noise--they can see Neku, and they're out for blood. Along the way, Neku is forced to make pacts with other characters because forming these bonds and fighting in pairs is the only way to deal damage to the Noise.

There are some genuine twists in this game's intriguing story, and there is also plenty of heartfelt emotion from its teenage protagonists, which makes for some truly touching moments. The themes explored here--finding your identity, overcoming insecurity, teen angst, coping with guilt, the weight of obligation--are nothing new for a Square Enix game, but they seem somewhat more resonant and identifiable because they're coming from characters who use mobile phones, eat fast food, and who do other things that ground them in the same world we live in.

Traversing the world of Shibuya is done through the stylus and touch screen, but battles are where it gets more complex. The game's setting might be somewhat of a departure for a Square Enix game, but the combat is a completely new take that uses both of the DS's screens at the same time. Neku and his partner share the same health bar, while the Noise they're fighting appear on both screens at once (although not necessarily in the same location). On the bottom screen is Neku, whom you control via different directional swipes with the stylus on the touch screen. Neku uses objects called psych pins to attack, and each type of pin requires a specific move with the stylus to unleash its power. These moves can include rapidly tapping the screen, performing slashes across enemies, quickly scratching empty space, drawing circles with the stylus, and more. There are also some pins that require you to yell into the DS's microphone.

These pins feature such varied powers as the ability to call a meteor strike, erupt a mini volcano, create lines of flames, throw cars and other objects around, shoot out electrical fields, and much more. Though there are supposed to be 300 different pins to be found in The World Ends With You, that doesn't mean there are 300 different types of powers to be unleashed in the game. Considering that many powers are replicated among different brands in the game (more on this later) you can definitely expect to see the same powers again and again. And just like Neku, psych pins can gain experience in battles, going up in levels the more times they're used.

The DS's top screen is where Neku's current partner will battle the Noise. The partner's actions are controlled via the D pad, with different combinations of directional presses resulting in different attacks or defensive maneuvers. Both Neku and his partner can also unleash powerful combos, which are earned by following a specific pattern of attacks on the top screen and released via tapping the bottom screen.

As you might guess, controlling both characters at the same time is confusing. Thankfully, the World Ends With You rewards you not for trying to control the action on both screens simultaneously, but for rapidly switching control from one to the other in a smooth way. At the beginning of each fight, Neku will be bathed in a green light. As soon as he makes a successful attack, this green light will move to his partner in the top screen, which will then move back to Neku after the partner makes an attack. Successfully passing this green puck back and forth between the two results in increasing damage bonuses done to enemies, which of course means that you'll need to concentrate on whoever has the puck to keep the combo going.

http://qshare.com/get/186639/2252_The_World_Ends_With_You_USA_NDS-SQUiRE.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5d650a/

zert

06-01-2008, 08:13 AM

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/786/93884886039frontna2.jpg

If you're in the market for an action game that wrings the most out of the Nintendo DS's visual and sonic capabilities, you need look no further than Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword. It is possibly the most technically proficient title available for the system, brimming with superb, smooth-as-silk visuals and sword-slashing sound effects that make the action practically spring off the screen. It's impossible to imagine how Dragon Sword could have better captured the overall look, feel, and flow of the console games, from protagonist Ryu Hyabusa's midair acrobatics to the dramatic Eastern-hued soundtrack. And while it may have its problems, the gameplay does a pretty good job of keeping up, matching most of this brilliance with a compelling adventure and stirring, combo-stringing stunts that are thick with thrills and kills.

To play, you'll first need to flip the DS sideways. Every bit of the action takes place on the touch screen, with the top screen relegated to cutscenes and the minimap. The touch screen also holds the key to your controls: Every move you make as Ryu, from running and jumping to slicing and dicing, is done with the stylus. The only time you need to touch a button is to block, which can be done with any button--even the D pad. It's a pretty comfortable setup, and we found that keeping our thumb on the D pad for this purpose worked out just fine (if you're a southpaw, you would use a face button in a similar manner), though using one of the shoulder buttons is also a viable solution.

Even if you're a series aficionado used to doing your dirty work with a standard controller, it won't take you long to get used to the controls. Using the stylus is remarkably intuitive, since your flicks with the stylus are met with a more or less equivalent action on the screen. If you want to run, just slide the stylus in the direction you want to move. If you want to jump, flick it upward; to attack, swipe through the enemy you wish to target. It's simple, and it may not afford you the kind of complex combinations and wall-jumping gymnastics you can perform on the Xbox and PlayStation 3 titles, but there's still a remarkable array of interesting techniques to pull off. For example, you can double-jump toward the heavens by flicking upward twice, and then slash through a nearby fiend, which will cause Ryu to zoom toward his enemy and slice into it. Scratching rapidly will unleash a powerful attack that varies based on how long you scribble, while tapping an enemy will cause you to throw a shuriken or shoot your bow. It's all pretty effortless.

Rest assured, the stylus controls aren't just the touch-screen equivalent of random button mashing. You need to maintain control over the attacks you want to perform, especially in the later stages, since some enemies are far more susceptible to some assaults than others, while a poorly chosen move on your part can leave you vulnerable. Nevertheless, compared with other games in the series, Dragon Sword is relatively easy, and is made even easier with its plethora of save points--and the fact that those same save points completely replenish your health and ninpo magic energy. The diminished challenge is most obvious in the game's boss fights. The bosses themselves are intimidating and exciting to look at, but most of them are a cinch to take down. If you're a Ninja Gaiden fan, it's a bit disappointing to realize that on standard difficulty level, you'll be able to take the majority down in one try. Even some of the attack patterns are practically the same among bosses, which is disappointing.

That doesn't mean, however, that Dragon Sword isn't a lot of fun, regardless of how you feel about its level of challenge. This is mostly due to a varied pace, a terrific sense of speed, and--when things are at their best--responsive controls. You won't just be swiping your stylus around constantly, and when you do, it's not always just to fight a roomful of mean-looking ogres. You'll head back to town between missions to consort with the townsfolk and purchase upgrades, navigate the occasional trap sequence, and solve a few rudimentary puzzles. The action is the most satisfying aspect, though, since the controls engage you with onscreen events in the most immediate way possible. It's tremendously rewarding to flick your stylus around and watch Ryu let loose with a smooth, snappy selection of stabs and strikes. Less frequently, the game won't respond properly to your carefully scribbled strokes. This occurs mainly when the level design causes the action to retreat toward the rear of the arena, where Ryu and his enemies become the size of ants. When this happens, the corresponding mess of pixels makes it harder to perform the attacks you want to perform, and even jumping gets a little haphazard.

Dragon Sword has retained the ninpo magic aspect of the franchise, though the mechanics are a lot different this time. Provided your ninpo gauge is full, you tap an icon on the screen to activate an attack. From here, you select the ninpo you wish to cast, and in turn, you are met with a Sanskrit character that you color in using the stylus. Once it's filled in, you're returned to the main action, where you can further control the attack. These are mostly what you would expect--lightning strikes, fireballs, shards of ice, and so on. The system itself is a nifty way of further using the touch screen, and while it temporarily removes you from the action, it complements it rather than detracts from it.

There's a story buried in here. The plot has never been the main point of a Ninja Gaiden game, but Dragon Sword provides a decent catalyst for the ensuing mayhem and introduces a new character, Momiji. The bulk of the story plays out in beautiful, vibrant cutscenes accompanied by gripping music, and features a few touching references to fallen heroine Kureha. The cutscenes aren't the game's only displays of splendor, however. As previously mentioned, Dragon Sword is a technical powerhouse, squeezing the most out of the DS without a single hitch and perfectly re-creating the visual style of the console titles. Ryu flips and zooms around with animations so fluid it's a wonder the machine can render them without even a hint of slowdown. Human enemies (of which there are few) and fiends (of which there are many) are meticulously designed, and they look great and animate smoothly as well. On top of that, an array of guttural grunts, sword clanks, and ambient sounds help bring the action to life.

The game clocks in at eight hours or so, but once you're done, there are some unlockable goodies to check out, and you can upload your karma score (accumulated by busting out your most skillful moves) via Wi-Fi to compare with others. Besides, the core gameplay is so good, you'll want to return to it, possibly to check out the higher difficulty levels, which are a bit more compelling. All in all, it may be watered down a bit, but Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is still a spicy and savory mix of familiar combat and sweet stylus action, and it pulls you into its world of dastardly fiends and mysterious, shuriken-slinging martial artists.

