Advance Wars: Dark Conflict


Platform: DS
Multiplayer: 2-4
Online play: Yes
Developed by: Intelligent systems/Nintendo
Published by: Nintendo
Genre: Turn-based strategy
Controls: Buttons and touch screen

Pros and cons
+ Still a great turn-based strategy
+ COs and there powers are more balanced
+ Wifi multiplayer is great
+ Loads of maps to do battle on
- Some don’t like the new look
- Its still to similar

Advance Wars DS 2 is a 2d turn-based strategy that’s the 4th game in the award winning advance wars series over GBA and DS systems. Its also the 12th game in Japan where its called Famicon wars (first released for the Famicon aka NES) After the eighth game it was so popular that Intelligent systems took the risk and released outside Japan, arriving in Europe on 2001 Advance wars was an instant hit and even won an award. Advance wars sees you commanding armies over a battlefield strategically, your goal varies but it’s usually to capture the opposing commanding officers HQ or defeating all the enemies. The latest installation isn’t that different but has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Firstly though, for fans of the series, things have been simplified a bit. Super CO powers and the Dual strike feature has been scrapped, they were a bit too much and being able to have two turns felt like a cheat. COs (Commanding Officers) and
there CO powers are a lot more balanced now too. This game gets serious as it gets rid of a1l the fancy looking units and has a darker more detailed artwork. The storyline is pretty dark too; an apocalyptic meteor shower kills off 90% of the worlds population and creates a giant dust cloud which blocks out the sun. It’s a bit different from previous titles with there bright colours and happy smiley COs. Yes, for some it will take some time to get used to.

Overall though, the graphics haven’t changed that much and there’s still a sliver of the series cartoon touch, battle scenes are more smudged and blotted to give an air of realism. The music is pretty catchy, weaponry sounds realistic and tank bullets give a satisfying thud when they hit the target. Moving on to the COs, later on in the game you learn how to attach COs to units, this upgrades the unit, making them altogether stronger. When this unit or surrounding units inflict damage on enemy units your power meter rises and when full you can unleash a CO power that gives you an edge in battle, but its all fairly balanced though as the CO power isn’t too overwhelming and the power bar resets if the unit is destroyed, using the COs power strategically at the right time may help lead you to victory.

Like previous games you can create your own maps to do battle with friends and computer controlled enemies alike. Map-make has been improved this time round as you can change the actual size of the map and you can customise rules for the map and a number of different options, for instance different AI types (attack, defend, etc.). On top of this you can save 50 different maps of varying sizes.

One of the best things about Advance wars is the great multiplayer, although the CPU is pretty solid, nothing beats the unpredictability of a human player, when you think your losing, with a bit of strategy you can turn things round, especially in Fog of war.
So you don’t have any friends or another copy of the game, don’t worry because finally Intelligent systems have made an online multiplayer so you can now battle COs around the world through Nintendo Wifi. Not only that but you can also trade maps you made online to share around the world.

Overall this a brilliant game, its simplified the gameplay and hasn’t changed the formula that much but that’s what makes it so great, its kept all the bits that makes the game so good and scrapped the rest, this is a pure turn based strategy that takes brains rather than speed or stupidly over the top power-ups. If liked the previous games you’ll like this one too, if you’ve never bought an advance wars game then you owe it to yourself to buy this game.
James Routledge

Overall Score: 90%
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Intuitive: 7/10
Value: 8/10

Posted on 07 Oct 2008 by KrikenKing 0 comments.