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Kirby: Mass Attack

Kirby: Mass Attack is both a celebration of nearly 20 years of great games and a fresh take on Nintendo's platforming history.

                                      
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Kirby: Mass Attack is both a celebration of nearly 20 years of great games and a fresh take on Nintendo's platforming history.

While one wouldn't expect to find hippo brains splattered across the dual screen, a few bruises, the odd cut, maybe even a tiny drop of claret would have been cool.

British writer Azmol Meah takes on the DS adaptation of an American take on the hit Japanese show.

How are we to explain to our sons and daughters that we just blew up Santa Claus?

Surely, after almost four years of the DS being on the market, even the big N must realise that drawing circles on the screen is only fun, like, maybe twice?

For many modern players, games in the vein of 16-bit Final Fantasy titles are like throwbacks to the days without electricity.

While there is much familiar about Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, it is not content to exactly follow the established mold of its forebears.

The clear sign that your console is top gun is that it has crazy, off the wall nonsense like Prey the Stars on it.

Unsolved Crimes keeps the tradition of point 'n' click adventuring alive on the Nintendo DS.

The relationship between player and animal is very disingenuous because the player is not really concerned with the animal beyond its basic aesthetic cuteness.

A Dramatization of the Console War of 2008.

The game's target audience might not have much patience for a game that offers a frustrating challenge, especially when the perception is that the game mechanics are at fault for much of the frustration.

Bangai-O Spirits shines because it's not easily classified as any given kind of game.

In Final Fantasy Tactics A2 there isn't really a point at which you can stop grinding and say, "I'm ready to hear the plot now".

Using the touchscreen as part of the Guitar Hero experience never gets past the point of feeling like it's an imperfect process.

Myst, after all these years, still has something to say to us.

Summon Night: Twin Age has just enough of that engaging "Gotta explore the whole map" appeal that playing never feels like a chore.

Excited as anybody by the upcoming DS re-release of Chrono Trigger, I'm curious as to what makes it such a well-regarded and influential game.

It's quite bizarre to see a game which in the concept sounds incredible -- playing as the dead, awakening to feed -- when the ultimate experience is so the opposite.

The entirety of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is controlled with your stylus. That's it. Every single button on the DS causes you to block.

Almost without exception, the changes to the standard JRPG formula in The World Ends With You improve the gameplay and provide a startlingly fresh take on the role-playing experience.

Azmol Meah takes on the UK-exclusive Hurry Up Hedgehog! for the Nintendo DS. He doesn't hold back.

The dependence of the Nintendo DS on stylus-based games has inspired an influx of pen-and-paper game translations. How do they hold up to the real thing?

The very point of having a huge roster of characters to play is the change of tactics and style that different characters bring with them. With Naruto, none of that exists.

The Guitar Hero franchise is being diluted by the sheer number of uses of the Guitar Hero name.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village succeeds because of the way it marries puzzles and adventure gaming while packaging the combination in a unique and aesthetically pleasing way.

Mario Party DS benefits from the fact that a single-player game of Mario Party makes more sense on the Nintendo DS than it does on a home console.

The online play in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground fares well, because you can take people on while you psychoanalyze their avatars.

Phoenix is wiser, older, and far more battle-weary than before.

Games like Contra presented a sort of difficulty that, while extremely demanding, was what offered those games longevity to begin with.

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 really shines in the multiplayer mode, as is to be expected with this sort of game.

When you've got a loyal fanbase who buys your games regardless of quality, is there really any need to rock the boat?

If nothing else, Flipper Critters is certainly colorful.

Renegade Kid basically took the game concept of Contra and hooked it into a survival horror FPS.

Even a ten-year-old could grasp that harvesting an entire forest at once is not as good as harvesting it in sections by simply comparing it to Chibi Robo's carefully balanced flower economy.

While it's easy to view Phantom Hourglass as the successor to The Wind Waker, in reality, it's just as much a direct descendant of A Link to the Past, due almost solely to perspective.

MySims is a "god game" that leaves you feeling more mortal than ever.