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zert

06-01-2008, 08:28 AM

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The Final Fantasy franchise had never been one to hold continuity close to heart. Until recently, it used to forsake the idea of direct sequels and instead focus on creating entirely new universes that share similar themes, names, and icons. However, the world of Ivalice has been one visited several times, and with Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, we return once again to follow the adventures of Vaan and his friends in the skies above. Their latest adventure is--in a drastic departure from the norm--an RTS game that manages to successfully blend the potent storytelling and signature style of Final Fantasy with the lightning-quick action of Command & Conquer, and the result is one of the more unique and memorable outings in the series' history.

One year after the war with the Archadian Empire, Vaan has fulfilled his dream of becoming a sky pirate and flies through the heavens in a ship of his own with Penelo as his trusted navigator. When he and his friends Fran and Balthier uncover a treasure known as the Cache of Glabados, the legendary sky continent of Lemurés is unveiled, and it's up to them to protect the winged inhabitants of that floating world from the sinister Judge of Wings and her illusionary armies. Along your journey you will encounter friends and enemies both old and new, and experience an adventure that becomes surprisingly introspective and questions what it means to truly be alive.

The leading man Balthier and his lady-friend Fran make their return, along with other companions from Final Fantasy XII.

Revenant Wings is divided up into 10 chapters, each of which consists of roughly five missions. Each mission will provide more detail on the deep and engrossing story with both in-game and prerendered cutscenes, and between them you'll be free to travel across Lemurés and beyond in an airship of your own christening that serves as your base of operations. You'll be able to take side quests from Tomaj and his notice board, engage in skirmishes with local fauna or other sky pirates, craft new weapons from materials gathered in your journeys, and look at trophies earned through battle. You will also be able to spend crystals called auricite that you earn through missions to forge pacts with summoned monsters known as espers. Though your main characters will take to the battlefield themselves, your espers will make up the bulk of your combat forces, so it's important to forge as many pacts with as many types of espers as you can to bolster your army.

At the beginning of a battle you are given your mission goals, which can vary from defeating all enemies, to sneaking to a specific spot, and more. At that point you're presented with the chance to analyze your enemy's strengths and weaknesses and tailor your army accordingly. Characters and espers are classified as ranged, melee, and flying units, each of which is part of a rock-paper-scissors relationship. These relationships, along with elemental resistances and weaknesses, are vitally important to pay attention to when selecting which party members and espers you will use, given that you can only field up to five characters and summon from a troupe of up to five types of espers.

When combat begins, your selected characters will each become the leader of a group of espers. Though Revenant Wings is an RTS, there is no resource gathering or management to speak of, and as long as you have control of a summoning gate, you can call forth new espers which are added to existing groups and makes unit organization a snap. However, enemy leaders can also summon espers in this way, and you'll have to work diligently to capture their summoning gates to help you control the flow of battle. Combat is extremely fast-paced, and as such it's important to make sure that your ranks are constantly refilled if the need to do so arises.

Beyond their normal attacks, espers have special abilities that are automatically used whenever they come available. Your characters themselves will learn a slew of their own as they gain levels, one of which can be assigned at any time to be their gambit, which shifts it into automatic use in the same manner as the espers. Each character will also learn a super ability called a quickening that can be used to turn the tide of a battle. Micromanaging in Revenant Wings is essentially reduced to keeping track of which character abilities and quickenings are ready and making sure that they're effectively used. This streamlines combat and makes it much more action-oriented, while keeping it easily accessible to those not well-versed in the RTS genre.

Control during battle is handled using a simple and intuitive combination of touch-screen use and button presses. The top screen displays a map of the entire area for quick reference of the positions of both your units and your enemy's, and the bottom screen is a close-up view of the action shown from an overhead isometric view. Leader portraits, which indicate the status of a particular character and his or her grouped espers, can be tapped to select the entire group. Individual units can be selected by tapping them, and you can also tap the screen and drag across to select a large group of units. You can then use a single tap to order those selected units to move to a specific location or to attack an enemy unit. Tapping and holding down the stylus will let you move the screen around, or you can use the directional pad to do the same thing.

Graphically speaking, Revenant Wings is one of the most impressive-looking games on the DS, and the prerendered cutscenes that play at times are of the same level of quality that one has come to expect from Square Enix. The assorted locales you will travel to are vivid and lively, and the unit sprites, however small, are highly detailed and expressively animated. For the most part, battlefields are designed to complement the fixed isometric camera, but there are times, however rare, that units or monsters may be concealed behind tall environmental objects, though this is a minor complaint. Likewise, there is some graphical slowdown when massive groups of units gather onscreen and enter combat, but not so much that it becomes even remotely unplayable.

There's never a shortage of frantic action.

Fans of the music of Final Fantasy XII will feel immediately at home with the soundtrack of Revenant Wings because the style is completely identical. In fact, many of the songs, such as the theme of the Rabanastre Lowtown, are straight-up ported across. This sense of familiarity that fans of other Final Fantasy games will feel is not limited to the music, either. There are many other throwbacks to older games in the series, such as the return of Namingway, and all in all, fans will be pleased with the game's self-referential nature.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings successfully takes the role-playing game flair and style that the franchise is known for into the RTS realm. With an excellent combination of game design and control-scheme implementation, the fast-paced battle system is easy to keep up with and difficult enough to challenge you for roughly 25 hours, not including all the extra time you could put into completing side quests, forging pacts with espers, and earning all of the trophies. Revenant Wings is easily one of the better games on the Nintendo DS, and whether or not you're a fan of Final Fantasy games or the RTS genre in general, it's a worthy purchase if you're looking for a fun and entertaining experience.

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zert

06-02-2008, 05:50 PM

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Intelligent Systems' long-running turn-based strategy series returns to the Nintendo DS with Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, and it's far and away the most divergent entry in the series yet. The game eschews an absurdly happy-go-lucky attitude toward military conflict in favor of a darker, more ponderous tone, which suggests that the series is going through its sulky teenage years. The gameplay itself will still feel familiar to returning players, though even veterans will notice an increased level of difficulty, making it a slightly less accessible experience. Even so, Days of Ruin still stands as a very satisfying strategy game with a ton of content.

The game sets its bleak tone by kicking things off just after the end of the world. Meteors have struck Earth, leaving it looking appropriately postapocalyptic. Any forms of government or social services have been wiped out, and the survivors scour the planet for shelter and supplies from the wild gangs of bandits that have begun popping up. The story focuses on a young boy named Will, who is rescued by a small band of surviving soldiers from the Rubinelle army. As they make their way across the desolate wastelands, they encounter animalistic bandits, cowering, duplicitous politicians, and other soldiers who insist on maintaining their preapocalyptic grudges. It's a pretty dramatic shift in tone from past Advance Wars games, which were themselves fascinating for their high contrast between breezy tone and grim subject matter, and it's a jarring change. And unfortunately, the anime-grade writing simply isn't strong enough to drive home any real impact from the story's meditations on the cost of war.

Along with darker thematic tone comes a whole new look for the series, which trades its primary hues for more subdued earth tones. The game also features entirely redrawn graphics, which are more detailed and animated than they have been in the past, and it makes the game feel like it was really designed for the DS from the ground up. The music is also a little more aggressive, though after about a dozen missions of listening to the same rock-opera theme music, you'll likely just find it aggressively annoying.

These changes are all largely superficial, though, and ultimately, underneath all of the game's gritty pretense the action is still pure Advance Wars, the gold standard for strategy games on the DS, and arguably one of the more consistently enjoyable strategy franchises on any system. A big part of the game's appeal is that it's deceptively easy to get into, and its turn-based nature means that you can take your sweet time deciding where you'll move your units. With no dedicated tutorial, the game is very gentle about how it introduces new concepts, starting you off on a small map with just a handful of different units with the simple objective of eliminating all of your enemy's units. You'll gradually be introduced to a larger variety of ground units, as well as your ability to produce new units at factories--though this requires money, which you earn by capturing cities scattered across the maps.

Advance Wars fans will notice that a bit of rebalancing has gone into Days of Ruin. A few units have been retired and a few new ones have been introduced, such as the antitank unit, the flare unit, the war tank, and the seaplane. There are also new obstacles to contend with on the battlefield, such as crazy energy fields produced by the meteors that caused this whole mess in the first place. Commanding officer powers have also been retooled, and while the CO that you choose to play with will still have an impact on the battle, it's much more subtle now. Individual units can now earn ranks through combat, with higher-ranked units being more potent. As many specific changes as Days of Ruin makes to the Advance Wars formula, the pacing and feel of the game is still much the same.

