Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
- January 16, 2008 13:36 PM PST
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Packed to the gills with content, the latest chapter in the Advance Wars saga will truly seek to ruin your day--at least, when it comes to you being productive.
For my money, you just can't beat the Advance Wars series for handheld turn-based strategy gaming on the DS (just to be fair, on the PSP side, it's Final Fantasy Tactics). The first few games were an amazing blend of tightly balanced gameplay and quirky, eye catching visuals; the chess-like strategy combined with the game changing C.O. powers left me glued to my GBA's screen for hours.
We sat down with representatives from Nintendo for an early look at the latest Advance Wars title, Days of Ruin, and learned that, rather than sticking with the tried-and-true, developer Intelligent Systems is taking the proven strategy experience of the past titles and marrying it with a more mature and gritty feel. The end result is a game that just might put a little more wind in Nintendo's handheld sails (and sales).
A Ground Battle
All The Stars Are Out Tonight
Days of Ruin takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where meteors have decimated nearly ninety-percent of the population. As per standard science-fiction conventions, the survivors splinter off into two groups: the lawless bandits who adhere to anarchy and the law-abiding peacekeepers who are trying to scrape civilization back together.
The story takes on deeper roots from there but we don't want to spoil the fun for you. To go along with the more "serious" story line, the game's visual style also gets a bit of a facelift. Gone is the garishly colorful pastels and day-glow paint schemes of past titles; the art style this time around is decidedly drab and muted, to reflect the harsh, sunless state of the world.
Days of Ruin takes on a post-apocalyptic style
Change Is Good
The biggest addition to Days of Ruin has to be the connectivity with Nintendo's Wi-Fi service. Now, instead of limiting yourself to local LAN play, you can take your game online and challenge gamers all around the world. Even better, you can custom design maps and share them with others; each map can be rated and ranked as well, allowing you to download maps based on what other gamers think of them.
For a strategy game like Days of Ruin, the addition of multiplayer is a huge bonus and the map editor is sure to open up some amazing possibilities, which in turn just adds to the game's replayability. Also getting a tweak are the C.O. powers; in the past, each commanding officer had the ability to invoke special abilities that usually had devastating effects. In Days of Ruin, that has been toned down. You "attach" your C.O. to a unit and as you rack up the kills, they begin to radiate a sphere of influence, which continues to grow with experience. Any units who sit in its vicinity receives a bonus; you can also expend the sphere for a one-time bonus that imparts things like combat bonuses to all units.
If It Ain't Broke
Of course, the developers wisely held onto the core design elements, so if you've played any of the previous titles, you'll be right at home. Even if you aren't familiar with the series, Days of Ruin should be easy for you to pick up and since it's a brand new universe, you don't have to worry about continuity issues. The single-player campaign promises to be long and fulfilling but even if it weren't, the multiplayer options alone would make this a compelling title for DS gamers.
We'll have to reserve judgment to see how Days of Ruin pans out but there is no denying that our expectations are fairly high. If the developer can deliver on their promises, DS gamers the world-wide will soon be waging war for a long time to come.
