I have many words of a Burnout: Paradise review sitting about on my hard drive, and yet I still don’t feel like I’ve actually said enough to truly call it a “review”. And so, from now on, I will blog about games, because I’m lazy and most certainly not dedicated enough to finish a game before anyone else is bored of it.

Residing in my DS at the moment is The World Ends With You, a crazy new game from the reliable folks at Square Enix. My favourite games for the DS which haven’t involved Mario or Phoenix Wright seem recently to be made by Square; they’ve got a real dedication to making DS games which truly take advantage of the platform.

World is a fun old time, and much of this is from the crazy combat (there’s a picture above). The touch screen of the DS has been used for several neat things in the past, but this could be my favourite. On the bottom screen it’s essentially combat-by-gesture; slash across your character to shoot in that direction, slash upwards to create a giant icicle, tap various enemies to create chain lightning, drag along the ground to set it on fire…

But people with eyes may have noticed that there’s also a top screen, and one has to fight on both of them. Splitting your attention between two screens makes for a frenetic experience, and I enjoy the combat, but at this stage I almost wish I were playing a game with just the bottom screen. Often my right hand ends up scribbling like a mad thing, and I can’t quite concentrate on either part of the battle completely. World is what it is, and what it is is awesome, but I hope to play a game one day with the gesture combat brought completely to the fore in a more relaxed fashion.

Ideally, this game will also made by Square Enix.

319

This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Saturday, May 24th, 2008. It concerns such pressing issues as games, Nintendo DS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.