Advance Wars DS stays true to the series and doesn't dissapoint
However much you love this game, you cannot deny that in terms of the aesthetics, Advance wars DS does disappoint. The visuals are barely improved from the GBA games and not much effort has gone into the lacklustre menu screens either. Fortunately though, it has lost none of its charm in the transition from GBA to DS and the characters have as much personality injected in them as ever.
The gameplay is as tactical as ever with decoys galore as you try to outwit the computer. The new Megatank provides a harsher adversary and the Stealth planes deepen the already loved dog fighting element. Intelligent Systems certainly haven’t messed with the gameplay, so no disappointments there. I found the touch screen a bit fiddly and preferred the D-Pad myself.
Where Dual Strike does improve upon the GBA incarnations is in terms of its options, which range from mildly diverting to almost as good as the main campaign. The combat mode, involving real time movement, falls firmly into the mildly diverting category and is entertaining to a point, but certainly wont be occupying an abundance of your overall playtime. Speaking of which, overall playtime is but one of the many stats which are updated throughout the game, complemented by a medal system. This is an excellent feature and provides much incentive to play through the good as ever War Room. This is where the majority of your playtime will form, as there are numerous 2,3,4 CO maps and DS maps to play through.
DS maps, you say. This is where the dual screen comes in as in some of the levels of the campaign mode require two fronts, a primary and a secondary front. The primary front proceeds as normal, however win the secondary front and the CO of that front moves to the primary front and you can utilise a dual CO power. This is where you get two turns with CO powers to wreck havoc.
The survival mode consists of a number of small mini-levels with a limited amount of time/money/turns in which to win. It proves more successful than the Combat mode, however the War Room and Campaign are where it’s at. The Campaign lasts approximately 20 hours, not including the Hard Campaign and the incentive to get an S rank. The War Room could pretty much last forever and you’ll always come back for a quick game now and then for years to come.