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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Mobile Gaming Recommendations

semioticrobotic

00:48 / 16.08.05

I'll be taking a 12-hour car trip soon, and I'm wondering: what GameBoy (I have a GBA SP Retro Ed.) games make for good, engrossing gameplay over extended, prolonged periods of time? I'm willing to hunt down some games and spend a little dough to make the car ride with my parents a little easier to take.

Suggestions?

Jake, Colossus of Clout

01:05 / 16.08.05

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or Zelda: Minish Cap.

Those are my favorite GBA games, period, and they have some hourage in them. FFTA has more playtime than Zelda, iirc. Also, if you don't mind old school, there's FF

awn of Souls, which is an updated vrsion of FF 1&2. Zeldas Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Time are sweet, too, if you don't mind the GB Color graphics.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

01:56 / 16.08.05

On a side note: How's Orono treating you, Brian? You just moved up here, if I'm not mistaken?

03:56 / 16.08.05

Second the recommendation for FF Tactics Advance. Great game. Also highly recommend River City Ransom. On one level it's just a simple beat-em up, but deeper down it's got plenty of extras to make the game much more such as special moves to learn and plenty of side gags. Those are the two I carry around all the time.

11:42 / 16.08.05

I do quite like FFTA, but it's not a very friendly game. The menus are all over the shop and make things much more difficult, time-consuming and frustrating than they need to be. My recommendations would be the following:

Pokemon Sapphire/Ruby. Pokemon's just a constantly entertaining game and these are probably the best versions. Plenty of things to do besides the usual collecting/battling - build a sectret base, enter your monsters into beauty competitions, set out on a hunt for the hidden monsters. At least 100hrs of play in there, nearly every second of it a blast.

Denki Blocks. Puzzle game, but not like Tetris or whatever - this one has actual puzzles with actual solutions. Very appealing look and feel, very original play mechanic, very brain-bending in places.

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. Can be a bit anal, but if the work-as-play thing clicks you'll get hours from it. Planting crops, feeding chickens, watching the seasons and the weather, going into town to find a wife.

Advance Wars 1/2. Does the turn-based strategy thing in a far more interesting way than FFTA, as far as I'm concerned. Simple, intuitive interface, wonderful characterisation, a heap of game packed away in the little cart with plenty of unlockables to keep you coming back.

The best of the best, though, has to be Astro Boy: Omega Factor. It's like the greatest Megadrive game never made - thinking of starting a thread on it soon. Feels linear and a little underwhelming at first, but then you get to the 'end', when it suddenly turns around and sinks its teeth into your nads.

semioticrobotic

13:44 / 16.08.05

Thanks everyone. These seem like perfect suggestions.

I have been eyeing FFTA for some time, so this might be the perfect excuse to purchase it. I also own Advanced Wars II and Harvest Moon (the first, for GBC). I'll pack those, for sure.

I may also take another run through Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, since it's simply one of the best games (let alone mobile games) I've ever played.

20:47 / 16.08.05

I would second Randy on the Pokemon. It's amazing how many hours that game can eat up. And all of them delicious.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

20:56 / 16.08.05

Really? I've always avoided Pokemon. I guess I'll have to check it out, now that it comes recommended my bright people. Any specific game to start with?

22:59 / 16.08.05

Either Ruby or Sapphire. Both are missing some of the best known monsters, but as I understand it the remakes of Red and Green are far too easy. Still haven't played those yet, mind, so that may not be true.

But yeah, I can definitely recommend Ruby and Sapphire - I've played all the previous ones and these manage to build on those foundations to create something even better. They get rid of the day and night cycle that ran through Silver/Gold, which is a good thing - it made it annoyingly difficult to remember which monsters could be captured where when you were also having to worry about the when. They include the ability to have monsters breed, but expand on it so that there are far more combinations. The island and dungeons are really well designed, leading to less of the getting lost/forgetting where you are/getting stuck that occured previously.

