My DS Lite has been booked solid lately. Three new releases have been keeping me very busy: Konami's Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero, South Peak's Big Bang Mini, and Atari's The Chase: Felix Meets Felicity. All three are wildly different games, all three have beautiful graphics that will unfortunately be labelled as "cute" and therefore "for the kids", and all three are a lot deeper than they initially look, gameplay-wise.
Elebits is a direct-sequel to the early Wii title, which served as a much more impressive tech demo than Wii Play ever did and maybe even paved the way for the currently anticipated Ghostbusters video game. Kai and Zero plays more like the handheld Zeldas, though, with a top-down view and a lot of environmental puzzle solving. Omega Elebits allow you to burn barriers, create ice bridges, dig holes, see invisible platforms and more. They're essentially Link's weapons in Zelda, only they look like Pokémon. Boss battles are short but vaguely awesome, though one of the most compelling aspects of gameplay is what should be the most monotonous – the collection of basic elebits hiding everwhere in the environment. Release, then tap as many wild elebits on the touch-screen as you can before your timer runs down, then touch your partner omega to capture them. Larger chains create bigger bonuses, and it's fun to try to catch more than twelve elebits at once before they scurry off to hide again.
Big Bang Mini is a globe-trotting shooter based around fireworks, and each of the game's nine locales offers unique power-ups and challenges. Kamakura's walls close in on you the longer you go without destroying a target and the Abyss requires you to grab oxygen bubbles and avoid hitting the instant-kill mines (the first time I've ever been made to play a shooter slowly and with such a relaxed precision) while horizontal strokes in Luxor bounce enemy attacks back at them and vertical strokes in Paris freeze time. The visual package is completely overhauled for each new city, and every stage ends with a Bonus Zone that somehow manages to turn connect-the-dots into a fun and challenging mini-game. Yes, it's totally connect-the-dots-TO-THE-MAX with a whole new set of obstacles in each city.
And then there's The Chase: Felix Meets Felicity, decidedly the most adorable looking of the batch. It is also the most f'ing brutal. Yes, its a cute story about a boy and girl meeting up for their first date, but mostly it's an unforgiving witch of speed run platform madness. Go down a dead end and risk certain death turning around as there is a Dino Rush-like thunderstorm of world-destroying devestation hot on your trail. Run out of lives and use some of your precious collected coins to buy a continue. Run out of coins and its game over, back to the start, and you can't replay levels until you've unlocked Score Attack mode, meaning you're always stuck battling traffic demons in the stage more difficult than the one you last completed until you beat the game or start anew. And even if you cleared a stage and made great time, if you didn't collect enough flowers, do enough flips and/or knock over enough other guys to raise your heart/star level, the game will still grade you as "rubbish" (and yeah, the game's text is decidedly British for that added sense of snark). The Chase's aesthetics completely betray what an monumentally challenging game it is.
So yeah, I've been spending alot of time getting really quite hostile at my DS for all the right reasons. It's a good time to be a DS gamer looking for excitement and challenge, just as long as you're not afraid of bright colors and sweetness.
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