Game Anticipation

The holiday season hasn’t brought many new DS releases worth coveting. I’m probably going to buy Yoshi’s Island or Gunpey for the plane trip home but I can't say I’m very excited about either option. Poking around the rumor mill I did find a couple of in production games that I cannot wait for

Black and White Creatures

I'm so happy to see this game headed for my little white bundle of joy. I was impressed with the first PC installment to the point of obsession and it seems like a great fit for the DS (game can be played in short installments; game doesn’t really require huge displays of graphical power…).

Unsolicited advice: Black and White had two key game design problems that caused me to quit the game at level 3 (of 4):

1. Casting spells was a pain in the ass because you had to learn to move the mouse in a designated pattern to “draw” cryptic symbols – performing magic should be challenging but it should not result in carpel tunnel.

2. Training the creature was boring and time consuming and seemed relatively unimportant in levels 1 and 2 – then I hit level 3 and suddenly couldn’t function. Frankly, I couldn’t have done without the creature entirely.

The stylus should be a huge improvement on the mouse when it comes to casting spells so I’m convinced that hurdle has probably been jumped but someone over at Lion better be improving the creature training model. Either make it fun (yes, fun – it is a GAME after all, not my job) or make it optional (The fact that the game is called "Black & White Creatures doesn't seem very promising).

Chibi Robo Park Patrol

Cutesy and very Japanese Chibi Robo was my second favorite Game Cube game of 06 (no one could beat out Mario Tennis) and I’m super excited to see it coming to the DS. I think the outdoor element has the potential to introduce some interesting new environment challenges and playing gardener beats maid most days. The screen shots also imply that the game designers have played around with different input options for the touch screen which I'm intregued by.

Unsolicited Advice: Chibi Robo gets a bit repetitive – in order to get happy points I had to scrub the floor obsessively and after a while it felt like a job, in the DS version I’d like a little more fun (there’s that word again) and a little less drudgery.

Wishing and Hoping

Could someone please start working on DS versions of the following?

Pikmin

Please?!? It’s already a Nintendo franchise and I fantasize about flicking pikmin at enemies using the stylus.

Katamari

This could be a challenge since Katamari’s soul may be owned by Sony but the stylus could offer lots of new rolling potential and bouncing from screen to screen sounds like so much fun (hey, it worked for Sonic Rush).

Taiko Drum Master

I think Ouendan (aka Elite Beat Agents only better) proved that the DS is a great medium for rhythm based games and in my opinion drum master beats guitar hero.