Posted: Friday, June 13 at 8:19 am
You’ve probably played a Worms game before, but if you haven’t, Worms: Open Warfare 2 would be a good place to start. For those who have never played Worms before, Worms is a game where you take control of a team of worm soldiers and battle against the opposing team or teams. You have an arsenal of weapons including things like the bazooka, shotgun, sheep, fire punch, and ninja rope, plus many more. You move your worms into position, take aim with your quirky weapons and destroy the enemies.
Worth the Price:
• Polished Worms experience
• Lots of multiplayer options, including WiFi
• Lengthy and challenging single player campaign
• Customizations of team and level schemes
• Puzzle mode
• Unlockables to extend the life of the game
Not Worth the Price:• May be a little difficult for a first time Worms player
• Controls take a little getting used to
Worms: Open Warfare 2 has been reduced in price since its release and now sells for about $15. This game has been greatly improved since the first release on the DS; the AI, the graphics, the challenge, and the multiplayer options are all better. With the WiFi option and quick play setting, this game has a huge replay value. I would recommend this game to almost any DS owner and is well worth the price.
Posted: Friday, June 6 at 4:10 pm
Your sister has fallen asleep and won’t wake up, so what are you going to do? Go fishing, of course. In River King: Mystic Valley for the Nintendo DS, you take control of the main character who is on a mission of catch the River King because one scale from the fish will magically wake your sister from her slumber. Along the way, you meet a few sidekicks with different abilities and other characters who will compete against you in tournaments.
Worth the Price:
• 8 places to fish and over 100 types of fish to catch
• Simple touch controls
• Wi-Fi fishing tournaments
Not Worth the Price:
• Hooking and fighting the fish is too easy
• Grinding to catch multiples of the same fish
• Sub-par sound effects and music
River King: Mystic Valley sells for about $28, and was a let down. A fishing game should have an entertaining and challenging fishing mechanic, but this one doesn’t. The touch controls work really well, but felt dumbed-down making hooking and catching the fish too easy and feeling more like a chore than fun. Although the tournaments are fun and put more challenge on catching fish and doing it quickly. You’ll still enjoy River King: Mystic Valley if you like fishing games, but you may want to wait for a sale before picking this one up.
Posted: Wednesday, June 4 at 9:10 am
Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for the Nintendo DS is a rogue-like game, or in other words, a randomly generated dungeon crawler. In this game you control Izuna, a female ninja, in her adventure where her “Grandboss” wanders off and Izuna offends a village’s gods. Izuna must stay in the village to battle each of the village’s gods and set things right.
Worth the Price:• Difficulty and harsh rogue-like penalties
• Quirky story, humor, and interesting characters
• Upgrading and refining your weapons and armor
• Replay value of the random dungeons
Not Worth the Price:• Short but sometimes overly difficult dungeons
• Lower quality graphics
• The level-up grind
Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja sells for around $25 and will probably only appeal to a select group of people. To like this game, I think you have to enjoy randomly generated dungeon crawlers, but also a punishment system that requires you to be careful about every move you make; since dying in a dungeon will cause you to lose everything you are carrying, including the weapons and armor you spent so much time upgrading. But at least you will have another reason to go back through the dungeons, besides trying to level-up. I enjoyed this game, the story, and the characters, but was frustrated with the difficultly level of some of the dungeons.