- Strategy games (Advance Wars,
- RPGs (Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Dragon Quest)
- The rest of the shovelware
Don't get me wrong, there are the occaisonal gems in the puzzle (Curious Village) and action (any mario game), but it seems like if it's not a RPG or strategy game, it's just not for the DS.
One strategy game in particular really caught my eye, and after I played the demo (courtesy of the Nintendo Channel -- Yes I use my Wii!) I was hooked. That game is Air Traffic Chaos, in which you take the role of an air traffic controller in busy airports throughout Japan. If this doesn't sound very exciting, you haven't thought it through.
The demo started in a very small airport, with only two runways and four gates. In the game, you must instruct planes when to leave the gate, which runway to take, when to taxi, and when to take off. Similarly, you must assign runways to incoming planes, assign them a gate, and let them know when it's safe to taxi. You must do all this while multiple planes are moving around in the sky and on the ground, and respond to each of the planes in time, or they'll get cranky and the stress level will increase -- both in your own mind and in a meter displayed by the game. There are always all kinds of things going on at any one time, and you have to balance the needs of multiple aircraft. My first try two planes crashed into one another while on taxi between runways. Oops.
It's a ton of fun, but not easy to find. Obviously Gamestop didn't have it. It's on the cheap on eBay, I might pick it up there. But it's one of those great niche games that you can only find on the DS, amidst the mound of crap wealth of My Random Pet with a Z and the next Cooking / Brain Training / Language Learning titles.
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