The Death Jr. series’ first foray onto the DS looks like a solid title. The developers at Backbone Entertainment tried a lot of things that have been successful on the DS, and even added a few new ideas into the mix. However, most hit titles have focused on one thing, and the effort put into each facet of the game makes all of it seem thin and unwieldy.
The plot of this game doesn’t stray far from the others in the series – that is to say – quite bizarre. As Death Jr. (or A
Lately, Konami has tended to stick to franchises and licenses. It’s served them well, bringing in millions even if quality is sub-par. It’s interesting, then, to see the company release a game like Time Ace. Though vaguely reminiscent of the arcade classic Time Pilot, there was no real effort to cash in on anything. Sadly, this game might drive Konami to not take risks in the future. The games has players taking on the role of —get this— Dr. Clock, a brilliant scientist in the early 1900s that not only builds a time machine, but is also conveniently an ace pilot. When he miraculously finds out somehow that his suspicious assistant Scythe has taken his machine and is using it to collect weapons and take over the world, he quickly builds a second time machine into a biplane and takes off into the future to track him down. This might be one of those times where they should have bought a pre-existing story and used that instead. Storyline aside, Time Ace is an unpolished shooter that makes some attempts at fun. The levels, despite the illusion of free-roaming battlefields, are very much on rails. The AI is not nearly adequate, and the game only becomes challenging when shots start to do a lot more damage. Beating levels unlock new planes, but there’s never a reason to use anything but the latest model, so it hardly matters. Time Ace adds on a multiplayer mode that would be worth it if they had managed to enable Download Play, but that’s about it. There’s nothing here to make it worth playing again… no Challenge Mode or anything. It is entertaining for about 30 minutes or so, but that’s not enough to make it worth picking up, or even renting.
Turn-based strategy games haven’t made a very strong showing on the 360, and Band of Bugs is there to fill that gap in the library. There are no levels, no stat points, no party selection, and no random encounters. Everything is scripted, and by God you’ll play that level with three bugs whether you like it or not.
Each of the game’s 20 storyline missions is scripted in this manner, and most begin and end with a few lines of dialog to explain what’s going on, what’s significant, and – if applicable – what that new unit type does and why it’s useful. This is a wonderful change from the standard TBS that inundates the player with options and move sets and mission selection. In Band of Bugs, it’s genuinely possible to start up the game, play a mission, and be done in ten minutes. Final Fantasy Tactics it’s not, and that’s okay because it isn’t trying to be.
Fans of the TBS genre will enjoy Band of Bugs. It’s got varied units, interesting missions with a difficulty that ramps up appropriately, and online multiplayer. Most tactics games are a single-player affair because they’re built to stack the odds against you and force you to come up with a crafty plan and take out six skeletons and six bombs with Ramza, two squires, and a chemist. Band of Bugs, however, by taking character progression out of the player’s control manages to create a challenging single-player campaign and competent multiplayer at the same time. There’s no attachment to your favorite squad here because you didn’t have to invest any time getting them just right. The game did it for you, and the multiplayer does it for you, too. It doesn’t seem like a good fit to take control away from the player in a tactics game, but it works beautifully. And honestly, it’s nice to know that the current mission is winnable with the squad I’ve got. There’s no way I equipped my archer wrong because I wasn’t the one that outfitted him. People that do this for a living figured out the balance between character abilities and player fun.
Band of Bugs certainly isn’t going to unseat Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Front Mission 3 from their places at the top of the tactics genre, but it’s got a lot going for it. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s entertaining, and defeating giant warrior bugs by pushing them off the edge of the world is always good for a laugh. Ninja Bee knows how to make a good casual game, and Band of Bugs is no exception. They’ve managed to marry the strategic thinking of the tactics game type with the quick shot of entertainment of the arcade game. If you enjoy tactics games and have an extra 800 MS points, then Band of Bugs won’t disappoint.
It’s sad when sequels don’t live up to their progenitors. It’s even worse when the original was a game worth buying a system for. You can’t buy that kind of hype, and it’s a damned shame when it’s wasted on a game that ships with a game-breaking bug and just isn’t anywhere near as fun to play as the original. And that’s why you should find a Neo-Geo Pocket Color and a copy of Card Fighter’s Clash.
Games aren’t supposed to ship with errors. They’re especially not supposed to ship with errors that make the game impossible to complete. SNK has offered to replace the defective cartridges, but it’s a small consolation. You’ll have to redo everything on the new cartridge and with a story as weak as Card Fighters DS‘s you’ll have a hard time going through it all again.
Card battle games can survive with a weak story, but they can’t be fun when the battle system just doesn’t work. Those are really the only two things that a card battle game has: story and a battle system. It’s difficult to judge this game against its predecessor, but the predecessor was too good to ignore. In the original, each competitor could have up to three cards in play at any given time. This made the game strategic. It was important to choose your cards wisely, and it made the game easy to learn but difficult to master. In what could only be thought of as an upgrade, Card Fighters DS allows up to eight cards on the field at a time. This removes the strategy featured in the original and turns the update into a race to get the most cards into play.
In addition to a thin story and an overly forgiving battle system, Card Fighters DS goes out of its way to make things difficult to understand by featuring one of the worst translations available. Not since Zero Wing has the English language been butchered so badly. The translation is bad enough that it can be difficult to discern just what each card does, and that’s something of a problem when a game is build on cards that feature a lot of text.
SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS isn’t a good game, and it’s only made worse by the shining example of card-based excellence that is the Neo-Geo Pocket Color’s Card Fighter’s Clash. Bad text, overly forgiving battles, and a bug that keeps the player from finishing the game make this a game that should be passed on. Stay strong. You’ll find that NGPC and Card Fighter’s Clash at a garage sale someday.
After playing Carcassonne, it has become obvious to me that Microsoft released its first two board game classics in the wrong order. I like Catan, I really do, but Carcassonne is fast, simple to learn, and it’s not too hard to become a decent player. Catan, on the other hand, is more cerebral. Victory hinges on one’s ability to make great trades and dominate the board without seeming like a threat. If Microsoft’s plan was to ease video gamers into the world of board games, they really should have started with Carcassonne. The only thing it lacks is a work-safe reason to say A
