okay real quick before i start hammering my skull with sociology i want to put up my first impressions of square/enix's latest handheld offering
A baby game
is what i thought at first. you start out by learning how to stretch out your slime and clear away some leaves so that you get to play a tune on the warrior flute for your friends. easy. then they shove the flute down your throat to hide it from "big daddy" and you turn into a baseball bat and hop around making a stupid sighing noise.
after everyone gets crammed into treasure chests and hauled away (you're spared because the stupid plod's think you are a worm) you go to the forest to find unimaginable wealth in the form of countless buried treasure. not, i wish, these chests are filled with slimes, and for some reason lots of random creatures that cohabitate with the slimes. Now I've played my fair share of Dragon Quest I, and i don't remember 90% of these things, if only there were seven other dragon quest games to play...
well this type of children's action game item grabbing starts to become blaringly obvious really soon, this is why it's fortunate that you also get introduced to the other gameplay mechanic very early. that mechanic is...loading guns. you'll be doing alot of gun loading because that's all the tank battles are. fortuneatly the addition of vertical and horizontal firing guns as well as different types of ammo helps introduce ALOT of strategy. there are also many other enemy tanks to take out, and a neat way of infiltrating the enemy tank once it's HP has reached zero. I've been doing alot of tank battling since it was introduced but the game is doing a good job so far of not presenting too much of either game element
In all honesty it was pretty hard to put down to get started on my studying which makes me think I'll have alot of fun this weekend working on it. The wireless sounds fun, I can't wait to try it out with my little brother.
okay so that's my first impression, it controls well (though the method of getting things does seem akward at first) and the story looks like it will shape up nicely, i'll post more about it further along