Super Lucky Kill!
By Ahchay
I’ll admit that I approached this game with mixed feelings. Advance Wars is one of the defining games of this generation, one that future rodents will look back on with awe and respect as the starting point of their love affair with videogames. A Robotron for the handheld generation if you will…
Whereas Advance Wars 2 was a little bit underwhelming. More of the same (as we’ve seen with everything from Jet Set Willy to Everyone Loves Katamari) not necessarily being the road to greatness that we might have wanted.
Picture Ed Ely couldn’t resist a cover from a
Favourite Game.
And, I will further admit, the opening four or five hours of play with this iteration of Advance Wars merely reinforced the sense of Déjà vu I originally felt with AW2. It is, to a large part, exactly the same game – again. There is a new big tank, along with one or two other new units, the same baffling references to “a fog-of-war rolling in”, the same inane chatter between the CO’s, the same laughably obvious weak points on each map and the same ‘behind-the-scenes’ bad guy who you only get to fight once.
But there’s new stuff in here too. Good new stuff.
I’ll skip lightly over the touch-screen (of novelty value only, you won’t use it) and the “Dual Strike” of the title (bit pointless if truth be told). Tagging CO’s - allowing you to combine two different CO’s for different stages of the battle – is more useful, but it’s nothing to write home about. Extra battle-types using the second screen are fun too – actually, mention should be made of the use of the two screens, it doesn’t make a big thing about them, it just uses them. Top marks also for remembering that there is a gap between the screens (something that a bewildering number of DS games seem to forget)
A screenshot blatantly not being a
good example of this gap.
More interesting is the ability to customise your CO’s – as they gain in experience, you’re given skill points which you can use to hone their abilities. Want to make Grit slightly less useless in close-combat? You can. Want to give Sami even more of a capture boost? No problem. Want to gain money quickly by bashing things round the head? Sorted. Old hat to RPG veterans maybe, but it’s a lovely way to tune the game more to your own style of play.
But the stuff that really makes this worth the purchase – and, make no mistake, it is worth your money – are the extra modes. You’ll breeze through the campaign mode garnering S and A ranks as you go without even breaking a sweat. Then you’ll try the Survival modes – win as many battles as you can with a fixed amount of cash, time or turns. Or how about Combat mode? Advance Wars re-imagined as an arcade-style blast (comparisons to VCS combat are fair, albeit slightly simplistic). The War Room makes a welcome return alongside a free Battle mode. And wireless play – assuming you have DS owning chums – is every bit the vindictive nasty little time-waster that you’d expect.
No it’s not a Lego Brick, look closer and witness early
multiplayer genius.
Someone at Intelligent Systems, it seems, has been playing away from home. These are all features that you’d expect to see in an a RPG – or even in King of Fighters. Here though, they seem fresh and exciting and are more than enough to ensure that – finally – the GBA slot in your DS can be freed for other, lesser, games.
October 2005
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