Post-Christmas DS Games

So after getting The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Christmas and two additional DS games with Christmas money I've been a little distracted lately. I thought I'd write some quick reviews of some of this holiday season's best portable offerings. The DS is one of my favorite video game platforms to come along in a very long time. It's affordable and intuitive and full of that often quoted Nintendo "innovation."

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Like most Nintendo franchises Zelda and I have a pretty good relationship. I'm not a hardcore fan, and I've always preferred the sci-fi styling and open-ended nature of the Metroid series, but you have to recognize the brilliance that keeps Zelda one of the most cherished and longest running video game franchises out there.

Recent Zelda games have fallen into two camps. The serious, more realistic looking Zelda that started with N64's Ocarina of Time, and the stylized cartoon-ish Zelda that started with the Gamecube title Wind Waker which hearkens back to the days of simpler graphics. Phantom Hourglass is part of the latter bunch and it fits the portable nature of the DS just fine.

The game is controlled entirely by touch-screen which made a few people cringe at first but it works so well and offers so many innovative game-play elements that it nearly makes my head explode. Nintendo wanted to make an example to other developers with this game and they use every inch of the DS from the touch screen to the microphone, they even have one puzzle that's solved by closing the system. The game was designed by a few of the people who worked on the SNES classic A Link to the Past and it certainly shows. It's a brilliant meld of both classic and modern Zelda, feeling like an old-school game but with imaginative new puzzles and ways of using old tools via the touch screen.

Memorable characters like the greedy and cowardly Linebeck and your over-eager fairy companion Celia don't hurt either. It's got a cute and funny story that doesn't take itself too seriously which helps break up the monotony between puzzles, and just about every part of this game is an intricate puzzle. Like most Zelda games it's chalked full of side-quests and secrets that will probably drag me back to playing it eventually. My only complaint is forcing you to revisit the starting temple several times and making you play it on a timer which was at times difficult and frustrating.

Still, this is by far the best hand-held game of the year and proof that the franchise isn't dead yet.

10 out of 10

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

When I first saw this, like a lot of people I laughed out loud. Call of Duty 4 for PC/PS3/X-Box 360 has been widely heralded as 2007's game of the year, and for good reason. The graphics are some of the best in any video game, ever. But the disturbing amount of realism doesn't end with how the game looks, but the voice acting, the way the guns function, the iron-sights, the artificial intelligence, the brilliant story and gut-twisting scripted sequences... all of this makes the game one of the greatest, most realistic war operas ever created. It doesn't leave you with a sense of glorifying war or violence, it leaves you with the shaken feeling that war is hell and something nobody should ever have to participate in. Call of Duty is a franchise that's been known for it's incredible WWII themed games and the fourth installment in a modern day setting with terrorists and crazed Russian nationals has been the kick in the pants that it really needed to put it over the top. Maybe it's because of the times we live in that make the game more topical and significant, but it certainly makes you feel like you're there with intense action while it rips out your heart and stomps on it with the grim reality of war.

The DS version doesn't quite have all that, but one thing is for certain, they made sure that they would strive for quality with the hand-held version and saw that it lived up to the Call of Duty name. All the intense action is there. The levels look good for the DS. The guns have their iron-sights. The scripted sequences are amazingly animated on such a tiny screen and really shocked and surprised me the first time through.

Instead of trying to replicate the entire experience of its big brother game it plays as sort of a side-story to the other versions of the game. You play as anonymous Marines and British SAS members that go on different supporting missions during the little secret war that you're fighting in. They managed to keep in little tidbits like the support missions where you're gunning off the top of a truck or in a helicopter, and they even managed to put in the high altitude level where you're the gunner in an AC-130, looking through a black and white radar scope and raining death from above to support your troops who are running around on the ground completing objectives. The variety keeps the game interesting and keeps you immersed the whole way through. The game also has a beautiful orchestral score and like its big brother, a load of voice acting with troops barking out orders and adding to the hectic action.

The AI isn't quite as advanced as the bigger brother version. Guys will still run out, duck behind objects, and toss grenades, they'll even pick them up and toss them back (you can toss them back too naturally, and you've also got flashbangs). For the most part though they'll just stand there and let you shoot at them. The hit detection is pretty good. If you shoot at the chest of your enemies you'll just be wasting bullets on their body armor, but a pop or two to the head will take them right down. Unlike the other versions of the game your allies are also dumb as shit, and except for a few rare occasions just stand around being useless.

The game was also criminally short and has no Wi-Fi online play, though it does have local multi-player which I'm looking forward to trying. I probably would've gotten bored if it were any longer though. As it stands the game shows just how well first-person shooters can be handled on the DS.

8 out of 10

Contra 4

In the history of video games, few titles evoke more swearing and admiration than the Contra series. This year is Contra's 20th anniversary and in celebration of that landmark, Konami has decided to give a little gift to its loyal fans. I've never personally been the biggest fan of the series but this is an important game and something that many people would've never thought possible in today's world of simple games designed so that anybody can beat them and move on with their lives. The appeal of Contra is you're going to have to have weeks, months, even years of practice until you memorize the levels master the delicate controls necessary to guide your one-hit-and-dead soldier through the perils of the Contra world.

Another reason this game is so important is because it's a direct follow-up to the SNES classic Contra 3: Alien Wars and it's the first traditional 2D contra game since the absolutely insane and absurdly hard Contra: Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis. This isn't surprising because the series isn't terribly popular in Japan and since I don't see too many muscular, American, machine-gun toting commandos staring in anime I don't have to ask why this is. In the West, Contra is viewed almost as a right of passage for the "hardcore" gamer, revered for its toughness and unforgiving level design. The bosses are brutal and insane and just about every moment of this game will have you screaming "You've gotta be kidding me, this is fucking impossible." Konami had an American team design the game and despite being only the second Contra to not come from Japan, the result is fantastic. The game looks great, the game-play is polished to a crystal shine, and the balance and level design is as perfect as Contra has ever gotten.

It's loaded with extra unlockable content including a challenge mode, a Contra museum that pays homage to the previous games, and even emulated versions of the original NES classics, Contra and Super-C. I don't often say this about modern games (with the possible, but not certain exception of Metroid Prime) but Contra 4 is the probably the best Contra game ever made. It may be designed for a niche audience but it's nice to see something like this can still be made in 2007. This is the only game on my list today that I haven't beaten yet and it'll probably be a long, long time until I do and that's what Contra is all about.

9 out of 10