The Nintendo DS has caught on with the masses, mainly because of the wide variety of so-called casual games. Some of these are downright offensive (Horsez, Petz, Pet Horsez), but most of them are in the puzzle category. The DS puzzle games are what I do on my BART commute every day, so I have lots of experience with them. I don’t even suck at them. So let’s take a look at some highlights and lowlights from the DS puzzle games I’ve played.
Brain Age (and Brain Age 2): It was 5 minutes of drunken Brain Age at Butter in San Francisco that convinced me to buy a DS. I was excited because after years of sucking at video games, here was a game I could be good at! Doing simple math problems as fast as possible! Brilliant! I played Brain Age for a long time until I got bored of the games. Some of them frustrated me (memorizing lists of words) and some just got too easy (3 people leave the house, 2 people go in the house, 5 people up the chimney, etc.). So when Brain Age 2 came out, I thought “here’s the game I love, but with new variety!” Well, I played it for about a week, and it has been left unplayed ever since. I can’t bring myself to sell it because I know I am supposed to like it, but I just don’t care for it anymore.
Puzzle Quest: This one had me seeing circles for weeks! This is an RPG, but instead of fighting with swords, you fight with Bejeweled. Brilliant! The story is so bad, I was just begging for opportunities to skip past it, but the actual battles were puzzlerific! And the system to get new spells and character upgrades was fantastic. I beat this game, collected all the spells, captured all the monsters, and realized I would never play it again. So to eBay it went. But before then, I had a great time with it.
Word Jong: Word Jong is kinda bad. It’s stacks of letters on tiles that you pull off piles to make words for points. The puzzle itself is entertaining enough if you like anagramming, but the actual game itself is really poorly done. The example that kills me is that there is a game mode where you battle against computer opponents. And the computer opponents will make words, backspace, make words, backspace, make words … oh you get the idea. When I am playing against a computer opponent, I want the thinking to happen off screen! It adds no value to the game. I got bored of this pretty quickly, and you probably will, too. Playing against a human opponent is probably fun if you are in the same room. Otherwise, I can’t recommend it.
Picross DS: Picross may have been played more than any other game in my gaming history. It’s phenomenal. It’s a Japanese picture/logic puzzler. There are numbers on the rows and columns that represent the number of dots filled in on a grid. And that’s it. You figure out which dots are filled in, which are empty, and you see a picture! The DS version allows you to download a bunch of additional puzzles, including all of the puzzles from the original Game Boy version of this game, which was called Mario’s Picross. Lots of Mario-themed puzzles in there, which is loads of fun. If you like addictive logic puzzles, this is the game to buy right away!
Clubhouse Games: This is the one I have in my DS right now. It’s out of print, and going for big bucks on eBay, and I can totally see why. It’s a very generous collection of classic games, from Dominos to Spit to Reversi to Bowling … it’s got lots in here. There are multiple game modes to play including a pretty difficult challenge mode. There are some games in here I’ve never heard of, some I’ve heard of but don’t know how to play just yet, and some I am too good at (I pitched a shutout in reversi against the AI). This is a great game collection, and my guess is that a sequel must be coming, otherwise there is no way that this should be unavailable. An absolute must for casual DSers.