For the New Gamer—and You Too
Combine an entertaining story and an engrossing world: you get Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is an exemplary entry in the DS' growing interactive story genre, featuring point-and-click adventure gameplay, DS-centric touch screen puzzles, and one of the more innovative art styles to hit any system. As former detective Kyle Hyde, you'll work your way through a multi-threaded story trying to unravel the mystery surrounding a silent young woman; hearing tales from a large cast of characters, working out the intricacies of their tales, and even doing some actual detective work along the way.
Obtainable for a mere US$30, Kororinpa: Marble Mania is built around a simple concept: tilt your Wii Remote to roll a marble from the beginning of the level to the end. Where it excels, beyond the excellent control, is in its level design; you'll find yourself going from a simple stage that can be completed in under ten seconds by a skilled player to stages that have you making jumps, rolling up the sides of walls, and firing out of cannons—all without having to learn any new styles of gameplay. The game's 65 stages can also be taken on by two players simultaneously, racing their marbles to the end to crown the winner.
For $20, Mercury Meltdown Revolution is really hard to pass up. Like Kororinpa, it uses the tilt sensor in the Wii remote to maneuver a blob of mercury in its liquid state through colourful levels filled with various hazards. These simple controls make it easy for anyone to pick up and play, but the clever level design makes it much more complex than you might think at first. There are spikes to split up the mercury in order to activate multiple switches at the same time. There are heating and cooling pads to change the density of the mercury. There are conveyor belts, moving platforms, mercury colour-specific switches. Throwing this all together creates a challenging, but incredibly fun experience.
The Ace Attorney series—which, as released so far, have been dominated by lead protagonist Phoenix Wright—have been enjoying newfound popularity in the West after a long run as a popular series in Japan. The games take the form of a story-driven adventure title, but shine in their trademark courtroom sequences, where you spend most of your time counter-examining witnesses, pressing for details, presenting evidence you've gathered—all in a tense bid to prove your client innocent.
Despite the murderous dealings afoot, the Ace Attorney games' scripts are very humorous and quite entertaining, owing mostly to the crazy cast of characters and their quirks. It's a rare gem of a series, and anyone who likes adventure, humor, mysteries, or just a good time should get into these titles.
Melding the best of traditional crosswords and Sudoku, adding pictures and removing letters and words, the Picture Crossword has existed for years on many a Nintendo system. The DS brings touch-screen controls, more puzzles, multiplayer, online multiplayer and downloadable content—the likes of which can extend the lifespan of the game limitlessly.
All of this makes Picross DS the best version of Picross so far and an irresistable package no DS owner should be without this holiday season. Fans of puzzle games, crosswords, Sudoku, or even logic itself don't need to be convinced; it's everybody else who will be convinced after just minutes with Picross DS. It really is that good.
Planet Puzzle League is a game that can be played very casually, or with an extremely competitive edge. The standard game has rows of multicolored blocks rising evenly from the bottom of the screen. You can move these multicolored blocks around with the stylus in a horizontal motion. Make three or more blocks of the same color in a row and the blocks disappear. If the screen fills up with blocks, you lose. It sounds easy, and it is! The challenging aspect is trying to setup chains, which are caused by blocks falling into the space of the blocks that you eliminated. To help with this, the game includes a puzzle mode, where the blocks don't rise at all, but you have to make all of the block disappear within a certain number of moves.
While all of this can be fun and relaxing, the real goal is to practice your chains to get high scores and be able to compete in multiplayer mode. This is probably where the more traditional gamer would really get into it. Thankfully, the casual gamer doesn't have to tread that far and can enjoy the quieter aspects of the game.