A helpful young lady on Usenet explained what I was supposed to do in this game, and so I started having more success with it. It seems you pick a start card, and from then on, all cards you place down must be either the same suit, or same value. And that’s pretty much it. I did manage a run of 24 cards, which was pretty good, I thought.
I’m really quite impressed with this game. I’ve managed about 12 stages so far, with Million Invaders being the most taxing. There are about four times as many invaders as usual, all 1/4 of the size. It takes quite a while to kill them all, plus you’ve got more to shoot at you! I found out that getting hiscores on Original mode also unlocks power-ups for New Age mode, so I played that for a bit too. And only managed …
Yes, I got some new games today! Space Invaders DS is, in one game mode at least, exactly what you would expect – a port of the original arcade game. In “New Age” mode, however, you get all kinds of bizarre layouts, patterns, screen “widths” and other such stuff. I completed one zone in this mode, and most of a second zone, before dying.
Technically, this is the same title as Cool 104 Joker, since they’re on the same card and you share “Ruze” points between the two games. It is entirely different to play, however, coming up like a cross between Glocal Hexite and Pipe Mania. I also understand how to actually play this one too – line up pipes across the board to get points. It isn’t easy, but at least I know what to do!
But only for 15 minutes or so, as I have no idea what you’re supposed to do. I mean, it’s a bit like Video Poker to look at, but them rules don’t seem to apply here.
It did click! Well, a bit, anyway. I completed the first level fairly easily this time, and then decided on the Pirate level. The “booty” puns were, quite frankly, filthy. I didn’t complete it this level though, but I was only 30 or so coins off the required 500.
“Erm” is probably the best way to describe this game. Either that or “Cel Damage meets Jet Set Radio meets Area 51“. The fact that one of the characters seems to be Mojo Jojo in a different body is also disturbing. I’ve only played one level so far, and that had involved randomly “becoming” people, laying giant yellow drawing pins, vacuuming up coins, and punching people with a huge spring-loaded boxing glove. And some rollerskating. I failed the level, but …
I still don’t seem to be able to draw arrows in any direction other than up. Luckily, you rarely need to (except perhaps at a slight angle), and on those few occasions when I have needed to, I’ve quickly rotated the DS. You might think of that as cheating. You might be right. Anyway, Chapters 7, 8 and 9 were all felled. There was a boss at the end of one of them, which involved bouncing arrows off mirrors to …
After Chapter 5 being pretty difficult, Chapter 6 was very easy. At the end was a boss, whom you had to kill by firing arrows at his feathers or clouds or whatever surrounding him, without hitting him. Accidently hitting him and not his coating causes him to drop ink on the bit you draw on, stopping you from drawing in that area. Onto Chapter 7 now then.
Just one game today – online against someone on my friends list. He played as England, I played as Japan. I won 4-0. How embarrasing for him. Of course, he then complained that he didn’t know about the run and shoot buttons and made up other feeble excuses during a post-match IRC discussion. Him == CRAP. FACT.
Does no-one play this online any more? All I could find were some idiot children trying to put on fake accents, and moaning that everyone else was cheating every time they were overtaken.
Put this on for a quick try. What an awful, awful game. Played a couple of races against the CPU, then some Drag races against a friend. What a stupid mode that is – you don’t even have to steer round corners! Then did a Sprint race, which was equally crap. Also tried Career mode, but the storyline (yes, a storyline) is pants and superfluous to the racing. As is everything else, even. And the graphics are rubbish. Lets never …
Played a few games with a friend who had come over today. Of course, he lost them all as he’s crap. Two of them did go into penalties, however.
There is actually a bit more to this game than just drawing Pac-Man, it seems. After completing the first four chapters, I can now draw multi-use arrows – they burst bubbles, hit switches, and stun ghosts. I’ve also killed two”bosses” as well – one which required me to draw larger and larger Pac-Mans (Men?) to eat it, and another one that involved eating his eyes. Obviously. I had a poke (literally) around the extra bits, and ended up in the …