Walmart is stupid and would sell the system but no games until the morning. Even without a game it hasn’t been boring. It’s amazing. It comes with a small deck of cards. You put the card on your counter or wherever and the camera sees it and you can play a minigame with it. It starts up and there are 3D targets and it looks like they’re sitting right on top of whatever surface you scanned the card from. I was shooting targets and fighting a boss monster by bobbing and weaving around my kitchen. This thing is incredible.
Got it tonight and am digging it so far. AR games are as awesome as I remember them being. Steel Diver is also very fun. Now time to zzz.
Now that I’ve spent the night with it, I must say that I’m just thrilled at how much I love this thing! I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they would enjoy it.
I haven’t even scratched the surface of any of these games yet, so these are more like first impressions, but here are my quick thoughts on the games I picked up.
Pilotwings looks and plays great. Flying around the island is one of the best showcases of the 3D, and it’s a good way to get yourself acclimated to it. The main gripe is the length of the game, which is understandable since it’s basically just a series of short missions where you fly through rings and land on targets and whatnot. You can breeze through it all pretty quickly and easily.
The thing is though that if you are the kind of person who loves perfecting your scores, you could conceivably be coming back to this for a long time since getting perfect rankings on everything can be quite trying. I also love the free flying mode where you just fly all over the island which is just covered with collectibles. I think I’ll actually be playing this for quite a while.
Just be sure to make your Mii before you play it, otherwise you’ll have to start a new file just to use your own character.
Nintendogs is just adorable. If you love dogs and think you would enjoy a high quality pet sim then you really can’t go wrong here. The 3D looks very nice, as do the animations, and the fur graphics look really good. Just realize of course that’s it’s not a traditional game with well defined goals, it’s more for casually getting caught up in cuteness.
Ridge Racer Is a good but generic arcade racer that happens to look fantastic. As far as I’m concerned these are the best 3D graphics on the system right now, mainly because the genre is just made for 3D. The way the depth of the track sprawls out before you is just wonderful. If you like racing at all or just want the best eye candy available at launch I recommend this.
Please be warned that the other racing game, asphalt, is supposedly pretty bad. So if you want racing this is the obvious choice.
Monkey Ball Is cute and charming ,but it’s just like all the other Monkey Ball games only easier and lighter on content. I still like it because I just love Monkey Ball and the game is actually very well suited for 3D, but it is criminally short so I can’t recommend it to anyone who is looking for the most value for their 40 dollars. Unless of course you just love all the MB games like me. Or if you want a good game for a small child, this would fit the bill nicely.
Street Fighter is one that I picked up only because it is getting the best reviews of the launch lineup. I’m typically not a huge fan of fighters on account of me kinda sucking at them, but this game is such high quality that I’m glad I went for it anyway. For one it offers a lite control style (in addition to the standard controls) that is a lot more accessible for someone like me who was never great at pulling off complicated move combos, also it’s just a beautiful and polished game.
I wasn’t expecting much from the 3D here since a sidescrolling fighter isn’t the first kind of game I would have imagined needing extra depth, but the visuals were the most surprisingly impressive to me alongside Ridge Racer. The menus pop are really look great with varying levels of depth, and the backgrounds in the fights look really neat scrolling along in the distance. There’s also a wealth of modes and such, so I imagine that of all the launch games this is the one people will most likely still be playing a few years from now. Highly recommended if you’re into that sort of thing.
Rayman is a port of Rayman 2 from N64 and Dreamcast, and it happens to be one of my favorite games ever so it was an easy buy for me. The game is fantastic and if you have any interest in 3D platformers then it comes highly recommended. Just realize that the game is 12 years old, but honestly I think it’s aged quite well compared to a lot of games from that time.
That said, the 3D effects can get really…busy. It’s a free roaming 3D world with a lot going on, so of all these games this one is the most likely to tax your eyes. While the game looks good in 3D, it does have some occasional flaws like ghosting, and really this is one where you will need to keep the 3D slider pretty low lest your eyes begin to mutiny.
I haven’t been able to play around with many of the other features of the system since I’ve been pretty busy giving all these games a shot, But I’ll chime in more later if anyone has any specific questions.
For all the complaining I’ve been hearing about the launch lineup I must say that I’ve found all these games to be varying degrees of enjoyable, and as long as you know what you are getting into you can’t really go wrong with any of these I’ve talked about.
So enjoy:D
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I wasn’t really sure what the hype was about around the 3ds. 3D? Not so exciting. But my girlfriend got one this morning, and just playing the AR cards is an experience unlike anything I’ve ever done before, it’s a blast. Really simple, but incredibly fun.
I can see how the 3D could get tiring, but so far I haven’t even thought of playing the actual games.
She started with Street Fighter, Combat Of Giants, Nintendogs, and The Sims.
God I want this! I have to wait because I need to get some cash together.
I got mine today, and I’ll just agree with everyone else. The 3D works great, the included games are fun, Pilotwings has been nice so far, and the 3D is helpful with judging things. It just works.
The pedometer thing is pretty clever of them too. You earn coins by taking steps with the 3DS in sleep mode. It’s a good strategy for them to get people to take the system everywhere they go, to encourage the trading stuff and to have people show it off to their friends.
Indeed. Everything about this device seems well designed, and always with the concept of having fun at its core. Apple’s devices may be ‘magical,’ but the 3DS is lively and fun (if you haven’t tried the Sound app yet, do so–that parrot be crazy!)
I got mine today too, mostly based on messing with one at PAX. I haven’t tried out all the features yet, but it’s looking to be a nifty little box of fun.