Advance Wars Dual Strike Review

[Master Inuyasha]

Advance Wars Dual Strike Review for the Nintendo DS

The latest installment in the Advance Wars series, Advance Wars DS delivers the nolstalgic factors that would keep you hooked for hours. Debuting on the Nintendo DS (Nintendo's latest handheld), is it all that? Not much was improved from the GameBoy Advance version, and quite frankly, the GBA version had much better graphics.

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising had alot of awesome graphics. Advance Wars Dual Strike seems to not have improved the graphics system at all, if any, it seems to have backtracked in the graphical part of the game.

The heart of the game is an army type strategy. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is awesome, which will keep you playing for hours. But with big fans of the series, like me, this is a dissapointment. With the Nintendo DSes reputation at stake, the developers of Advance Wars could have done better.

Now, for the gameplay. There is eleven menus in al, and I won't get into deep detail in each of them, just the important ones.

For veterans of the series, the War Room and Campaign Mode should all be familiar territory. Campaign Mode is basically the storyline. Play through it to gain some critical experience and sharpen your skills. The War Room is something different. You enter it, and you already have a couple of defualt maps. (You can buy more maps with "credits" that you earn). You can select which map you want, unlike Campaign Mode, and which CO you want. (Again, there are some defualt ones, the rest you must purchase later). After emerging Victorious from a map, you earn credits, where you can spend at "Battlemaps". You can also earn credits from Campaign Mode.

There is also a multiplayer option where you can play with a DS per person and an Advance Wars DS cartridge each, or DS per person and one cartridge, or One DS and one cartridge.

There is a new mode called Combat. This mode to me is possible the best part of the game. You purchase units with the 20,000 credits the game gives you, (not all units can be purchased) and you can only control one unit at a time. You play in real time, so no turns. To capture city, you place any unit, and just let it sit there until the timer counts down to zero. Then the city is yours! City's in this mode doesn't give you money, but does restore you health! Also, if you capture a base, you get one extra unit of the unit that just captured the base. Win the combat mode, and get a ribbon. There may be a way to play an even harder mode in combat mode. But I will not tell you that secret.

Then there is the last mode, survival. Basically here, you try to beat a map in less then X days, or survive a number of days, or simply capture a certain amount of building. Not very satisfying.

SCORES:

Graphics: 6 (Could have been much better, on hardware with 3D acceleration possibilities)

Gameplay: 9 (Very addicting)

Replay Value: 9 (Awesome game, makes you want to play it some more)

Longitivity: 10 (300 medals to collect. Good luck)

Overal Score: 8.5 (The game itself was great, just not the graphics)

Overall, the game is great, and if you have $35 lying around, I recommend purchasing it, as it is one of the best games for the Nintendo DS that is not a remake. The graphis could have been much better, but it is livable.

This was written by Master InuYasha, please do not use without giving proper credit.

[pspcrazy]

Awesome this seems like a must get game For me gfx are not my interest for handhels its moe the fun factor. Ill be looking into this game for purchase .

Thanks for the awesome review.

[sorrow]

Dude I Would Have Given This Game A 9.5 It's Addicting,Overall Fun,I Loved The Little Drawings, But The Reason I Liked This Was Because It Was Strategic And Sometimes Hard, It Better If You Play Against All Four Nations In One Match,I Didn't Like The Story Much I Just Played On My Own Custom Made Levels And And Custom Matches, I Loved This Game And I Think It's The Best Strategic Game On The DS, Thanks For Sharing This Review It's Awesome