Navigation
menu
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
I think you see my point. What’s also bad about this game is just how long it freakin’ takes. I don’t mean to say that I want games to be shorter, not by a long shot. If it were a choice between games never being short and being the fat kid I mentioned earlier, I only have one question for you: Have you met my good friend Betty Crocker? She is one sweet talker. No, what I mean is that this is a portable game, and it goes on longer than a lot of console games out there now. And this wouldn’t be so bad, if it weren’t for the fact that there is absolutely no reward. No ending worth watching, no extra units unlocked...not even a ‘Hey, great job kid!’. Oh wait, they do give you something at the end. They let you do it again. Here’s why this is a problem. The whole point of a handheld game is to provide entertainment where your normal methods of entertainment are unavailable. Naturally, you could crack a damn book, but that’s neither here nor there. What is here, and frequently there, if I may be so bold, is the unwavering knowledge that if I wanted a good story, or an incredibly in-depth gaming experience, I’d go home and play Tail of the Sun. I mean Shenmue. But if you give me a portable game with a load of missions and hours upon hours of gaming to wade through, at some point, I’m betting that I’ll make it home. Once there, I have two choices; I can either turn off the Gameboy and finally finish Colony Wars, or I can sit in my living room and try to forget that I’m staring at a screen 1/10th the size of my television on a system I bought for when I wasn’t able to use the television. Maybe it’s me, but going a few laps around Bowser’s Castle seems to possess a delineated sense of finality more appropriate to the medium. I can run the last race...or not. I’m fine either way. Unless, of course, that Kong bastard has red-shelled me too many times on the Cheese Land course, and then it’s all about the sweet, deadly taste of revenge. And woe is anyone who dares mention "We’re here, you can turn that off."
I guess I’m saying that Advance Wars asks you to invest a lot of time and effort into a sub-category of gaming (handheld titles) that traditionally aren’t the destination for your sacrifices, and then fails to thank you for the donation. What a prick. I’m going to wrap this up by saying that there are many people for whom the journey is the payoff, not the destination. To those people, I would suggest they test that theory and take a trip from one of our nation’s coasts to the other, on a bus, and let me know how their Jedi Master, make-lemons-into-lemonade, late Sixties rhetoric looks in the cold light of diesel fumes, flat tires and loud children. But I guess that’s exactly why they made Gameboys, now isn’t it? If you happen to be one of these wackos, and you can take a break from listening to Dylan blow in the wind, then Advance Wars is more than adequate for your gaming needs. Loads of Campaign missions, and even more single player War Room missions, (where you are able to play as any of the CO’s you’ve unlocked while playing the Campaign) an infinitely replayable Multiplayer feature and the ability to create and save up to three maps of your own are ample testament to that fact. Of course, all the maps you play in the War Room and Multiplayer need to be purchased with coins you’ve earned by beating the Campaign missions (and later the War Room missions) so the longevity of this title begins to tower into the stratosphere. Also, let’s not forget that certain conditions must be met during the course of a campaign just to allow you the honor of buying a CO to use in the War Room maps. You could be here for months. Still won’t get a decent ending though. As for myself, I found the limited number of units, the lack of mission variation and the pathetic payoff to be excruciatingly unpleasant until I realized that I had spent well over twenty hours playing the freakin’ game. That’s when I had to admit that even with it’s limitations, Advance Wars is worth nearly every penny you spend on it. Unless of course you own GT Advance. You guys aren’t allowed to buy games anymore. Go ride a bike. Highs:
Lows:
Final Verdict: While there are a mountain of challenges to complete, they all begin to blend together after a while. A situation made even more venomous by having all your efforts to complete the campaign boiled down into a single rank (E~S, with E being the worst) they throw at you like the thrift-store second-place ribbon at your elementary school pottery competition. Yeah, you earned it, but obviously your efforts weren’t appreciated enough to warrant some fanfare. Maybe your lung-shaped ashtray was just a little too cerebral for the oral-care deficient heathens that felt little Timmy’s bowl he made with his fist was actually first-place material. Next year, I guess you should try sticking the clay down your shorts and claiming you’re doing a performance-art pottery rendition of John Holmes’ Greatest Hits and see if that gets their attention!! Or maybe I just need to get out more. Overall Score: 8.5 Additional Images:
Image
1
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
