What is it good for?

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS)

Please forgive me if, after reading this, you believe me to be a hypocrite, but the truth must be told, if only to absolve my own guilty conscience. Despite my love for S-RPGs, I have never owned a copy of Advance Wars until Days of Ruin. In fact, I never even played one until Dual Strike, and even then, only in passing. Despite knowing about Advance Wars since it first came to America on the GBA, I've never been terribly interested in the game. Perhaps it was the fact that other games caught more of my attention and Advance Wars got lost in the noise. Whatever reasons I have for commiting this foul, evil sin are no excuse: I have forsaken the path of strategy and tactics and shall forever regret doing so.

So, when Days of Ruin came out, you can understand if I merely shrugged it off as "another" Advance Wars game. Pile on top of that how most reviews were calling it the worst of the series so far, and I now have even less reason to become interested in the franchise. I was wrong; so very, very wrong.

When my friend purchased the game, it is as though his DS became permanently attached to his hand, his stylus flying here or there in a frenzy, attempting to destroy enemies and save allies in S-rank fashion. I've never seen someone so engrossed in a game before. As he played more and more, I began to feel "the itch". I had just played Enchanted Arms, which had already gotten me thinking about grids and turns and such, and was looking for a new DS game to play after finishing Trials and Tribulations. At first, the only reason I purchased the game was to play multiplayer with him. Now, I wish I could find a way to go back in time and play all the other Advance Wars when they came out, as my ignorance has made me miss out on a great gem of a game. If you like strategy games at all, think of this as a ringing endorsement and don't even waste the time reading the rest, just go buy it and enjoy it. If you are actually interested in why I like it, then by all means continue reading.

Advanced Wars is perhaps the tactical antethesis of Fire Emblem (another game by Intelligent Systems) which allows it to create it's own niche. In Fire Emblem, you are given a certian number of units and must face innumerable foes and insurmountable obstacles without any of them dying, lest they be lost forever to their digital grave. A proper defense, slow advances and countless item choices are the path one walks to excel at the Fire Emblem series of games. Advanced Wars, on the other hand, usually allows you to collect resources and build units so losing one or two units over a battle is no big deal. This changes the tactical approach to the games to be drastically different.

Perhaps you will use an infantry to lure a strong enemy unit into the firing range of your artillary, or send a recon trudging through enemy territory on a suicide mission to determine enemy positions and unit strength. If the enemy has placed his strength in air units, you can begin to produce anti-air and easily wipe the floor with him. However, since they can build units too, their strategy can be altered at a moment's notice so you must always be on your guard. This kind of dynamic gives the game a more 'RTS' feel, without the pressure of making decisions in real time. Each move can be planned out but, like chess, you must always be thinking several moves ahead in order to anticipate possible counters that your enemy will employ. This is only somewhat true in tactical games like Fire Emblem or Shining Force, since enemy units often recieve reinforcements and you must always be prepared for a surprise, but generally those types of games involve predetermined unit deployment and unit choice so you know your strategy ahead of time. In Advanced Wars, every level is different, which greatly adds to the replay value.

The campaign seems rather standard for the genre, with unit portraits that talk to one another to set up some scenario for the next battle. The storyline, for the most part, goes off without surprises and while it does not wow in any way, it gets the job done. Technically speaking the campaign is nothing more than a fancy wrapper palced around different scenarios, as there are also several dozen more maps that are treated as "training excercises" by the game's story but are in most ways no different from the campaign maps aside from missing some prewritten story. With the campaign levels, this totals to over 50 different maps, which means you will be playing the game for a long time to come. The last level, however, is incredibly difficult. Nothing I've ever played compares to the chaos and challenge of the final level in this game, and this is not a good thing. There are challenges which

That is, if there wasn't multiplayer. With local wifi play (to battle against friends) and even Nintendo Wifi play (to battle against random people or friends over the internet), the game's replay value soars. Don't feel like going 1 on 1 with your friends? Battle as a team agaisnt the computer, or maybe even in a Free For All to see who comes out victorious. The only disappointing part about the Nintendo Wifi is that you can only play against 1 other person (I could find no way to make a 3 or 4 player friend game). I really wanted the ability to play with 2 friends at once in a Free For All. Also, considering the length of time that a turn can take, it is not exactly the most friendly wifi game. The added voice chat with friends is a almost perfect solution to Nintendo's problem: Honestly, I don't care about voice chat with random people. But I do need voice chat when playing with friends and decided what levels to play next or what type of strategies I am working on (Brawl and Mario Kart, I am looking at you). It is ironic that the system that has amazing voice chat capabilities (the 360) hardly ever gets used for multiplayer, and the systems that have the best multiplayer games (Wii) has no voice chat ability. But that is a rant for another day.

To top it all off, there is even a map editor. That's right, not only do you have what the developers created at your disposal, you can create your own maps from just about anything you have seen in the campaign. The replay value of the game is nearly infinite. I've created a ton of my own maps, some to use in 1v1 versus friends and others to make the computers a bit stronger in our co-op 2v2 matches vs the AI, which makes the games that much more fun. You get almost as much joy from huddling around the DS trying to create a level to play on as you do then testing it out and finding new ways to tweak or improve it. It is annoying that the online map sharing has to be limited to a paltry 10x10 map is beyond me, as most of my favorite created maps are 20x20 or more. And while the ability to vote on maps that you have downloaded is great, it is somewhat annoying that you cannot "search" for maps and instead are just handed a random one to try out. Or how to get more than one the "get online, download map, wait, get kicked off" process must be repeated over and over. Why can't I browse maps, or download mutliple files at once? Again, limitations to a system that could have had so much more potential but, as it stands now, the online map sharing and ranking is least a welcome (but frustrating) addition.

Overall, Days of Ruin is a great S-RPG experience and will provide hundreds of hours of gameplay. It represents one of the best values of your dollar in terms of amounts of gameplay you can squeeze out of it and is arguably one of the best games on the DS (although most certianly not the most unique experience). All in all, the game comes highly recommended and is worth every penny to purchase - you'd hardly even begin to scratch the surface if you rented it. Do yourself and your DS a favor and pick it up, if you are even remotely interested in S-RPGs, you can't go wrong with Days of Ruin.


What should be next (Still working on GTA IV and Mario Kart, sorry)?
Puzzle Quest (DS + XBLA)
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)
Mass Effect (360)
Saint's Row (360)
Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii)
Undertow, (XBLA)

Uno I just won't review because, let's face it, it's Uno. Although the experience playing it on 360 is poor - the online experience is terrible and it's not like you can play multi player locally. I hope you REALLY like Uno...

Halo 3, well, I don't get the hype. Same basic thing as the first two, Forge is OK but too limiting and hard to share stuff, online is outclassed by COD4 but if you liked Halo you probably already got it anyway, no need for me to talk about it, so scratch that too.