Advance Wars: Dual Strike (Nintendo DS)

Advance Wars DS (Dual Strike), is a turn based strategy game much like it's predecessors but with new gameplay modes, unlockable content and a new storyline. Advance Wars DS is a sequel, but you don't -have- to have played the 1st or 2nd game to know what's going on, it just helps.

The main objective of the game is defeat or overcome the opposing CO(s) and their army(ies). This can be done in mainly 2 ways but for special missions ...
...room is a classic, all Advance Wars veterans will know all about this feature. Basically you can design your own maps (max 30 x 50 squares), which means you can practically do anything. It's entirely up to the player, you can make it predeployed (just units no factories) or make a fortress with several COs against one. The terrain can be changed using 'fill' to fill the whole map or by using the stylus to draw. Each army -has- to have atleast: 1 ... more

Advance Wars DS (Dual Strike), is a turn based strategy game much like it's predecessors but with new gameplay modes, unlockable content and a new storyline. Advance Wars DS is a sequel, but you don't -have- to have played the 1st or 2nd game to know what's going on, it just helps.

The main objective of the game is defeat or overcome the opposing CO(s) and their army(ies). This can be done in mainly 2 ways but for special missions in campaign can sometimes if not only be done in a different way. The 2 main ways are HQ capture and Rout. HQ Capture
is where you capture the enemy(ies) HQ using a Mech or Infantry unit, Rout is where you defeat all of the enemies units on the field. Some missions you can be playing as multiple COs for different armies working together (up to 4 armies in one mission (max 8 COs, min 4))
Players will typically play 2 COs (except from the first few missions of campaign or in versus/war room where you can choose not to do so). This is a new feature and allows the use of 'Tag Powers' 'Tag'ging your partner (switching in other words) and a whole new level of strategy.

Capturing properties is a big part of the game as doing this increases daily funds, inables you to produce new units, or increase your armies strength with the new 'Comm Towers'. There are 6 capturable properties (HQ, City, Base, Airport, Port and Comm Towers) and also Missle Silos that when used by infantry/mech units cannot be used for the duration of the battle again. Empty properties (coloured grey) aren't owned and don't benefit anyone untill they are captured. The five main nations all have different coloured properties which are quite obvious because of the nations names : The Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth, Yellow Comet and the antagonistic Black Hole.

The first game had Co Powers, the second game had Super Co powers, now Dual Strike has...you guesed it 'Dual Strike' (and co + super co powers)(or tag)! The effectiveness of tag powers depends on your chosen CO's compatibility which is shown with *s in the COs info. Usually 1* = an extra 10% but in some cases for example Candy and Jugger's "Fireworks" (1* compatibility) goes only to105% (out of 130 max). Black Hole CO's become available and if for example Andy and Candy used DS it would simply be called Dual Strike instead of a special name and would also be at only around 90% effectiveness, instead of a 0* compatiblity for non crossed COs which gives 100% (as in normal) effectiveness. The first CO uses their super power (with increased/decreased firepower) moves all of their units, then 'tags' the other CO into battle making them use their super power and gain another 'turn'. This is somewhat like Eagle's super power except all units get another turn, meaning sometimes you can produce a unit and move it in the same turn. This can turn the tide of battle, but is devastating when used against you. The AI is pretty smart and in campaign you don't get to use it untill about a third the way through, whereas they use it quite early, and they use two cos at once early too.

Being on the DS you'd expect the stylus to be used in some special way...well it isn't. It can be used to move but can take longer than just pressing the buttons, and fewer mistakes will be made. For example when launching a missle silo you can't aim...wherever you touch it will hit there and you won't see the blast radius untill the missile is gone :(
Apart from a few little niggles, it actually is quite useful in Design room. It's basically just a gameboy game on the DS, but that doesn't make it bad.

With two screens comes missions (in campaign/versus/war room) that can be fought on two fronts. The battle on the lower screen is the main battle and the battle on the top screen is the less important battle. 1 CO per army takes a screen each, and when the top battle is won the loser loses its other CO (on the bottom screen) whereas the winner gains a CO. The remaining units and money from the winner of the top screen gets converted into power stars for the winning army. Winning the battle on the top front isn't necessary for overall victory but does give advantage to those that do. Some missions in campaign do require to win the top screen but most aren't DS (battles with two fronts) battles.

Graphics are actually the same as the previous two games (slightly better) which is a bit of a dissapointment...
The Sound is okay, some can be really quite annoying but in certain parts actually adds to the characters and depth of the game.
The characters aren't really too deep, only about half the COs from previous games come back for campaign and not much is said about the new COs apart from whats in their CO info (which isn't much).

Fog of War acts as such a nuisance. Basically units can hide (including yours) in forests & reefs and be undetected unless one of your units is directly beside it. It can get annoying, searching for enemies as you can't see anything out of your units visual range, while still trying to protect your HQ from enemy infantry hiding in bushes next to it. It featured in the past two games and is optional in versus, and few missions in campaign actually use it (woo :D)

As with the new game, comes new units, 7 in fact: Megatank, Oozium, Black boat, Carrier, Piperunner, Black bomb and the Stealth fighter.
In campaign all of the new units are not available from the beggining, but become unlocked when Black Hole starts using them (except Oozium).

