So I just got my DS Lite!
I now have
Elite Beat Agents
Rythym Heaven
Disgaea DS
but… I think I need a change of pace from Music/rythym and SRPGs. I was thinking of Meteos, hearing all the good things about it, but I can’t seem to get a copy off ebay, or anywhere (I had to get Elite Beat Agents off ebay, too). Is the Disney themed Meteos the same thing?
Anyway, so now I turn to the collective wisdom of the dope. What action/puzzle games should I get for the DS?
For a puzzle game, try Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
Awesome game, IMO.
Advance Wars is a killer strategy game. If you like TB strategy you can’t go wrong. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a fun game if want a strategy-rpg that’s a little less insane than Disgaea. I haven’t played FFTA2 yet but I’m crazy about the first. I liked Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow a lot and the second one got great reviews too.
Pokemon - I have Pokemon Pearl and I adore it but I deliberately put it down because I could see myself getting all obsessed about catching them all. I have too many addictions as it is. 
Advance Wars- Awesome
Professor Layton- Awesome
Meteos- I thought it sucked and sold it back to the used game store after a couple days.
I have not played the DS Version.
But I have the PC and iPod version.
Peggle.
(IIRC, it is 'Peggle Dual Shot" on the DS, or perhaps Double shot)
I will warn you now, it will be addictive. You have been warned. It won’t matter, you will play it anyway.
Pachinko / Plinko type game play, mixed in with Arkanoid / Brick Break with a dash of Ode to Joy.
You are welcome in advance for you new habit.
It’s ok, I have it too.
If you like Elite Beat Agents, it might be worth importing one or both of the Ouendan games. Gameplay wise, they are exactly the same, except with different music and stories. They can be played and (mostly) understood without knowing a lick of Japanese. Of course, if you can’t stand Jpop at all, then pass it by. Note, the DS and DS Lite have no region locking and the DSi still lets you play older games regardless of region, so importing is no hassle at all.
If you like platformers, New Super Mario Bros. and any of the Castlevanias are great. Super Mario 64 DS is also a strong title. Oh, and Yoshi’s Island DS is great, too.
If you like puzzle games, Meteos is quite good (dunno about the Disney themed one mentioned before), Picross is fun yet relatively easy logic puzzles, and New York Times Crosswords Puzzles delivers exactly what it promises in a good package.
If you like platformers AND puzzle games, get Henry Hatsworth in The Puzzling Adventure. It combines platforming and a Tetris Attack style puzzle in a charming package.
If you like RPGs, particularly of the action variety, The World Ends With You is great, and I hear good things about the re-releases of Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger, though I’ve not played them in this incarnation.
If you’re looking for casual games to play with friends, I hear good things about Clubhouse Games. Lots of classic card and board games in a solid package that allows multiplayer using only one game cart.
If you have any fondness at all for tower defense games, Ninjatown is an extremely adorable, great game.
If you like retro, NES style games, Retro Games Challenge is pretty neat.
And of course, Mario Kart. Everyone loves Mario Kart.
This, it turns out, is really really untrue.
Try looking on metacritic for compiled games reviews. You can just scan down the list from #1 looking for what piques your interest.
(http://www.metacritic.com/games/ds/scores/).
You’ll notice that Mariokart is number 3 of all time, and in general, if metacritic says it’s good, its usually good. I’ve asked for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for my birthday, and yes, I am a grownup.
I saw this one, myself. I had too many questions for it.
I couldn’t find any legalese on Actual 1980s games.
Are real games used? Will I see Galaga ships? Will I see Pac-Man?
Is it more like Warioware, are they full games, some how connected, SEAMLESSLY?
If you’re doing imports, and want a rhythm game with slightly different gameplay, the second Taiko no Tatsujin DS is awesome (the first has too limited a music selection, IMO).
Other games I’d recommend…
The Brain Age carts - if nothing else there’s several dozen sudoku puzzles on each card, but the training is enjoyable, too. (BA2 seems to be more generous with your Brain Age, or else I’m just much better at the types of test…I test 10 years below my age on BA2, ranging from right on to 10 years older on BA1.)
The Mama series - cook recipes, or plant a garden (depending on which instalment) by simple (to learn…some of them can get pretty damn hard in certain recipes/plants) mini-games…Cooking Mama 2 and Gardening Mama, are, IMO, the better two of the three.
The Ace Attorney series (Phoenix Wright: AA (and 2 sequels), Apollo Justice: AA (no sequels as yet)) are a wonderful series of visual novels…the first game in what will probably be a new side series comes out later this year - AA Investigations, which will be a more standard adventure game, and feature Edgeworth, one of the recurring prosecutors.
Hotel Dusk is another VN, and also totally awesome.
For an RPG with very (very) different gameplay than Disgaea, or most any other RPG you might have played, we have The World Ends With You… It makes full, full use of possible DS input methods - the only thing it doesn’t do, unless it’s in one of the quests I haven’t finished yet, is require you to put the DS to sleep (which is used in several other games). The fashion mechanic is neat, although the fact that it doesn’t change the characters’ sprites based on what you have them wearing is disappointing.
No, though Galaga is an interesting example to use. Cosmic Gate, the top-scrolling shooter, is way more like Galaga than the other games are like the games they’re expies of.
Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure.
The top screen is a platformer, like Mario or Megaman, the bottom half is a grid of blocks that you pause the main action to match (like bejewelled.) When you kill an enemy in the top screen, it becomes a block on the bottom. The blocks slowly move up ,and if you don’t “match” the enemy to get it to go away, it comes back into the main screen. Matching blocks gives you powerups and such.
When you fill a “super meter” from matching blocks, you can then activate “tea time” and turn into a giant steam-powered mech.
Confusing? It should be! A short video explains gameplay better than I can. (Watch the first couple minutes for general gameplay, then skip to 4:45 to see ‘Tea Time’ in action.)
Your DS Lite can play Gameboy Advance games, too. I just finished playing Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on mine and it was lots of fun.
Actually, there is a certain enemy that you can only beat (well, maybe not if you’re extremely, extremely powerful) by closing the DS.
Checking Metacritic is definitely a good idea, though. Anything higher than an 80 that sounds interesting to you is a pretty safe bet, and after you work your way through those you’ll have a better idea which more obscure titles may interest you.
Man…so they did, in fact, incorporate every possible input?
(And I’m curious which enemy this is…It’d be amusing if it’s one I managed to muscle through. But I’ve only got 78% or so completion on my Noise list (I THINK I’ve got everything but a couple Boss Noise available in the main game), so it’s entirely possible it’s just one I haven’t fought.)
Yeah. This seems to me to be a pass.