By the time Days of Ruin introduces most of its significant elements, like nautical and aerial units, multiple factions, commanding officers, fog of war, multiple enemy factions, and other concepts, you'll find the game to be significantly more complicated than when you started. You'll also find that you've already completed half the missions in the main campaign, though this doesn't mean you're halfway through. The missions become significantly longer, as well as significantly more difficult, potentially to a fault. Being able to just bowl over your enemy in a strategy game isn't fun, but neither is the sensation that a wrong move in the first few turns will spell certain defeat. When it finds its balance, though, it's a terribly engrossing game that can hold your attention for hours at a time.

The main single-player campaign in Days of Ruin consists of 26 campaign missions of varying length, as well as a number of optional training missions, which are often even more punishing than the campaign missions. Frankly, all of the really exciting stuff in this game exists outside the single-player campaign. In addition to local multiplayer support, Days of Ruin features online play for up to four players, complete with voice chat. If the 150 maps that the game comes with aren't enough, there's also a fully featured map editor that works in tandem with the game's online abilities, allowing you to upload your custom maps and share them with friends.

Even if the stiff challenge and clumsy new "serious" tone don't make it the most accessible or recommendable entry in the series, there's still a lot to like about Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, especially if you're looking for some really compelling online action for your Nintendo DS.

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zert

06-02-2008, 05:55 PM

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If you paled at the thought of having to lug around a bucket of myrrh in the newest foray into the world of Crystal Chronicles, you can put a lid on your worries. All told, Ring of Fates is a much more user-friendly experience than its predecessor, and lets up to four players beat up on some monsters without needing a bunch of extra cables or unnecessary hardware. Toss in a better single-player experience, and you have an action role-playing game that's easy to enjoy right out of the box, even when your buddies aren't there to liven things up. In the process of being so different from the GameCube original, though, Rings of Fate introduces some of its own foibles. Nevertheless, most of them are easy to forgive in light of all the breezy fun to be had.

On the single-player side of the coin, you'll follow younguns Yuri and Chelinka, fraternal twins who can effectively channel the power of magic crystals--provided they work together to do it. Unsurprisingly, there is evil afoot, which has caused monsters wearing red crystals to antagonize the lands. The twins are connected to these events in more ways than they realize, and their journey is marked by several poignant moments of loss and discovery. Along the way, they are joined by three friends (though because Yuri and Chelinka are represented by a single avatar, this actually makes for a party of four). There's nothing all that unique about the plot, but the strength of the charming cast and a load of quirky, cute dialogue hold the narrative together nicely without getting overly saccharine.

The main point of all this is to jump into a dungeon and whack at monsters until they die, while you level up and collect cool loot to help you whack at bigger, badder monsters. You can control any of your four party members at any time by tapping the appropriate icon on the touch screen, and each character has his or her own distinct strengths. The Yuri-Chelinka amalgam is you primary melee warrior, so if you prefer to get up close and personal with a sword, this is the best way to do it. Alhanalem is primarily a magic user (more on spells later), but can use staffs to lob magic orbs from a short distance. Gnash is talented with a bow and arrow (and has an ultra-handy double jump to boot). Meeth is the oddest of the bunch. She can wield a melee weapon (it's fun to stick a hammer in her hands, since it lets her stun enemies), but she's slower and therefore more vulnerable to attack than Yuri. What makes Meeth special is her summoned urn, which she can crawl into and use to roll into enemies for a nice bit of damage. In certain places, she can even grab it and float to spots that the other characters can't reach.

Additionally, each character has a tribal ability, some of which are offensive, while others are used for support or puzzle solving. To access these skills, you press the R button, which in the case of Yuri, Al, and Gnash moves the main game display to the touch screen, where you can use the stylus to perform your tribal talents. In Yuri's case, you touch an enemy to perform a powerful melee attack, while you can do the same for Gnash to land a mighty aimed shot. Al can unleash an area-of-effect lightning attack, but his knack for all things electric is more often used for the Ring of Fates' many puzzles, since he can create a magic thread that makes invisible platforms appear and lights magic candles. Again, Meeth is the odd one out. Like other members of the Lilty tribe, she can create magicites (the game's equivalent of magic scrolls) out of various crystals. To do so, you enter the alchemy screen, select the components you wish to use, and use the stylus to stir your pot of goodies. If you're successful, you create a magicite or other item without spending a single gil.

Of course, these magicites don't just sit there looking pretty--you need them to perform spells in Ring of Fates. This is where the game's greatest strengths and most obvious shortcomings come into play. There's no doubt that the system is very unique: To perform a spell, you need to use the corresponding magicite. No magicite? No spell. To activate one, you tap its icon on the touch screen and hold the X button, which brings up a circle that you can position with the D pad. When you let go, that spell is performed at whatever position the ring occupies. If you want an even more powerful effect, you can create magic piles, which are essentially stacks of magic rings that you can activate at one time with disastrous results for your enemies.

The spellcasting mechanic is interesting and original, but it doesn't always work out very well when you're playing on your own. There's a lot of fumbling involved, since you have to select the proper magicite from the touch screen, hold X to move your ring, press the L button if you wish to lock your ring in place (or keep holding X), switch to another character and/or select another magicite, position the ring, and so on. In the end, most monsters aren't going to stay put for you to do all this, which makes magic piles far less fun in the single-player game than they are in multiplayer. The system is obviously tailored for cooperative play, where piles are a cinch to pull off since you'll do a fraction of the fumbling in half the time.

Solo players will also need to keep a close eye on their computer-controlled teammates, since they're usually worthless. Often, they stand around doing nothing, or possibly attacking every five seconds or so. They'll jump into lava, fall off ledges, or just lag behind and never catch up. The good news is that pressing the L button will summon them to your own character's location, but even the in-game explanation ("Sometimes your friends will fall behind, kupo!") is essentially an admission that the artificial intelligence needs babysitting. The bright side is that you'll be frequently switching between characters and experiencing their individual attributes. The bad news, of course, is that it just contributes to the overall sense that you have to twiddle around more than you need to.

Other aspects of the game help make up for these and some smaller annoyances, however. You'll spend a fair amount of time in platforming sequences and solving environmental puzzles, and for the most part, these elements are done really well and can get fairly involved. In some levels, you'll need to use Meeth to travel to a distant ledge, shoot targets as Gnash, and use Al's magic needle to uncover hidden platforms. It's a varied, well-balanced mix of gameplay elements, and your reward for making it through a given dungeon is a terrific boss battle. Bosses are usually monstrous and require a good deal of movement and thoughtful spell control, and most of them are challenging enough to be fun without getting frustrating.

But like with Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube, Ring of Fates' true delights are found in its multiplayer mode, where up to four friends with their own copies of the game can hit the dungeons together or even take quests from town. The gameplay is essentially the same as in the single-player experience, but without the AI issues and cumbersome fumbles. You can create up to eight characters to use in cooperative play and select from any of the four tribes when creating them. It's rewarding to create a successful spell pile with others, as well as to earn equipment unavailable in the single-player game, which serves to highlight one of the game's better elements: the well-paced drop rate. Unfortunately, the multiplayer aspect has its own major drawback: an unacceptably slow frame rate that seems to stem from the game's inability to render too much action onscreen at one time. It's a shame, because it takes the enjoyable and cheerful romp at the game's heart and throws in unnecessary frustration. It's also easy to lament the lack of online play, though considering the issues with getting the game to perform properly in local multiplayer, it's perhaps no wonder that full Wi-Fi support wasn't included.

Aside from the performance stutters, Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates looks terrific, from the colorful character design to its particle-heavy dungeon crawls. As you may expect from a Square Enix RPG, the cutscenes are striking, with particular attention given to dramatic camera angles. The sound design is the real star of the production, however, featuring an evocative soundtrack and fitting sound effects. There's also a good bit of voice acting, and while some of it gets a little too cutesy for its own good (it's one thing to see Meeth's speech quirky speech tic written on the screen, and another to hear it said out loud), it's done consistently well throughout.

There's even more on that little cartridge on top of the co-op play and the 12-hour campaign, like Moogle painting and trading, and a little kart-racing game similar to the one from its GameCube precursor. Had this youth-oriented Final Fantasy been scrubbed up a bit more, it might have been a squeaky-clean take on the hack-and-slash RPG formula. Nevertheless, while the game might not quite be in big-boy league, this kid's got a lot of enthusiasm, and it's infectious enough to make Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates a worthwhile competitor.

