So, based on your advice, we bought three Nintendo DS games a couple nights ago.
- Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
- Animal Crossing (Wild World)
- Valyrie Profile (Covenant of the Plume)
Yes, this is Cassie’s toy… but the last game was for me, mostly.
Add in the first game we bought, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Ring of Fates), and we’ve pretty much got gaming styles we love covered.
We almost bought Puzzle Quest, but we got a buy “2 get 1 free” deal at one store, which brought the overall cost of the three games to under $20 a piece on the average, which ain’t bad for Animal Crossing or Professor Layton. I’m sure we’ll get Puzzle Quest at some point, though.
Amusingly enough, when we go out to look for games for mommy, Alex tends to make out like a bandit. We have yet to go in a game store without him finding something.
I think we’ve obtained a temporary respite from his new game cravings with our latest tactic.
We dug through our pile o’ jurassic era games© and found the perfect one to inflict upon a boy still learning to read; Simpson’s Road Rage for the PS2.
Simpsons Road Rage, for those that missed it at the time, was Crazy Taxi, but with Simpsons characters, vehicles and locations.
You put it on Sunday Driver mode, and it removes the Game Over time limit for finding and transporting passengers.
It leaves you with a car, a city, and things to run over at top speed. And you can still pick passengers up and run around town with them.
I didn’t know he could howl with laughter that loud. The game is definitely a smash hit.
Hur hur.
The mayhem… the destruction… the leaps off cliffs.
Yeah, he’s not getting a license until he moves out of the state.
Back on topic, Cassie has been playing a lot of Animal Crossing. I am immediately reminded of our obsession with the Gamecube Animal Crossing when she was pregnant with Alex, because she’s already got a fishing checklist printed out (and like 10 fish crossed off that she donated to the museum), she’s already moping because she missed the winter “roll snowballs to make a snowman” season since the game thinks yesterday was the first day of spring (clearly NOT in tune with the Weather Channel, ‘mmkay?) and she’s also made comments such as the following;
“I’m so angry. I donated a fish to the musum, and now I see according to the list I could have sold it for 2,500!”
This from the same person that, when I say I made a lot of gold in game, retorts, “You made a lot of money… that’s in a not real place. You made imaginary money. How about you make some real money?”
Ahem.
So, she’s happy with Animal Crossing.
Crystal Chronicles she’s played a bit and likes, but she found a guide on eBay that’s on it’s way media mail, so she’s kinda on hold playing it until the guide comes, and explains things like… how do I find those carrots in my inventory that I picked up?
Valkyrie Profile is more my kind of thing, but I doubt I’ll be playing until we go on a long trip and I’m not the one driving. Still, I’ve played enough to know I like the Final Fantasy Tactics style RPG elements, and I know I’ll like the combined offensive teamwork aspect of grouping up on an opponent.
That leaves us with… Professor Layton.
Cassie played it a bit, did the first 6 or 7 puzzles. She was surprised at the challenge of the puzzles, and was very impressed with the game design, awesome animation/story, very cool. The story sucks you right in.
From hearing her talking about the difficulty of the challenges, I just had to try it out, and thus create drama if I did better than she did. I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that she would hurt me.
She’s dead on about the difficulty. I expected puzzles that had a speed or accuracy component, like the Wii Wario game that we bought that has tons of minigames and senses motion… often frantic motion.
Instead, the puzzles are thought pieces, many of them based on classic puzzles of mathematics, observation, or logic. There are, at least so far, no timed puzzles. You can take as long as you want thinking about the rules, examining the graphics, and working your way through the puzzle until you decide upon your solution.
For a game that is supposed to have 150 puzzles, I was very impressed. Excellent game.
So far, operation DS Lite has been a success. Playing GBA games on it isn’t as fun, since you do get used to great graphics fast, but at least if Alex’s GBA goes down, he’s got a backup for Rescue Heroes. 🙂
Thank you all very much for your excellent suggestions!