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Posted on September 11th, 2005 - 6233 Reads

Rated Everyone Advanced Wars: Dual Strike Nintendo DS Review Silver Award

-- Written by Saul Santiago



 Advanced Wars: Dual Strike is the latest game in the award winning turn-based strategy series that began on the GameBoy Advance. This Nintendo DS sequel is chock-full of new content, including new Commanding Officers (CO's), new units, new game modes, and dual-screen wars. This makes for much more of an upgrade for the series than the previous edition, Black Hole Rising. In fact, many of the new units change the way you approach battles, and the new modes add even more depth to a series that has always delivered hours of addictive gameplay. Advance Wars veterans will appreciate all the new content, though gamers new to the series may be initially overwhelmed at the intimidating amount of strategy involved in winning battles.

Advanced Wars has always been about deep military strategy wrapped in a cartoony shell. It's all a big game of rock-paper-scissors where the object is to outsmart or outmuscle your opponent by either wiping out all their units or capturing their base. Dual Strike adds some twists to this formula, including timed battles where you have to complete either the entire battle or a specific objective within the battle before a timer runs out. The new dual screen battles are an interesting feature that allows you to wage two separate wars, one on each screen. The secondary battlefield, however, is often too simplistic for any serious strategizing, and players will often opt to have the AI play out the top screen battle while they work their way through the bottom screen. Another new mode in Dual Strike is the real time Combat mode. This is the same basic premise as the main game, but at a much faster pace, since all units move in real time. The result is a disjointed mode where you're often just scrambling to keep up with units and trying to get a handle on what the heck to attack or move. It's fun for quick run-throughs, but the fast pace is really contrary to what the series has always represented, which is thoughtful strategizing.

One of the features that makes Dual Strike such an improvement over previous Advance Wars games is the addition of various new units. Many of the new units in Advance Wars DS have the ability to perform different functions under various circumstances, which adds to the game's variety during combat. For example, the new Stealth Fighters can attack ground units and ships in addition to other planes, and it can also camouflage itself from enemy units. This makes it extremely versatile and useful in any battle. Of course, the Advance Wars series has always done a fantastic job of maintaining balance between units, so the Stealth Fighter burns fuel and ammo relatively quickly compared to other air units. The same is true of the ultra-powerful Mega Tank, which also burns through fuel and ammo at a rapid pace. Still, combining a Mega Tank with an APC unit and a Stealth Fighter with one of the new Aircraft Carriers for quick supplies makes both new units deadly and devastating adversaries.

Controls: You can control unit movement in Advance Wars DS using either the dpad to move the cursor around or using the stylus. Either way is fine, since using the dpad in the same way it was used in the previous Advance Wars games was never a problem. Using the stylus does allow the player to command the units faster, but there may be times when using the stylus results in selecting erroneous commands. Those occurrences are rather rare, however, so it really comes down to preference. I instinctively used the dpad when I first started playing Advance Wars DS, simply out of habit from the previous games. Once I started using the stylus, however, I preferred that input method since it allowed me to select commands to my different units quicker.

Visuals: The one area where Dual Strike fails to impress is graphics. While the game makes full use of both screens to display terrain and unit information, the actual graphics look barely improved over their GBA predecessors. The presentation, including the menu screens and CO cut-scenes, are well done with pretty artwork and flashy graphics. The world map also looks good, with cell shading and nice touches like flying birds and cloud cover. The actual battlefield and unit animations, however, look identical to the GBA games, and thus dated. While I appreciate the developer's insistence on keeping the series' looks similar in style to the other Advance Wars game, the world map and all the flash in the menus and cut-scenes convinced me that plenty could've been done to spruce up the battlefield graphics without compromising the game's unique style. The battlefield and the unit animations, which already looked dated for the GBA games, now seems painfully archaic and really look out of place with the game's presentation and cut-scenes.

Audio: Dual Strike sounds fantastic, with different CO theme songs and tons of war sounds. Battles may last hours, but the music is never irritating, especially since it switches every time a new CO is used. The music is also very vibrant during the menu and cut-scenes, adding energy to the overall presentation. Dual Strike is one of the few DS games that really sounds loud and clear through the DS speakers, even when you're playing outside or in a crowd. Everything sounds even better when you plug in headphones to hear the stereo music. While the war sounds seem mostly recycled from the GBA games, they do sound crisper and are appropriate for the scenes they portray.

Closing: Overall, Dual Strike is a fantastic game that really pushes the series forward. The presentation is flashy and energetic, and everything looks great until you get to the actual battlefield. Ho-hum unit graphics don't dampen the superior gameplay the series has always been acclaimed for, however, and there's enough new content here to keep gamers occupied for a very long time. Dual Strike is deeper in both substance and strategy than any other Advance Wars game, which is definitely a complement considering the series' pedigree. Fans of the series should not hesitate in picking this game up, while gamers looking for a DS title with plenty of substance and depth need not look any further.

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