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zert

06-09-2008, 04:53 PM

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Fans of the previous Advance Wars games will be in for a comfortably familiar experience with this installment, though it adds a slew of new features, characters, twists, and tweaks--considerably more than Advance Wars 2 did. Still, all this new content isn't evident at first, and it isn't forced on you. So those who've already spent a ton of time playing previous versions of Advance Wars might be a little put off when they first begin playing the campaign mode of this game. The brand-new campaign assumes no previous experience, starting you off gently and teaching you the ropes of how to marshal your diverse military forces (even if you already know the drill). This is done through some story-driven missions that do a great job of quickly getting you interested in the game's colorful cast of characters. However, if you're an Advance Wars veteran, the early missions of the campaign--and indeed the subsequent two-dozen-or-so missions leading up to the climactic conclusion--will seem quite easy. Regardless of your experience level, though, you'll appreciate the diversity and surprises that Advance Wars: Dual Strike's campaign delivers from one mission to the next. There's some sort of a unique twist or angle to just about every one, so you realize during the course of the dozens of missions that this game has a whole lot to it.

The campaign's two main characters are both new to the series. The male lead, Jake, can take some getting used to, thanks to his knack for leaning on overused Internet slang ("Owned!"). Still, the otherwise-well-written dialogue and endearing characters shine through, and in the end, even Jake turns out to be likable. Advance Wars has always had a unique style to it, and this latest game carries it forward, once again deftly accomplishing the seemingly impossible and ridiculous task of making modern military warfare kid-friendly. For what it's worth, the story of this game pushes farther into the realm of science fiction than its predecessors, distancing the subject matter of Advance Wars: Dual Strike from anything resembling real-world conflict. That's probably for the best, since what's left is a great mix of new and old characters all wrapped up in an interesting storyline that hits some serious themes while still being fit for all ages. You must help the commanding officers of the Allied Nations in their attempt to thwart the wicked schemes of the Black Hole Army, which has mysteriously recovered its military might and seems to be draining the land of its very life.

At its core, the gameplay of Advance Wars: Dual Strike is much like that of the previous games. You take turns with your opponent maneuvering your various military units about a tactical map, trading hits with opposing forces, capturing factories and other buildings, and ultimately attempting to either destroy all the enemy forces or capture the enemy headquarters. At your disposal are all the different types of military units you can imagine: infantry, tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, battleships, submarines, fighter jets, and more. Advance Wars: Dual Strike features every unit from the previous games and makes a number of key additions, such as stealth fighters, aircraft carriers, and the appropriately named megatank--the biggest and toughest Advance Wars unit yet, but one whose firepower is tempered by a steep cost, slow movement, and limited ammunition. Perfectly tuned balance is the key to this series, after all, so there isn't a single unstoppable unit in the lineup. Each has a valuable purpose, but none can help you outsmart your foe. Many of the units are elegantly simple and yet very interesting in their own rights, like chess pieces packing unique weapons and defensive properties. Since most units can automatically retaliate when hit, you're constantly having to consider the possible repercussions of your every move.

There's an impressive array of different units available, but when multiplied by all the different commanding officers in the game--each of whom has his or her own unique specialties--the variety becomes incredible. Besides being memorable characters, the various COs of Advance Wars can have a significant impact on how you play. For instance, Advance Wars fans will recall that the laid-back gunslinger, Grit, is an expert with long-range combat units like rocket launchers and battleships. However, he's relatively weak with direct-fire units like tanks. The new COs are equally as interesting. For example, one of the new Black Hole COs, Kindle, is a snobbish socialite whose units fight more fiercely than ever when stationed in cities--and her superpower lets her cripple enemies recovering in their own cities. Each CO has two different superpowers that can be used every several turns, once the CO has gathered enough energy.

In addition to the great new units and characters, Advance Wars: Dual Strike introduces some intriguing new types of battles. For starters, it's possible to fight tag-team battles using pairs of COs. One CO is active at a time, and you can alternate between them in between turns. So if Grit gets into uncomfortably close quarters, just bring out his buddy Max, who's got a knack for doing serious damage with his tanks. Being able to mix and match different COs' strengths makes for many more interesting variables to consider and experiment with. Plus, when both your COs fully charge their power meters, you're free to unleash their devastating tag attack on your foes. These let your COs take their turns one after another, before your enemy is able to act. The new tag-team matches allow for wider, faster shifts in a battle's momentum, making for more-exciting skirmishes. What's more, your COs now gain experience points after every victory, and once they've earned enough, they get promoted. As COs rise in rank, they gain access to an increasingly larger variety of different skills, which they can mix and match to subtly but noticeably tune their fighting styles.

Dual-screen battles are another welcome addition to the series. Normally, the top screen is used to display contextual data about the terrain and also whichever unit you have highlighted at any given time. Most of the action takes place on the bottom screen, where you may either use the directional pad and buttons or the stylus to move your units around. However, in dual-screen battles, there's combat happening on two separate maps at once. Once you're done maneuvering your forces on the main screen, the battle switches over to the second front, where the computer will move your forces by default. However, you can command them yourself if you like. Usually the two fronts are linked somehow, and whoever wins the battle on the second front will gain an advantage on the primary front. You can send units to the secondary front to help guarantee that happening. The dual-screen battles are a nice twist to the tag-battle gameplay that's the mainstay of Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

Different weather effects and, of course, the great variety of maps compound the complexity of the game without complicating it. Fog-of-war maps have a totally different feel to them than the standard maps, where you always have full visibility. When there's a fog of war, you can use forests and reefs to hide your units, which will lie in ambush; also, you can move your infantry into the mountains to gain a better vantage point on the fight. In other types of maps, snowstorms and sandstorms can hinder some of your units' movement, which keeps you from getting too comfortable with the way your mechanized forces normally work. The difference between maps that test your tactics by limiting you to a specific set of units and those that let you strategically use funds to build reinforcements is quite dramatic as well.

Apart from the lengthy campaign, Advance Wars: Dual Strike offers a war room, a versus mode, and a survival mode for experiencing all the possible variations on the strategic gameplay. For good measure, as you win single-player battles, you earn credits with which you can unlock tons of new maps and many new COs for use in the various modes of play. In keeping with this whole "give you everything and more" theme, extensive multiplayer options are available. You can pass-and-play with other people using one DS and one copy of the game, or you can compete with up to three players in wireless Wi-Fi battles. Using Wi-Fi, you can also trade maps you've created in the game's design room (which are easier to create than ever thanks to the stylus), and you can also download the new real-time "combat" action game to any unfortunate DS owners who don't have the game.

It's possible to have up to eight players in a combat battle with just one copy of Advance Wars: Dual Strike between the lot of you. Combat takes some of the units and mechanics of Advance Wars and translates them into a fun little arcade game, where the object is to capture the enemy base. You directly control one unit at a time, firing on your enemies and recovering damage at your cities. There aren't many units or maps in the combat mode, but it's a fun diversion, and it represents another solid addition to the series.

http://qshare.com/get/98497/0088_Advance_Wars_Dual_Strike_USA_NDS-LUBE.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/9b7dc4/

zert

06-09-2008, 04:58 PM

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/4641/92944992587frontpk3.jpg

Bleach: The Blade of Fate for the Nintendo DS is a fighting game in the Street Fighter style that lets you lock swords with the characters from the Bleach comic book and animated series. Fans of the Bleach universe will be thrilled to discover that the game totally captures the characters' personalities and their unique attack moves. However, Blade of Fate isn't strictly for the fans. It's a superb fighting game in its own right and should appeal to anyone who enjoys the genre, especially those who have fond memories of playing games like Samurai Shodown and The Last Blade down at the local arcade.

There are 28 characters to pick from, all taken from the first couple of years of the ongoing story. Ichigo, Renji, Byakuya, and many other familiar faces are here, and their movements and attacks are based on the techniques and spirit powers they've displayed in the comic or TV show. Seeing those attacks in motion is sweet, not just because they're accompanied by flames and explosions, but because the large characters and multilayered backdrops are put together with some of the finest 2D artwork yet witnessed on the DS. Fans of the comic will appreciate the hand-drawn character portraits and bankai cutaway scenes, which are scrawled in the rough style of the comic. Meanwhile, devoted viewers of the animated series will delight in hearing each character's numerous battle cries, which were recorded from the English dub's voice actors. Even if none of that stuff matters to you, the explosive sound effects and intricate techno musical snippets will make you want to keep the volume cranked.

