I played 22 Wii games for fun in 2008 and finished five of them.
As I did last year, I’ve compiled a list of the games that I played for fun in 2008. One list per major gaming platform.
(Check out the rest of my 2008 Gaming Playlists for other platforms, updated daily until New Year’s.)
Today’s entry is all about the DS, a system I got a lot of use out of this year, surprisingly mostly with third-party games, not Nintendo stuff.
What did I play? And which five games did I finish?
Take a look below:
My 2008 DS Playlist
(Games I completed are italicized)
1) Advance Wars: Days of Ruin - I think I’m saturated with “Advance Wars.” I loved the two Game Boy Advance games in this strategy-combat series. I appreciated the ambition of the first DS title (it added a second screen for double-sized battles and introduced a real-time-combat mode). But a fourth iteration of this formula for American DS gamers was more than enough for me. The old games aged well and still hold up. The new game just didn’t resonate with me.
2) Air Traffic Chaos - Never did I think a game about being an air traffic controller would be among my DS favorites of the year. It’s basically “Diner Dash” with airplanes.
3) Bangai-O Spirits - Hardest game I played all year.
4) Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
5) Chronotrigger - This is the one game I’m taking with me on my holiday travels.
6) Civilization Revolutions
7) Drawn To Life
8 ) Guitar Hero: On Tour - I tried playing it in the laundromat and felt like people were staring.
9) Kung Fu Panda
10) Lock’s Quest - Kind of a tower defense game. Kind of an adventure game. It’s very good.
11) Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword - We need more action games that can be played in the DS’ bookstyle format. The vertical orientation made performing an Izuna Drop (grab enemy, jump vertically off the screen with him, land back down on enemy’s head) one of the coolest motion-controlled moves of the year.
12) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - Capcom’s lawyer game was still amusing me.
13) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: And Justice For All - But I got tired of the gameplay mechanics, which are little more sophisticated than the gameplay mechanics of turning a page to read a novel.
14) Professor Layton And The Curious Village
15) Prince of Persia
16) Rhythm Tengoku Gold (import) - This was my only import game of the year and one of the most visually interesting games Nintendo has made in a hardware generation. It also has great music and, when released in English in 2009, will hopefully demonstrate to people why the Japan-only “Rhythm Tengoku” released on the Game Boy Advance a couple of years ago is one of my favorite handheld games ever.
17) Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
18) Soul Bubbles
19) Space Invaders: Extreme - Like “Pac-Man Championshop Edition” in 2007, this rave-remix of a classic arcade game shows how you bring a classic back for modern times.
20) Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
21) The World Ends With You - A jaw-dropping game, not only was it the first Japanese role-playing game that I liked in a couple of years, but it also has some of the best sound, graphics and controls of any DS game on the market. Beyond that, it has good characters, a refreshingly modern setting, a radical exploration of how fashion and popularity can be made into gameplay elements — and it teaches you to look at two screens at once while controlling the action on both screens simultaneously. Amazing.
(Game I missed - Away Shuffle Dungeon)
DS Games of 2008: Played 21 / Finished 5
What did you play? And what did I miss?