The next GOTW is done on the first day of school.
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Game of the Week: Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Console: Nintendo DS
Walkthrough / Database: Walkthrough
Graphics: 8.5/10 – Cartoony and quite unrealistic, though it’ll ruin the game if you make it all realistic.
Gameplay: 9/10 – Everything is easy to control, yet it’s annoying when you accidentally press the up button a second time and make a unit wait instead of attack. Also, there’s a lot of aspects to the game, which makes the game pretty fun. But then again, if you forget any of these aspects, you’re likely to be on the disadvantage. In addition, there’s more things you can do in Advance Wars: Dual Strike than you can with the GBA version (or versions? It’s called Advance Wars 2 but I never heard of Advance Wars 1).
Story: 8.5/10 – I’m kinda dissapointed about the lack of the choice thing, how you can only pick from one mission. But other than that, it’s similar to the GBA version. The story is kidna fun to read, but usually they have no relationship to each other, other than the fact that each battle is either for defense or for getting closer to the enemy’s HQ.
Audio: 9/10 – Every CO has his/her own theme music, which is cool. But it really has no suprising sound effects, and the music really isn’t baffling. But then again, there’s no drawback – at least it’s not too annoying.
Overall: 8.75/10 – Very fun, lots of replay value, yet it is quite simple and it’s not the best polished game you can find. What more to think of a DS game than simply fun and nothing else?
There’s a lot of aspects in the game: Campaign, Versus, War Room, Design Room, Battle Maps, Survival, Combat, Wireless, Gallery, Sound Room and History. Each is special in its own way, if you really play the game or not.
First of all, campaign is a campaign. In other words, it’s the story. As I’ve said before, it’s kind of annoying how you can only choose one mission at the time. But then again, you can’t stray fromt he main point of the story. Eh.
Versus is where you play for fun against CPUs or your friends using 1 DS.
War Room is where you play against the CPU with set rules and a set map. Unlike Versus, you can get EXP for you Commanding Officers (CO) and gain ranks when you win.
Combat is a really crappy real-time battle. I suggest you not to play it, unless you’re REALLY bored, and you don’t have any other way to get cash.
Survival is playing with three limitations, which is pretty fun. Actaulyl, it’s three different limitations; you only get one a time. Which is pretty fortunate.
Battle Maps is for buying new maps to play on, and for unlocking COs and other stuff. The shop idea realy makes the game more fun, as it pushes you to play things to get money. 
Sound Room is for sound, probably (I haven’t unlocked it yet), and Gallery is probably for looking at pictures (I haven’t unlcked that either). Design room is to customize the colors of your COs, your wallpapers, and to make your own maps to play on.
As for COs, there’s different COs with different advantages and disadvantages. Examples are: Max, who is good at direct attacks and weak at indirect attacks, and Grit, who is good at indirect attacks and weak at direct attacks. Another thing is CO powers, which greatly boosts your power for a turn or two.
As for renting/buying, and all that… I would give the classical “Rent and check”. Not all people will like a turn-based strategy game as I do. But I would reccomend those who do like the game to buy it, for there is a whole ton of replay value. You don’t even need to use Wireless, which lets you play around the globe, unless your friends are somewhere else; you can use one DS, which is basically the same.
-Cheers,
-Atomic Whiskey
–Head Admin
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Video gamers HQ~