Underneath the hood, Bleach: The Blade of Fate is a solidly executed fighting game that beginners and experts alike can sink their teeth into. Battles can involve as many as four people, and combat takes place on a 2D plane. You would think it would be crowded with four characters crammed onto a single screen, but Treasure, the game's developer, wisely made it possible for you to jump between the foreground and the background. If a four-way free-for-all is too much for you, or you're getting spanked in a double-team, you can escape to the other plane at the touch of a button.

The controls are easy enough to figure out. Movement is handled with the directional pad, while your character's light, medium, and heavy attacks are bound to the main buttons. You can dash by double-tapping the directional pad and perform an additional jump in midair by pressing up again once you're airborne. Each press of a button unleashes a basic punch or slash that takes off a slight amount of health when it connects. To dole out more damage, you can perform one of your character's special moves or super attacks, which you do by keying in a command sequence that typically involves a quarter-circle motion on the control pad and a quick button press. The remaining buttons let you block, switch planes, or execute a Bleach-inspired flash step move that lets you instantly teleport across the screen.

You can do a great deal simply by mashing the buttons. However, after you rack up a few matches, you'll come to realize that the fighting system is actually rather deep. Basic attacks can be chained together into combinations, some attacks can be interrupted by other attacks (and supers!), and the flash step teleport can be used in midair or during an attack to create some unique chains. Meters for spirit power and spirit press limit how frequently you can change planes, use the flash step teleport, or perform your character's super attacks. Other players can't just avoid you by teleporting or switching planes all the time, because they get three "strikes" before they have to wait for their spirit power meter to gradually refill. The spirit press meter mainly shows you how many supers you can perform, though you can sacrifice one level to perform a canceling move that lets you slip out of an opponent's multihit combination or super attack with only slight damage.

All of the action takes place on the upper screen. The touch screen functions as an extra set of "buttons" and lets you perform special moves and activate spirit cards with just a single tap. Performing special moves in this manner eats up a section of your spirit power meter, whereas keying in the commands with the directional pad and buttons does not. Thus, this quick input method is mainly for beginners who don't mind dipping into the same meter that limits flash steps and plane swaps. The touch screen's main intended use is to let you activate spirit cards during the match. In a nutshell, spirit cards are power-ups that can make you stronger, replenish your various meters, or cause different calamities to befall your opponent. For example, if you use the "forced crouch" card, your opponent will be stuck in the crouch position for a few seconds. Spirit cards inject some extra excitement and strategy into matches without breaking the game's solid fundamentals. Their effects tend to wear off quickly, and their use is also somewhat limited. You get only 10 chances per match to use them, and at any given moment your choice consists of two cards randomly selected from one of the 15-card decks you've put together.

Among the many single-player modes, you'll probably spend most of your time going through the story mode. Of the available characters, 23 of them have their own story path based on events that took place during the second run of the comic and TV show. The opponents you'll face and the scenes that play out vary depending on the character you've chosen. Sometimes opponents will issue you a challenge to beat them in a certain way, and your success or failure in doing so will cause the story to move in a specific direction. Additional spirit cards are given out after every win, while completing a character's story will earn you tons of money that you can later spend in the shop menu to buy more cards--as well as player costumes, bonus artwork, and music for the sound gallery. Besides the story mode, the game includes the usual sort of single-player modes you've come to expect from games like this: arcade, training, survival, and challenge.

No fighting game is complete without a versus mode, and this one lets you get matches going wirelessly with as many as four people, both online and off. You need only a single cartridge for local play, although the pre-match loading times are significantly reduced if everyone has a cartridge. The online mode lets you seek out opponents randomly or challenge the people you've exchanged friend codes with. Two-person battles are generally seamless and free of lag. When you get four people going in a match, lag is more of a problem, especially if players tend to frequently use spirit cards. For best results, you'll want to stick to people on your friend code list or limit the matchmaking search to your nearby region.

Good fighting games are a rarity on portable systems. Great ones come around less often than Haley's Comet or a tolerable Wayans Brothers movie. Bleach: The Blade of Fate is definitely one of the great ones. There are lots of characters to learn, the combat system is intuitive and deep, and the multiplayer is well suited to local and online connections. Fans of the show shouldn't hesitate to pick it up, nor should fans of the fighting genre who want to trade blows somewhere other than on the couch or at the arcade.

http://qshare.com/get/100155/1491_Bleach_The_Blade_of_Fate_USA_NDS-XPA.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/306222/

zert

06-12-2008, 03:15 PM

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/4820/93956087833frontsr7.jpg

It's not surprising that the Nintendo DS iteration of Assassin's Creed doesn't feature the often-stunning, open-world exploration of its console counterparts. It does feature many of the same elements, however: An attractive visual style, some nice animation work, and decent sound effects that make the Middle Eastern cityscapes you explore feel alive with activity. Its fundamental design, however, bears a closer resemblance to another of Ubisoft's landmark properties: Prince of Persia. In Altair's Chronicles, you travel through 3D environments on a mostly linear path, avoiding traps, scaling walls, and occasionally beating up some bad guys in the process. When the game hits its stride, this makes for some fairly enjoyable entertainment. Unfortunately, clunky controls and an overall lack of refinement frequently conspire to sully the experience.

The sense of sci-fi wonder that permeated the console release is noticeably absent from this prequel. The story is a pure, straightforward chase-the-artifact adventure that wouldn't be out of place in a Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones title. Chronicles' holy grail is a mysterious chalice, and while it serves its purpose as a plot catalyst, there's nothing very interesting about Altair's tale. The narrative plays out via dialogue texts that convey just enough information to keep you up to speed, and is thus missing the metaphysical, morally ambiguous ramblings you may have expected. Altair is reduced to a generic hero in ancient garb, which may be fine for Assassin's Creed fans but won't be of much interest to those new to this game universe.

Yet in spite of its generic characters and wooden script, you'll still glimpse a little magic here and there, as fleeting as it can be. The art design is quite nice, featuring soft, earthy hues and some nice details in the architecture. Altair himself often moves gracefully, and the climbing and running animations are splendid. Others don't look nearly as good, and some jumps are missing transition animations completely, making it look like Altair is teleporting instead of leaping. On your travels you'll hear the commotion of crowds, the chirping of birds, and the snoring of sleeping guards, and while the same effects are replayed often, they still make the cities through which you travel feel organic. Combat noise gets to be grating over time, however, since you'll hear the same grunts over and over again. The Arabian-themed soundtrack is similarly repetitive, but still properly dramatic.

You'll spend the bulk of the game getting from point A to point B by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing walls, and crossing beams. The clear-cut level designs keep platforming sequences from being overly challenging, though they occasionally require some light puzzle-solving (push a few boxes or pull a few levers) and trap navigation (look out--spinning blades!). They do suffer from some frequent annoyances, not the least of which is that you are often required to jump to a platform that you can't see. Altair also has an annoying tendency to slide forward a bit after landing his jump--sometimes slipping right off the platform and into death's cold embrace. Even worse, the camera will occasionally move to a position that doesn't even allow you to see Altair, forcing you into even more guesswork. As a rule, the platforming works, but the general fluidness of what you see onscreen is never matched by similarly slick controls.

Combat is often enjoyable, though it too suffers from some execution troubles. Your trusty sword will do the bulk of the work, and the X and Y buttons perform weak and strong attacks, respectively. You'll also pick up a number of other skills along the way that require you to block, then counter, in a manner similar to the counterattacks in the console version. You'll earn other weapons along the way, such as throwing daggers and bombs, but Altair's Chronicles rarely gives you a reason to opt for them, since mashing X and Y will usually get the job done without too much trouble. Beating up a few guards at once can be fun, particularly when the encounter occurs in the midst of trap sequences, but like the platforming, it feels looser than it should. The autotargeting doesn't seem to work well much of the time, so you'll waste time slashing at empty air--which in turn is made more frustrating by the fact that combo animations seem to take forever.

