THE HUB

OMG!!!

FEATURED GAME

FEATURED MEMBER

DoctorIrish

DoctorIrish

The Doctor is in.

QUICK POLL

Grand Theft Auto IV: does it live up to the hype?

ASK THE PROS

THE GAMEPROS

FREE NEWSLETTERS

Sign up now to receive weekly or daily updates on your favorite games, stories, and more!



GBA | Strategy | Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

Boxart for Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising
Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising 15 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.0
  • SOUND: 3.5
  • CONTROL: 4.5
  • FUN FACTOR 4.0
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.6
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.3

Review: Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

Review by STARDINGO | 06/23/2003 | 12:42:27 PM PST

The sequel to the great GBA strategy game is?surprise!?another great GBA strategy game.

Advance Wars 2 is pocket d?j? vu, a recurring dream about a place you?ve been a hundred times before. Luckily, it?s a place filled with happy memories and candy and not some hellish pit filled with demons and spikes and evil robots made of demons and spikes.

The best thing about Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is that it pretty much hurls you into the thick of things right at the beginning. The three original COs (Andy, Sami, and Max) are all present right away, and the tutorial missions are severely abbreviated. A few new thingies have been added to the roster: COs now feature two levels of power-up, and eventually the game introduces new enemies like giant stationary cannons and new units like spider-lookin? Neotanks?but none of the new stuff is earth-shattering by any stretch of the imagination. The game still uses the same exact graphics?good, cartoony, and clean. Terrain bonuses and unit advantages all work the same, and even most of the music is the same?not that it?s a bad thing since the original featured some pretty rousing fanfares.

Just like its predecessor, Advance Wars 2 is a great, excellently balanced, and super-fun strategy game, but it feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel. If you never played the first one, skip right to number two. If you?ve still got the old one unfinished sitting in your GBA carrying case, you might as well dust that one off instead of paying for the same game again. But play one of ?em, dammit. This is dang good stuff.