Megatank - Moves 4 spaces, most powerful vehicle ingame but only
get's 3 cannon shots
Oozium - Think 'Man Eating Blob'... Moves 1 spaces, but can destroy any unit in it's path (land only)
Black boat - Can repair anything by 1 HP (costs money), provided int's beside the unit. Also can transport 1 infantry unit at a time.
Carrier - Long range unit used as anti air, that can also hold air units (like landers,APCs ect.)
Piperunner - Long range vehicle that can only travel on pipes or factories.
Black Bomb - 9 space moving detonatble unit that does 3 damage to all surronding units.
Stealth Fighter - Like a fighter but can be used to attack land/air/sea units and also has a stealth feature similar to the submarines 'submerge' (uses a lot more fuel... since it only comes with 50!!!)

The game is divided into several parts : Campaign, Versus, Survival and Combat. There's also Battle Maps, History, Wireless, Sound Room, Gallery and Design room on the opposite menu.

Campaign - Fight through the story line missions, including special missions such as preventing a bombing of your country, destroying a floating satelitte or the colossal Obelisk.
Versus - The most manipulatable (is that a word :)) part of the game. You can play designed maps (made by you or your friend if you recieved one) and most other maps. The rules can be completely changed to suit the way you want to play. For example: the weather, amount of money per property, fog of war ect. You can also choose to play all or none of the COs and the teams. Some maps may need to be purchased...
Survival - A mode where you play out about 11 maps with either limited Money, Time (minutes and seconds), or (game) Turns. Quite hard in my opinion.

Combat - Like an RTS minigame. You actually move around a unit and mash (A) to fire. The obective is to win by Rout or HQ. It's brilliant but gets terribly hard on 'hard' or 'brutal' mode. You can only play as about 7 COs each has CO powers similar to the main game that build up by gathering pickups and by destroying enemies/mountains. Also the choice of troops is limited (it is just a minigame after all) to Mech, Tanks, Recons and Artillerys.
Mechs - fastest capturing speed, fast but low firepower.
Tanks - slowest capturing speed, strong firepower but moves quite slowly.
Recons - medium capture, weak firepower but moves the fastest and has the greatest line of sight.
Artillerys - slow speed/capture, perhaps the strongest firepower, uses range attack (goes over pipe, but very inaccurate).

When you flip the menu (X or touching the arrow) there's another menu that's more options and technical-like.

Battle Map - Spend points to buy maps or various upgrades like costume changes or songs ect. (Haichi's shop)

History - This section adds a bit of longetivity to the game, it's basically the section where all of your medals are displayed. You gain medals for doing certain things like deploying x number of x unit or destroying x number of x units. Also things like play time, total points earned CO ranks, and mission grades can be awarded medals. All in all there's 300 medals to collect and every 100-50 extra medals you get a trophy (stone-iron-steel-silver... ect.). It will take forever to collect all 300 (I've been playing about 70 hours so far and have only gotten like 260) and is quite hard aswell.

Wireless - In this area you can swap maps or battle with friends wirelessly. (Note: Only Combat can be played if there's only 1 game card, normal battles can only be played if there's the same amount of game cards - players - DSes.)

Sound Room - Not sure if this is available from the beggining, possibly an unlockable. Here you can listen to all the erm... "glorious" sounds of the game, ranging from CO theme tunes to backround
songs.

Gallery - Here you can view images that you've unlocked/bought.

Design Room - The Design room is a classic, all Advance Wars veterans will know all about this feature. Basically you can design your own maps (max 30 x 50 squares), which means you can practically do anything. It's entirely up to the player, you can make it predeployed (just units no factories) or make a fortress with several COs against one. The terrain can be changed using 'fill' to fill the whole map or by using the stylus to draw. Each army -has- to have atleast: 1 HQ and 1 unit (or a way of producing a unit, eg. an airport)
Even though making a whole map sounds really complex, the process is covered well and not that difficult. The only bad part is you have to have a 30x50 map and can't get a smaller one (you could just fill it up with sea or pipes but still...)

I personally like this game, I got it about a year ago for £25 from Amazon. I still play it, trying to get 300 medals. It's so easy just to pick up and play without having past experience. The first few missions of the campaign ease you into it with tutorial style missions. It will last for ages and doesn't get boring, I'm at about 70 hours (mentioned earlier) and haven't even beat Hard campaign and Money survival...

In few words Advance Wars: Dual Strike is the game you should buy if you could only buy 1 game for your DS. Plus you can probably find it quite cheap somewhere. I guarentee if you like turn based strategy then this is the game for you, that'll last longer than most.

I haven't had anything bad to say (not really) about AW:DS but that's because hardly any of it is bad or needs improvements.

Thanks for reading,
John_Connor
(Sorry for all the brackets :P) 

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