Michael Braun's Blog

I recently beat Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, a game I had bought soon after it came out and had played quite a bit. For whatever reason, the final battle was a lot easier than I had initially thought. I beat it after 3-4 tries. But playing through the extra battles wasn’t giving me much pleasure (they are unconnected to any story and winning doesn’t unlock anything new), so I put the game away and pulled out Advance Wars 2, a game originally released for the Game Boy Advance. What a pleasure it was to play again!

There are several noticeable differences between the two games, but the stripped down style of AW2 doesn’t bother me much at all. Yes, there are far fewer options for units, making some strategizing different, but those kinds of changes don’t affect the gameplay very much. And the most rewarding difference is unique missions that involve doing something besides defeating all units or capturing the HQ. I believe these kinds of objectives should be incorporated into future releases.

For example, I just played a mission in which I had to keep the enemy from capturing my HQ (pretty standard), but in order to win, had to blow up 3 of their laser cannons. Standard enough, except that a large, impenetrable pipe separated most of my forces from the objective. Thus the game starts out as a careful race against time to unite my forces and win the battle. Though the AI was somewhat disappointing (retreating their missiles as my bombers approached – completely ridiculous in terms of strategy), the mission was a lot of fun. A similarly unique mission involved me fending off approaching forces with rockets kept at bay by two mountain ranges. It gave a real sense of actual combat as I strategically moved my rockets up to keep fire on the enemy as they approached my HQ.

At some point in time, 4 years ago when I bought AW2, I put it down because of its difficulty. As I pick it up again, I’ve either gotten more patient or more skilled. The game seems much easier (though no less fun). Now I need to get my hands on the original AW and the first DS release as well. The DS (and GBA before it) is the perfect system for these types of games. And no franchise does them better than Advance Wars.

In other DS news, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new Grand Theft Auto game for the DS. From the previews I’ve read, it looks quite expansive. A good combination of old school top down views, but with a more complex 3D environment. I’m a bit skeptical about efforts to use the touch screen for more interaction, but will wait and see. Overall, it looks to be a fun game with a complex environment, fun missions, and a uniquely deep gameplay experience. I will pre-order it this afternoon and look forward to March 17 (during Spring Break) to pick it up.