Can I tell you that the only game I give a FUCK about in the upcoming months is the Nintendo DS revision of Dragon Quest IV? Little Big Planet? I don't even know what that is. Gears Of War 2? I've had enough oat meal skinned space marines thanks! And I don't even know what the heck is coming out for the Wii this fall. I don't think I even care!

Nope, just Dragon Quest IV thanks. I even swallowed my pride and pre-ordered it at a GameStop so that I can get it right on day 1 when the store opens. Maybe I'll bring my DS and just play it there instead of going right home. I think when I get it I will just play through it three times. The first time will be within a week from it's release. I hereby proclaim September 17th - 24th, 2008 as Dragon Quest Week here at BIG.



I wish I was this dude, playing Dragon Quest IV on my Nintendo DS Lite hand held gaming device! Stretched out on my bed with a Coke on my nightstand.

I love how they are re-using the engine from Dragon Quest VII for these DS remakes. It looks like 3D Super NES! You see how fast the game transitions from battles? This game doesn't jerk you around no sir. It doesn't waste your time, it doesn't assume you have nothing better to do than to play this game. You're it's guest.

I've been hearing a lot of debate over remakes in general. I am all for them, if the game is worthy. Lately I have been playing the Nintendo DS version of Final Fantasy IV, which is damn good! Taking into consideration the crappyness of the Gameboy Advance version of the game, this is the first good portable version. Final Fantasy IV and Dragon Quest IV-VI are important entries in the genre, and their respective series. They deserve to be ported and remade again and again. After all no one is forcing you to buy them, and the games remain faithful enough to the originals so that one doesn't feel totally obligated to purchase them.

Now Square-Enix, make a DS card with Dragon Quest I-III on it.

Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin is a pretty great strategy game. It's got lots of different units and terrain types, enormous maps and you can even play with a friend via Nintendo's Wi-Fi matching service! Suffice to say if you are craving a turn based strategy game in these long summer nights, then Intelligent System's(Fire Emblem, Paper Mario) Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for the Nintendo DS is the title for you!



What's most interesting about this game has nothing to really do with the gameplay(which for the most part is the same as the other games in the Advance Wars series, but the aesthetic shift from those games to it's newest iteration. Where the older games in the series had a very lighthearted and cartoon-like art style, Days of Ruin's characters are drawn in a much more "mature" fashion. Commander Brenner looks closer to the oatmeal skinned gorillas of Gears Of War than anything in the previous games in the series. While Brenner looks quite brutish, the main protagonists, Will and Isabella, look more akin to a shonen manga or a Square-Enix game.

Just for reference here is the cover of the first Advance Wars game for the Gameboy Advance:

Doesn't it just look so fun? The whole gang has loaded up into the tank and we're off for some warfare! War is fun! Hey mom have you seen my baseball cap anywhere? I need to put it on my head backwards and command my forces to victory! Even the tank is cute. I guess all the bright colors turn off the type of people who buy the most videogames.

What's most jarring about the visuals of Days of Ruin is that when viewing the overhead map of a battle, your units appear the same as they did in the previous games. It still uses "super deformed tanks", even when it cuts away to show 10 tanks firing on 10 infantry men. It's like when in Final Fantasy 7 you got a cut scene of a more realistic Cloud riding on his motorcycle, and then the game brought you right back to his SD version.

So the question is, why did they change the art style so much for Days of Ruin? Well I suppose it helps reinforce the more "serious" story. The Earth has been laid to waste by a colossal meteor shower, leaving most of the population dead. Will, a low ranking member of the Rubinelle military has clawed his way back to the surface to join Brenner and his troops, and try to rebuild civilization. The story doesn't get any less silly as it goes on. In fact it even adds an amnesiac girl with mysterious powers, and a disease that turns people into plants. The only decent part of the story is the idea that it will be natural forces that destroy the Earth, and not war between nations.

The place where Advance Wars: Days of Ruin falters most is in it's storytelling. The story is told primarily through conversations between characters that occur before and after battles. What you'll see is the large portraits of characters displayed right next to eachother on the bottom screen, and a background image, and their text. Occasionally their will be larger picture that takes up both screens of the DS but these are few and far between, and can only go so far in telling a story. While it's possible to tell a great story using only text(novels), Days of Ruin's problem is that it only has dialog, and nothing else to give added characterization and depth to it's story. What's worse is the dialog is filled with moralizing, though not on the same level as Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Everyone is very extreme in their viewpoints, and they don't really change that much! Once you've met a character once you pretty much know everything about them. Well except that mysterious amnesiac girl.

The game is pretty much an utter failure in terms of telling a story. But still, the gameplay is fantastic. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is fun to play in bed or on the go. The AI can be pretty brutal as well, so you can not add it to the list of Nintendo franchises that have been made babyshit easy since the Gamecube era(Legend Of Zelda, Super Mario). What I enjoy most is that the game isn't stressful at all. It might get frustrating when you've been playing the same battle for an hour and the AI just took over your headquarters, thus defeating you. But at least you don't have to worry about grinding for levels after that. I don't really get a sense of despair when that happens, I am more anxious to alter my strategy for the next round and try again. Thankfully I can skip those awful dialog scenes by just pressing START.