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!

Or at least the cutting edge of gaming… as of 5 years ago.

Last night, Cassie joined the ranks of the handheld gaming community by buying a refurbished Nintendo DS Lite.

We also have 1 game… Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a game that looks pretty amazing. We both thought it was awesome on the Gamecube, so we’re looking forward to seeing the new one.

What we’d like to ask of all you wonderful hip cats (and Bears) is your expert advice on games to look for!

See, we know that it’s highly likely a lot of you, if not most of you, already bought a DS 5 years ago, and have tried out and played tons of games.

That being the case, YOU are the valued expert, and we.. well, we’d like to take advantage of you. 🙂

Wheras I am a player along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics when it comes to handhelds, Cassie is more a button mashing gamer, and proud of it!

She has, self-admittedly, no love for turn based Final Fantasy console games, or card based combat. We’d both like to think she’d love the new Kingdom Hearts, but it looks like it went away from the original combat style of the first two console games by using card based combat… which she doesn’t care for.

She likes, well, the old Guantlet style combat, or Paper Mario and the Thousand year Door, characters you run around with and kick and punch or hammer and jump the bad guys.

Yes, technically Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door is turn based. Sometimes. Shh!

I suggested she try out Castlevania, and she said she had read reviews, and it sounds like one of those where you have multiple party members that you can’t control, so pfft.

A woman of discerning tastes is she.

I do know what she’s talking about, though. We both loved Spyro… until they changed the Spyro game so you had Spyro, plus like 5 other team members, each with different playstyles, and in order to progress you were forced to have to play different zones as all of them, including one that handled as a first person shooter.

As an aside, wtf is wrong with people that, when they have a winning highly popular playstyle design, they shoot themselves in the foot for a sequel and toss in a bunch of multiple characters with different handling styles done to death in other games, and force you to play those to progress? If I want to play an FPS, I ain’t thinking, “Oooh, I know. Spyro!” It’s the same in WoW, “Oooh, they’re bored, let’s add a new mechanic, dragon riding combat and make it a raid!” 

Anyway, I ask for your suggestions on Nintendo DS games that you played that you thought were just brilliant, for someone that loves platforming or RPG styled action oriented games, and preferredly ones that are fairly inexpensive to find used or on Amazon, because we are poor.

There is a reason it took us this long to get a DS, after all.

Have fun, and a wonderful day!