A few boss fights break up the pace, and they aren't bad, but they do serve to highlight some other control issues. Like with other key elements (picking up boxes, assassinating snoozing guards), you need to execute context-sensitive actions that require you to hit a particular button when you are in range of your target. All too often, however, you have to be in a peculiarly specific spot for this to work. Shuffling around just to push a crate is an annoyance, of course, but it's a mild one. Having to do the same "find the right position for the A button icon to appear" dance when fighting a boss, however, could lead to Altair's untimely death. And sometimes the game simply changes its mind and executes the standard move mapped to the button rather than the contextual move it's supposed to deliver. Even trying to switch weapons, which requires you to touch an icon on the touch screen, can be a royal pain, since your tap will often not register.

The touch screen's other main purpose is to display your minimap, though it does get some use in Altair's simple minigames. In some cases, you need to pickpocket your victims. This minigame requires you to scribble all over the screen to uncover all of the items your target is carrying in his satchel, and then carefully slide the needed object around the other items and out of the bag. The assassination minigame is supposed to approximate how Altair uses various pressure points to subdue his victims, and involves tapping various points as circles close in around them, somewhat in the manner of Elite Beat Agents. You won't be doing much of this, though it's just as well, considering that from a mechanical standpoint, these minigames are the least enjoyable aspect of Altair's Chronicles--a tacked-on way of giving the touch screen something to do.

You could finish Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles in around four hours, but even the promise of a harder difficulty level won't likely lure you back for a second play-through. It's hardly a bad game; in fact, the final hour mixes the various elements together nicely and hits a smooth stride as a result. Nevertheless, the game offers few surprises, and some sloppy execution problems get in the way far too often to make it outright recommendable.

http://qshare.com/get/142130/1992_Assassins_Creed_Altairs_Chronicles_USA_NDS-Micronauts.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/da2749/

zert

06-12-2008, 03:27 PM

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4863/93211573758frontjb5.jpg

Transformers: Autobots and Transformers: Decepticons are two sides of the same coin. Both games tell the same general story, they both share the same environments, and they both let you run amok as a robot that can transform into various vehicles. The main thing distinguishing the two versions is that you fight as a heroic Autobot in one and an evil Decepticon in the other. Regardless of which version you choose to bring home, you'll probably get a kick out of beating up opposing robots and exploring the huge 3D environments incognito as a car, helicopter, or some other Earthly conveyance. The bad news is that the uninspiring story missions and brief overall length pretty much guarantee you'll be done with the game for good in six hours or less.

When you first start the game, you'll watch a short video clip narrated by either Optimus Prime or Starscream (depending on the version) that explains how Megatron, the Decepticon leader, came to Earth 100 years ago searching for something called the "Allspark," and how both the Autobots and Decepticons have come to Earth to reclaim the mysterious artifact. Key events from the recent movie are depicted, but the human point of view is notably absent. On the Autobots' side, you take orders from Optimus Prime and go out on missions that involve gathering information, escorting human vehicles, or stopping Decepticon raids. On the Decepticons' side, you'll answer to Starscream and your missions will mainly involve causing public destruction and stealing from fortified military bases. Both games share three locations in common and have one exclusive location. In the Autobots version, you'll shadow the military's recovery of Megatron from the Arctic. In the Decepticons version, you'll take part in the Decepticon assault in Qatar. Also, each version has its own, unique ending.

A good way to describe the game is that it's Grand Theft Auto with giant robots instead of mobsters. As the story unfolds, you'll find yourself in large 3D environments complete with streets, buildings, traffic lights, and innocent car traffic. You can go anywhere you like on foot or in vehicle form, and you're free to climb up buildings, smash light poles, and throw cars around. In your vehicle form, nobody will take notice of you. However, if you roam around on foot or cause enough damage, robots from the other side as well as military vehicles will take notice of you and attack with lasers and armor-piercing bullets. You can fight back with your robotic fists or dish out the pain from a distance with your own lasers and missiles. Reducing rival robots to rubble is satisfying, but the combat is also very shallow. You have a few melee and weapon attacks, you can move out of the way of oncoming fire, and you can jump--that's it. There aren't any power-up items to speak of either, apart from the health-recovery orbs that exploding objects and robots occasionally leave behind. CPU-controlled enemies also do a lousy job of avoiding your attacks, although they generally have twice as much armor as you do. When you get bored of fighting, you can transform into your vehicle form and hide until the alert level goes back to normal.

Scattered throughout each environment are a number of spots that you can visit in order to attempt various challenge and story-related missions. Challenge missions involve simple tasks such as destroying cars or racing from one place to another. You can replay challenge missions as often as you like. By contrast, story missions are doled out in a set order and involve multi-step tasks that occasionally let you control familiar Transformers. In the Autobots version, you'll have opportunities to take Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Jazz, and Ratchet for a spin. In the Decepticons edition, you'll have brief stints with Barricade, Brawl, Blackout, Starscream, and Megatron. For the majority of missions, though, you'll control your generic create-a-bot. Being a create-a-bot has its perks. First, while the namesake bots have preordained rankings for strength and firepower, your generic bot's rankings continually grow as you gain experience from completing missions. Secondly, your custom bot isn't limited to a single transformation like the others are. You start out with a "beater" body, but you can gain new transformations by scanning the vehicles you come across on your travels. Your create-a-bot can transform into as many as 37 different cars, trucks, helicopters, and airplanes. Some skins even resemble popular characters from the Generation One cartoon and toy line.

All of the robots look nice up close, and their face and body details are generally well-defined. Transformations happen in a few quick steps and are totally sweet. The streets and buildings in the surrounding environment look simple by comparison and occasionally suffer from blocky or missing textures, but the sheer number of objects being displayed at any given time by the game's 3D engine is still impressive. The draw-in distance could be better, and fog conveniently makes it tougher to notice buildings popping into view, but you can always see a large portion of the world around you and any robots or tanks that happen to be nearby. While you can't actually destroy entire buildings, you can at least blacken them with your weapons. You can also smash surrounding fixtures like streetlights and dumpsters, and leave cracks in the pavement by jumping.

The audio mainly consists of a decent assortment of weapon and explosive noises, along with some hilarious radio chatter comments from nearby police and military vehicles. Robots that attack you will occasionally voice a taunt as well, and their laser blasts sometimes make the "ch-ch-choo" sound that the lasers made in the 1980s cartoon series. Story scenes put together with in-game graphics and recorded voice dialogue frequently appear, but what's really impressive is just how much recorded dialogue the developers managed to cram into a DS cartridge. Every story scene has at least a few lines of conversational dialogue, and each version of the game probably has around 30 unique story scenes. Activision wisely enlisted Peter Cullen and Frank Welker to lend their voices to "Optimus Prime" and "Megatron," respectively, just as they did in the cartoons. Steve Blum and Keith David do a great job voicing the generic bot and "Barricade" respectively. Transformers: Autobots and Transformers: Decepticons set a new standard for both the amount of and the quality of voice acting in a DS game.

For the most part, both versions of the game provide the same experience. Each version has five robot skins that the other doesn't, but the underlying transformations are identical in both games. You'll attempt a couple more stealth and escort related missions in the Autobots version, while the Decepticons version has a few more rampage missions. However, the bulk of missions in both games are structured similarly. The only upside that one version has over the other is that it's easier to gain experience and build strength in the Decepticons' game, because they gain experience from destroying property and police vehicles. The goodie-goodie Autobots are supposed to protect humanity, so they only earn experience by trashing Decepticons and completing missions.

In addition to the main story mode, the game also offers a multiplayer battle mode and a unique, online score-attack mode. The multiplayer battle mode is nothing special. Four people pick their bots and duke it out in deathmatch or keep-away matches. The score-attack mode, on the other hand, is actually rather interesting. Each day, you log into a server and download a new challenge mission. These missions are timed and typically involve destroying property or catching air off of jump ramps. For the rest of the day, you play the mission as often as you like and build up a score. Then, at the end of the day, you log back in and your score will be uploaded. The interesting aspect is that people playing the Autobots version of the game are all on one side, while everyone that bought the Decepticons version is on the other. The scores on both sides are added together and the side with the highest score is declared the winner for that day. At the end of the week, the team with the most daily wins gains possession of the "Allspark." Based on how significant your contribution is, you'll receive in-game tokens each day that eventually unlock the vehicle skins that aren't present in the main story mode.

