It Comes With Games, Lots of Games
Two weeks ago, I finally got my hands on Nintendo’s latest handheld the 3DS. While I had the chance to talk a couple of weeks ago about the hardware itself, I hadn’t had much time to play the games I purchased with the system. Pilotwings Resort and Steel Diver were my games of choice and so far I’ve been very happy with them. Little did I know however, that I already have far more than two games. The system comes with a host of free games built right into the hardware and that’s what I’m here to talk about this week.
Special mention needs to immediately go out to the StreetPass Mii Plaza. One of my favorite new features of the system, StreetPass Mii Plaza starts with you carrying the 3DS around everywhere that you go in standby mode. When the light on the top-right turns green, you’ve successfully passed by someone who has done the same and have collected their Mii character. You can then use each of them for various games built into the plaza. Puzzle Swap is about how it sounds. There are several 3D pictures that you can get pieces for, but in order to complete them, you need to come across people that have the pieces you’re missing. You can also purchase a piece for two play coins, but you’re not guaranteed to be given a piece you don’t already own. I love the concept of swapping the having to meet people who already have the pieces you’re missing in order to complete your pictures, but beyond that, there’s not much to it.
Find Mii is probably the more interesting game of the two included with StreetPass. It is essentially, an RPG where you use all the Mii characters you’ve gathered throughout the day to fight monsters in an effort to rescue your Mii from a cage in a tower. Similarly to Puzzle Swap, you can pay two play coins, but this time they’re used to hire some mercenary characters to help fight your battles. The mechanics are pretty simple, but it’s still a fun thing to look forward to being able to do each day. As well, if there are any Mii characters that you run into frequently, each time you meet up with them, their character gains a level, making them a more formidable ally. Every once in a while, when you defeat all of the monsters in a room, a chest will appear. Inside will be a hat that can be worn by your Mii which will be seen by whomever picks it up via the StreetPass feature. Having not only a selection of hats, but possibly one that not many other people have makes this feature even more addictive and I’m happy to say that I’ve had my 3DS in my pocket at every opportunity in the hopes of getting more hits on my StreetPass.
AR Games was a feature that I was very aware of before I got my hands on the device and it certainly lived up to the expectations I had set from what I had seen of it beforehand. This collection of short but very sweet games takes advantage of your camera and the AR cards included with the system. Mainly using the question mark card, the options start out simply with a shooting game where it takes the surface you’ve placed the card on and brings it to life. The surface pulsates, flips and transforms as you aim for targets placed around where you’ve set the card. Once you’ve completed the first game more open up and so on from there. A lot of the games do a great job of taking the area you’re pointing the camera and transforming it in a meaningful way. It’s really quite exciting and fun. The one complaint I have about the games are that it’s a little hard to find the perfect lighting situation and surface to play. Other than that, the games are fun and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to mention a few things I read on a review by rivalry.gg on the game Face Raiders. With this built-in game, you take pictures of yourself and your friends and then have them attack you in an augmented-reality-based game. One of the coolest features about this game is that it takes what is essentially a normal picture of you and fully animates your face into multiple expressions. The game itself is not particularly long and doesn’t take much time to conquer, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had by simply collecting more faces to play with and seeing how funny/creepy they are when they’re animated.
As you can clearly see, there is more than enough right out of box to keep you entertained for quite a while. Some of it is a little short, but most of it is stuff that you can do every single day. I can’t wait to see how Nintendo manages to incorporate the StreetPass and play coin features into full games. Keep it up Nintendo!
