FuzzyCo

Soul Bubbles is one of the funnest games ever. Srsly! It's probably in the platformer genre, but instead of controlling a little jumping Mario et al, you're a "Soul Herder" who blows on the titular Soul Bubble to navigate it across a dangerous world to safe rest in a Soul Cube. (How many times can I can say "Soul"?)

Said "blowing" is accomplished with the DS' stylus, not by actually blowing into the microphone. There was a brief awkward moment at the beginning of the game where you're required to blow into the microphone and I wondered if I'd be able to play this game on the train, but thankfully that was the only time that was required -- I assume to check off some Nintendo "uses special features of the DS" requirement.

Anyway, the game mechanic is both interestingly different and plain old fun. And the music and design is top notch. I loved it, can you tell? And hey, it's not just me -- it's won two Milthons and it was nominated for a BAFTA this year. (And hey, guess what else was up for a BAFTA -- Ninjatown, which I just found out had its story and dialogue written by my good friend Dan's brother, Robbie Q. Telfer.)

FuzzyCo grade: A+

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a sequel to the Game Cube's Wind Waker and is presented in the same super-cute cartoony style. And let's note that, indeed, there's no real innovation in game design here. You're going to be going into dungeons and solving puzzles to find 4 of this and 5 of those to assemble the thing that'll get you to there. Super-annoyingly, you also have to return to one main dungeon, the Temple of the Ocean King, about 20 times and you have to retrace your steps every time (alright, only mostly every time, but still).

But for all of that, I like the standard Zelda game play, and the use of the touch screen for controls made controlling Link more fun than ever before. I loved being able to direct the path of the boomerang by drawing on the screen.

FuzzyCo grade: A

If you like puzzles, all kinds of puzzles -- word puzzles, math puzzles, chess puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, geometry puzzles, etc, etc -- then Professor Layton and the Curious Village is exactly the game you want on your Nintendo DS. There's even a special feature where, after you've finished the nearly 200 puzzles in the game, you can download a new puzzle each week. Puzzles! Oh, and it's gorgeous.

Probably my only complaint about the game is that the way the puzzles are integrated into the main through-line is tenuous at best and that, oddly, the mystery of that main plot unfolds on its own, with out giving you a chance to solve it.

FuzzyCo grade: A

I've been addicted to the the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games since Tony Hawk Underground (I think it was the Story Mode that really made the game click for me) (and I've since gone back and played all the earlier ones). I usually play the games exclusively on the PS2 -- the games are dependent on fairly careful control fiddling and I just don't want to deal with a different controller. But I found a copy of Tony Hawk's American Sk8land for the DS at Toys R' Us for $10 and decided to give it a whirl.

I'm glad I did -- it was a thoroughly enjoyable version of the TH games. The DS seems to be providing PS1 level graphics and performance, which is fine for the skateboarding. It does make the skater and board customization kind of a waste - you can't really see your skater in enough detail for it to really matter. (And I don't think I'd like any lower level of graphics, though, so I'm glad I skipped all the GBA versions of the games.) I went through the whole story mode of the game and then actually went back and unlocked all the levels in classic mode, which is unusual for me.

The biggest place I noticed the cut-down nature of the game was the soundtrack -- there are only about 8 songs in the whole game and so they start to wear thin after a while. I Like Dirt by the Thunderlords is funny the first 20 times you hear it, but then...

I haven't played any of the Dragon Quest games, except for the weird little spin-off game/toy, Kenshin Dragon Quest, which features a sword controller that you wave around in front of your TV*. The first enemy you encounter in that game, and I'm guessing in many of the other Dragon Quest games, is a happy little blue slime ball. Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is an adventure game for the Nintendo DS that is entirely from the perspective of one of these blue slimes. Now, this is no bold deconstruction of the fantasy game genre, ala Mary Gentle's Grunts. Rather it's a quick, fun adventure game pitting your plucky blue slime against a gang of punk platypuses who have kidnapped the other 100 residents of your slime village. The game play is fun and the recurring "tank battle" mini-game is one of the most original battle mechanisms I've ever encountered. And there are plenty terrible puns on elements from other Square/Enix games.

FuzzyCo grade: A.

* Which now has a sequel for the Wii.

Puzzle Quest is a rather frustrating game: the graphics are terrible and the game is buggy and crashed frequently* -- a rarity for a console game. But it's also incredibly addictive. There's a veneer of an RPG game bolted onto Bejeweled as a battle mechanic (and item-forging, spell-researching, etc. mechanic). Something about the near-mindless pattern matching combined with the "I'm making progress" of the RPG system combined to keep me (and Erica) playing the game for months. When I hit a brickwall at the final boss, even after completing all the side-quests, Erica helped me grind through enough battles to get enough gold to improve my stats to the point where I could beat Bane. And now that the game is finished, Erica is still playing to finish researching all the spells.

I did have a pet peeve with the intersection of the story and game mechanic. It was incredibly unrealistic that you could capture and control entire cities and it didn't affect your relationship with the inhabitants at all. I realize I'm making that complant about a game where this is high battle, but still.

* Fortunately the game auto-saves after battles, otherwise it would have been thrown out the window in frustration.

Our Tetris DS friend code is 7277-1792-4430. I say "our" because it might be me and it might be Erica. If you defeat us easily, it was me. If we kick your butt, it was Erica.