As you can see, the differences between the two versions of the game are mostly cosmetic. Some people will enjoy the Decepticons version more because you gain experience faster and don't have to complete as many stealth missions, although that's really a matter of personal taste. In either case, the games look nice, the voice acting is marvelous, and transforming into vehicles and beating up on other robots is fun. It's just too bad Activision chose to publish two individual versions instead of a single game. The dodgy camera and targeting may be annoying, but all the filler missions and the overall short length of the story suck a lot of the joy out of being a Transformer.

http://qshare.com/get/99844/1161_Transformers_Autobots_USA_NDS-XPA.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/8110ca/

zert

06-12-2008, 03:33 PM

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3825/93811984464frontla8.jpg

Transformers: Autobots and Transformers: Decepticons are two sides of the same coin. Both games tell the same general story, they both share the same environments, and they both let you run amok as a robot that can transform into various vehicles. The main thing distinguishing the two versions is that you fight as a heroic Autobot in one and an evil Decepticon in the other. Regardless of which version you choose to bring home, you'll probably get a kick out of beating up opposing robots and exploring the huge 3D environments incognito as a car, helicopter, or some other Earthly conveyance. The bad news is that the uninspiring story missions and brief overall length pretty much guarantee you'll be done with the game for good in six hours or less.

When you first start the game, you'll watch a short video clip narrated by either Optimus Prime or Starscream (depending on the version) that explains how Megatron, the Decepticon leader, came to Earth 100 years ago searching for something called the "Allspark," and how both the Autobots and Decepticons have come to Earth to reclaim the mysterious artifact. Key events from the recent movie are depicted, but the human point of view is notably absent. On the Autobots' side, you take orders from Optimus Prime and go out on missions that involve gathering information, escorting human vehicles, or stopping Decepticon raids. On the Decepticons' side, you'll answer to Starscream and your missions will mainly involve causing public destruction and stealing from fortified military bases. Both games share three locations in common and have one exclusive location. In the Autobots version, you'll shadow the military's recovery of Megatron from the Arctic. In the Decepticons version, you'll take part in the Decepticon assault in Qatar. Also, each version has its own, unique ending.

A good way to describe the game is that it's Grand Theft Auto with giant robots instead of mobsters. As the story unfolds, you'll find yourself in large 3D environments complete with streets, buildings, traffic lights, and innocent car traffic. You can go anywhere you like on foot or in vehicle form, and you're free to climb up buildings, smash light poles, and throw cars around. In your vehicle form, nobody will take notice of you. However, if you roam around on foot or cause enough damage, robots from the other side as well as military vehicles will take notice of you and attack with lasers and armor-piercing bullets. You can fight back with your robotic fists or dish out the pain from a distance with your own lasers and missiles. Reducing rival robots to rubble is satisfying, but the combat is also very shallow. You have a few melee and weapon attacks, you can move out of the way of oncoming fire, and you can jump--that's it. There aren't any power-up items to speak of either, apart from the health-recovery orbs that exploding objects and robots occasionally leave behind. CPU-controlled enemies also do a lousy job of avoiding your attacks, although they generally have twice as much armor as you do. When you get bored of fighting, you can transform into your vehicle form and hide until the alert level goes back to normal.

Scattered throughout each environment are a number of spots that you can visit in order to attempt various challenge and story-related missions. Challenge missions involve simple tasks such as destroying cars or racing from one place to another. You can replay challenge missions as often as you like. By contrast, story missions are doled out in a set order and involve multi-step tasks that occasionally let you control familiar Transformers. In the Autobots version, you'll have opportunities to take Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Jazz, and Ratchet for a spin. In the Decepticons edition, you'll have brief stints with Barricade, Brawl, Blackout, Starscream, and Megatron. For the majority of missions, though, you'll control your generic create-a-bot. Being a create-a-bot has its perks. First, while the namesake bots have preordained rankings for strength and firepower, your generic bot's rankings continually grow as you gain experience from completing missions. Secondly, your custom bot isn't limited to a single transformation like the others are. You start out with a "beater" body, but you can gain new transformations by scanning the vehicles you come across on your travels. Your create-a-bot can transform into as many as 37 different cars, trucks, helicopters, and airplanes. Some skins even resemble popular characters from the Generation One cartoon and toy line.

All of the robots look nice up close, and their face and body details are generally well-defined. Transformations happen in a few quick steps and are totally sweet. The streets and buildings in the surrounding environment look simple by comparison and occasionally suffer from blocky or missing textures, but the sheer number of objects being displayed at any given time by the game's 3D engine is still impressive. The draw-in distance could be better, and fog conveniently makes it tougher to notice buildings popping into view, but you can always see a large portion of the world around you and any robots or tanks that happen to be nearby. While you can't actually destroy entire buildings, you can at least blacken them with your weapons. You can also smash surrounding fixtures like streetlights and dumpsters, and leave cracks in the pavement by jumping.

The audio mainly consists of a decent assortment of weapon and explosive noises, along with some hilarious radio chatter comments from nearby police and military vehicles. Robots that attack you will occasionally voice a taunt as well, and their laser blasts sometimes make the "ch-ch-choo" sound that the lasers made in the 1980s cartoon series. Story scenes put together with in-game graphics and recorded voice dialogue frequently appear, but what's really impressive is just how much recorded dialogue the developers managed to cram into a DS cartridge. Every story scene has at least a few lines of conversational dialogue, and each version of the game probably has around 30 unique story scenes. Activision wisely enlisted Peter Cullen and Frank Welker to lend their voices to "Optimus Prime" and "Megatron," respectively, just as they did in the cartoons. Steve Blum and Keith David do a great job voicing the generic bot and "Barricade" respectively. Transformers: Autobots and Transformers: Decepticons set a new standard for both the amount of and the quality of voice acting in a DS game.

For the most part, both versions of the game provide the same experience. Each version has five robot skins that the other doesn't, but the underlying transformations are identical in both games. You'll attempt a couple more stealth and escort related missions in the Autobots version, while the Decepticons version has a few more rampage missions. However, the bulk of missions in both games are structured similarly. The only upside that one version has over the other is that it's easier to gain experience and build strength in the Decepticons' game, because they gain experience from destroying property and police vehicles. The goodie-goodie Autobots are supposed to protect humanity, so they only earn experience by trashing Decepticons and completing missions.

In addition to the main story mode, the game also offers a multiplayer battle mode and a unique, online score-attack mode. The multiplayer battle mode is nothing special. Four people pick their bots and duke it out in deathmatch or keep-away matches. The score-attack mode, on the other hand, is actually rather interesting. Each day, you log into a server and download a new challenge mission. These missions are timed and typically involve destroying property or catching air off of jump ramps. For the rest of the day, you play the mission as often as you like and build up a score. Then, at the end of the day, you log back in and your score will be uploaded. The interesting aspect is that people playing the Autobots version of the game are all on one side, while everyone that bought the Decepticons version is on the other. The scores on both sides are added together and the side with the highest score is declared the winner for that day. At the end of the week, the team with the most daily wins gains possession of the "Allspark." Based on how significant your contribution is, you'll receive in-game tokens each day that eventually unlock the vehicle skins that aren't present in the main story mode.

As you can see, the differences between the two versions of the game are mostly cosmetic. Some people will enjoy the Decepticons version more because you gain experience faster and don't have to complete as many stealth missions, although that's really a matter of personal taste. In either case, the games look nice, the voice acting is marvelous, and transforming into vehicles and beating up on other robots is fun. It's just too bad Activision chose to publish two individual versions instead of a single game. The dodgy camera and targeting may be annoying, but all the filler missions and the overall short length of the story suck a lot of the joy out of being a Transformer.

http://qshare.com/get/99843/1162_Transformers_Decepticons_USA_NDS-XPA.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/132b96/

zert

06-12-2008, 03:43 PM

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/6222/92958471191frontdt8.jpg

Nearly 10 years after Resident Evil first shocked and amazed game players around the world, it's been squished down to a portable format that preserves most of what made the original so great. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence is basically a straight port of the 1996 PlayStation classic, though it adds a few neat twists made possible by the Nintendo DS. While the graphical presentation isn't as impressive as you'd expect from Resident Evil, it's still impressive to have the whole game playable in the palm of your hand. More importantly, Resident Evil DS still packs some good freaky fun, and it's a cool way for the series' newer fans to experience the game that coined the phrase "survival horror."

