Advance Wars DS
During my recent Christmas vacation back to the UK, I found myself, for the first time in years, without access to a game console or a PC. Much of my time was spent with friends and relatives, of course, but practically every waking moment I spent in my own company was spent playing Advance Wars 2 on my trusty Game Boy Advance SP. The first Advance Wars, released in 2001, was the first GBA game I ever made a point of playing when I was sat at home and could just as easily have played on my consoles. Advance Wars 2, which I've still not beaten, also gets played at home occasionally, but more than that, it's one of the major reasons why I so look forward to traveling long distances on trains, planes, and suchlike. I continue to make slow progress through the game's campaign, I enjoy skirmishes on maps that I've purchased, and I've even been known to spend hours designing my own battlefields.
In all honesty, I really don't know that much about Advance Wars DS just yet, and I'm not sure that anybody outside of Nintendo does either. I know that I want it, though, and I know that it's almost certainly the game that will convince me to go out and buy a Nintendo DS when the game ships toward the end of this year. Unlike many of the DS games that I've played to date, Advance Wars DS actually looks like it'll use the system's dual-screen configuration to good effect. Controlling ground troops on the bottom screen and air units on the top one will change the game quite dramatically, I imagine, and it makes a lot more sense to me than having one of the screens devoted to an interactive steering wheel or a pointless map. I'll tell you right now that I also plan to put the game's wireless multiplayer support to good use, even if it means purchasing two DS handhelds and two copies of the game to take with me everywhere I go. I've been impressed by the artificial intelligence of the enemies in both of the previous Advance Wars games, but there's really no substitute for a human opponent...or three of them.
Oddworld Stranger's Wrath
I love Oddworld. There, I said it. I wrote a complete solution to Abe's Oddysee for a UK-based tips magazine back in 1997; I played through Abe's Exoddus on my own time the following year; and somewhere along the line, I grew to love the world created by Oddworld Inhabitants in a way that, I guess, is comparable to how a lot of people feel about the Star Wars universe created by George Lucas. I have an Oddworld mug, a number of Oddworld T-shirts, and I've just recently purchased a limited edition book (number 777 of 1000) full of Oddworld art from Australia. Yes, my name's Justin Calvert, and I'm an Abe-aholic.
Why do I love Oddworld? I guess the fact that I've enjoyed all three of Oddworld Inhabitants' previous games is a major factor, but it's really much more than that. It's the bizarre-looking characters that I find myself empathizing with far more than those in most games. It's the way the games make me think about real-world issues without even realizing that I'm doing so. Most of all, though, it's the fact that Oddworld games have always clearly been created by people who are passionate about what they do, which is why I feel confident that Oddworld Stranger's Wrath will be worth the wait when it arrives later this month.
One of my other great loves, as far as games and movies are concerned, is the Wild West (specifically the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone). Now, I could be wrong, given that I've not actually played the game during its development (something that I'm very pleased about, incidentally, since I plan to enjoy the game on my own time), but based on what coverage of the game I've allowed myself to read (I'm terrified of spoilers), it seems the game's central character has more than a little in common with the excellent "The Man With No Name" character played by Clint Eastwood in so many of the aforementioned Western movies. So unless I'm very much mistaken, one of my all-time favorite movie genres has just been given the Oddworld treatment, and even World of Warcraft is going to have a tough time competing with that.
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Let's Play -- Oddworld: Starnger's Wrath (Part 39) "Sekto! The final battle!"by TheDirgeofEramak4,220 views
@LiquidShizzles Good news, more games are coming.
Rayman4321 1 year ago
didnt they go into administration???? shame they were a really creative company
neilss1 3 years ago
Call of duty 2 is great.
SgtThom 3 years ago
Oddworld = Best games ever made. I've played through Abes Oddysee, Abes Exodus, Munch's oddysee and Strangers Wrath...but now they've stopped making them :(
LiquidShizzles 3 years ago
ok?
hell0mom 4 years ago