Resident Evil's story comes straight out of a horror movie--a bad one if you judge it by the quality of the so-awful-it's-funny voice acting and the cheesy full-motion video cutscenes seen in the intro and endings. But apart from some dialogue that's every bit as painful as the various gruesome-looking scenes of violence the game is filled with, the story of Resident Evil effectively sets the stage for plenty of tense and suspenseful action. The premise is simple but compelling: The elite S.T.A.R.S. alpha team is sent in to reconnoiter with bravo team, which disappeared while investigating a disturbance near an old mansion. But alpha team is promptly attacked by monstrous things and forced to split up. Now Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, together with several other surviving comrades, are trapped in the mansion and trying to regroup and escape. But are their conventional weapons enough to protect them against the living dead? After an awkward start, the story becomes quite captivating as Chris and Jill begin unraveling the mysteries of both their hideous enemies and the mansion.

Similarly, the gameplay feels rather clunky at first, but once you get accustomed to the controls and few odd quirks, it gets fun. The action is still satisfyingly visceral after all these years, so you can look forward to blasting zombies' heads off, sticking your knife into killer crows, stomping baby giant spiders, and other good stuff like that. Aiming and shooting is as simple as pressing and holding the right shoulder button to ready your gun, then tapping the fire button to squeeze off rounds. However, the tight corridors of the mansion coupled with the relative scarcity of ammo means you'll really need to make your shots count, especially since some of your foes aren't as slow and lumbering as the zombies you'll frequently encounter. At least it's easy to tell where you're going; the top screen on the DS persistently tracks your progress on a highly legible map. The top screen also starts flashing when you're injured, a useful but somewhat distracting visual cue that lets you know when you should be scrounging for a health power-up.

Moving around is trickier than shooting, partly because the game's cinematic camera angles can be disorienting. Pressing up on the D pad always makes your character walk forward, which doesn't seem intuitive at first but helps let you stay in control as the game keeps switching up camera angles from one static scene to the next. This control scheme carried the Resident Evil series through numerous installments, but the behind-the-back perspective of last year's amazing Resident Evil 4 changed all that. If you've played RE4, you'll probably find it tough to go back to these old controls.

A few other gameplay contrivances stick out, betraying the fact that this is an old game. Your characters' inventory space is very limited, for example. Chris can only carry six items at a time, so if you've got two keys, a shotgun, some spare shells, and a medicinal herb, you're practically full. If your inventory's tapped, you can't just drop stuff to make room for more, but must find a storage chest in which you can dump off your spare equipment. In some parts of the game, you naturally wind up going back and forth through areas multiple times just because you don't have enough room to transport all the stuff you find. Also, your ability to save your progress is limited to the number of ink ribbons you have. You use these up at the typewriters scattered around the mansion each time you save. This limited save system might seem cruel and unusual, but you'll probably grow to appreciate how it helps build tension without really hurting gameplay--besides, you'll find ink ribbons in fairly generous supply. However, the inability to save at any time or as often as you like means Resident Evil DS isn't really well suited for quick play sessions, which you might expect out of a portable game.

Resident Evil DS features a classic mode that's mostly identical to the 1996 original, the updated "rebirth" mode that introduces some new surprises, and a Wi-Fi mode in which up to four players can either compete or cooperate as they fight through several different areas. You've also got two playable characters to choose from and multiple endings to discover in the single-player modes, and many more characters are unlockable for use in multiplayer, which helps create lots of lasting value. The underlying gameplay is a pretty simple mix of blasting zombies and other monsters at close range while solving occasional puzzles, but it's good enough to sustain multiple plays through the storyline (which takes maybe six or seven hours the first time), especially since enemy placement changes depending on the mode and your character. Chris and Jill take slightly different paths through the game, but apart from that they play almost identically. Jill has an easier time because she can pick certain locks and carry more stuff, but Chris can take more punishment. Both will need to overcome a few fairly well-thought-out puzzles besides just blasting zombies, thoughThe game's occasional puzzles are appreciably more interesting in the rebirth mode, which challenges you to use the DS touch screen and microphone in a few clever ways. For example, you'll need to blow into the DS' microphone to try to resuscitate an injured team member, and you'll even need to do the equivalent of that popular parlor trick where some tough guy quickly stabs a knife in between his fingers without cutting his hand. Rebirth mode packs a number of neat little surprises such as that, but one of the most jarring is how first-person-perspective battles occasionally break out when you enter a new room. All of a sudden you'll see enemies shambling towards you. You can't move, but instead must slide across or poke at the touch screen to slash at your foes with your knife. These bits seem really tacked on at first but they're pretty entertaining, especially since you can perform flashy-looking critical hits by hacking at your enemies the instant before they hit you.

You know a game's a classic when you can play it years later and still have a great time. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence is surprisingly successful at translating the scary bits of the original to a much smaller format, and the end result has a lot to offer Resident Evil fans as well as those who've always wondered what the fuss is about. You wouldn't expect a portable game to be able to scare you, especially since this version's visuals simply aren't on par with the cutting-edge graphics Resident Evil is known for. But Resident Evil DS packs in a lot of gory, atmospheric moments. It's pretty wild that now you can play a game like this on the go.

http://qshare.com/get/98820/0314_Resident_Evil_Deadly_Silence_USA_NDS-WRG.zip.html
or
http://www.filefactory.com/file/3e843d/

zert

06-12-2008, 03:53 PM

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3601/93368476744frontdz1.jpg

Aficionados of scrappy, arcade-style racing games will feel right at home with Need for Speed Carbon for the Nintendo DS. While the DS game doesn't include all of the features that its counterparts on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox have, it does ape enough of their features and atmosphere such that it delivers the same sort of spirited street-racing experience. Beyond that, it's also a fun, sometimes-hectic game that gives players a good selection of cars, parts, and courses to fiddle with.

Generally speaking, Carbon is set up like you'd expect it to be. You compete against opponents in various circuit, elimination, sprint, and endurance-type races; new courses and cars unlock along the way; and your victories net you points that you can use to buy new cars and upgrade your old ones. Each of the game's 12 courses emphasizes a different setting and structure, and you'll find shortcuts all over the place. The driving is fast-paced, and the cars feel sufficiently heavy. The artificial intelligence, meanwhile, does a good job of nudging fenders without coming across as unfair. Smashing into oncoming traffic can lead to a spectacular crash, but the AI usually isn't so harsh that one or two collisions will knock you out of contention. At least CPU opponents are subject to the same mishaps, unlike in last year's game when they would simply pass right through commuter traffic. As for the controls, everything you'd want at your fingertips is there. Steering is mapped to the directional pad; the shoulder buttons handle braking and acceleration; and the main buttons activate the handbrake, wingman, and nitro functions.

Three exciting new gamebreaker features help distinguish Carbon from previous Need for Speed games. Two of these are rewind and slow-motion abilities, which let you recover from crashes and slow down the action just by pressing a button. The other, more significant new addition is the wingman. In a nutshell, you have a buddy in the race that will come to your aid with a helpful block or draft whenever you summon them. Blockers will try to nudge and T-bone the other CPU cars. Drafters, on the other hand, will get in front of you and cut down on your car's wind resistance, helping you achieve a higher top speed. They also refill your nitrous, rewind, and slow-mo tanks while you draft behind them. Wingmen are a welcome addition to the Need for Speed formula, as they can instigate some awesome crashes and change the pecking order in an instant. About the only downside to them is that you can't have both a blocker and a drafter in a single race. You must pick one or the other before the race starts. As such, you have to decide which strategy is more important, slowing down the other competitors or being able to refill your nitro, rewind, and slo-mo tanks.

Of course, Carbon is still very thick with the unique features that people have come to associate with the Need for Speed franchise. You're not just racing to win a title. Instead, with every win, you're taking away turf from six rival gangs and bringing their members into your posse as wingmen. Some animated comic-book-style cutaways gradually reveal the ins and outs of the story as you capture more turf and enlist new allies. In true Need for Speed fashion, the game lets you amass a stable of as many as 15 real-world cars and provides a ridiculous selection of performance and visual kits to upgrade them with. We're talking dozens upon dozens of engine, transmission, and body upgrades, as well as spoilers, hoods, paint jobs, and vinyl decals. And then there are the crashes and nitro boosts. Bumping and plowing into opponents is OK. Or, if you need to blow past them, you've got a nitrous button that you can push to kick the car into overdrive.

For the most part, the graphics and audio convey all of the excitement with gusto, although the limitations of the hardware are obvious. The 3D environments are busy with tunnels, overpasses, buildings, and the like, and the frame rate is usually silky smooth, but the textures are grainy and some of the polygon work is just plain boxy. The flat-shaded cars are nice and shiny, especially when you dress them up with decals and neon kits, but the graphics engine can only