Pokemon's often overlooked because of its kid-friendly manifesto and the milking of the franchise outside of videogames. That's a bit of a crime, because it's one of the most consistently enjoyable series around, with a huge amount of depth if you want it, but a nice, easily understandable and rollicking adventure if you don't. Out of all the videogame spin-offs that there have been, only two have been bad games, with the others varying from good to great (Pokemon Snap deserves to be remembered as one of the N64's best).

Get it in. You'll be talking about species compatibility, the location of Feebas, IVs (if you get *really* into it), studying attack/defence efficiency charts, embarking on the search for shineys and learning how to read braille(!) before you know what's happened. And probably being pissed off that you can't get a couple of the monsters that the Japanese can, but we don't mention that.

semioticrobotic

03:21 / 17.08.05

I played Pokemon when the first debuted (Red Version, here) and absolutely loved it. But when I heard they were making others, I thought: Why? How's it going to be different? But apparently you can make a good thing even better!

I went to the game store looking for FFTA today, but all I could find was a used copy for $25, which was a little much, I thought. I came home with the Extreme Ghostusters game, because the Ghostbusters are my life.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

11:23 / 18.08.05

Don't get Pokemon. Get Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It's like a streamlined Symphony of the night with RPG stats and over 100 souls you can collect from dead enemies and use with your nascent necromantic abilities. I got this second hand in the middle of Pokemon Saphire and it's probably the reason I never beat it.

Oh yeah, and no whips. Just huge, meaty swordplay.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

11:38 / 18.08.05

The best of the best, though, has to be Astro Boy: Omega Factor. It's like the greatest Megadrive game never made - thinking of starting a thread on it soon. Feels linear and a little underwhelming at first, but then you get to the 'end', when it suddenly turns around and sinks its teeth into your nads.

Gotta love Treasure, but towards the end I found that game tedious as fuck. It's aces for ideas and recalls a fair bit of the Gunstar heroes style, but the gameplay mechanic starts to tire before you've seen everything.

Still, you're looking forward to Gunstar Super Heroes, I take it?

Saturn Quality 2D, see footage

12:22 / 18.08.05

You need to get to the credits in Astro Boy before the game proper starts. The first run is effectively the intro, a tutorial. Once finished, the structure changes completely - you've not seen half of what it has to offer.

Excited by the prospect of GSH, but their output can veer wildly from amazing to rubbish, so I'm not going to expect much from it until I get it in my hands.

Trying to compare Pokemon to Castlevania is like asking which is better out of elephants and yellow.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

12:58 / 18.08.05

Not really all that different - Soma, the new Castlevania mascot can level up and collect and trade souls to fight for him. Anyway, it was so brilliant I shunned all my other gba games for months, including Pokemon.

(Important note: Avoid Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance like the fucking clap)

I beat Astro boy 100% - some of the key NPC's in the new game+ bit are hidden in fucking stupid places which really wound me up, and overall it's not a patch on the Mega Drive output Treasure used to put out. If I could run through those levels kicking arse it would rule, but they've taken the most boring aspects of late 1980s brawlers and mixed them in, buggering up the flow. Why do I have to stop and beat up the same boring robot so I can move on for the whole game? Grrr. I mean it's good, but I think generally it's overrated.

22:08 / 24.08.05

I don't get the problem. It's a score attack game - those levels full of small fry are there with that in mind, to give you an opportunity to crack the combo meter up and beat your mates by a few hundred points. They're also there to encourage experimentation.

Anyway, back on Pokemon for a second, I got Leaf Green today and I think it (or Fire Red) might be a better bet for newcomers to the series if you're still thinking of jumping on, Jake. What it lacks in optional extras compared to Ruby/Sapphire it makes up for in presentation.

There's a lot of new stuff here, all of it designed to make the experience easier to get into and follow. Always-present instructions and glossaries, a redesigned Pokedex, a brilliant save function (when you load your game up, it gives you a run-down of all the things that you did most recently in it, helping to prevent the 'what the hell was I meant to be doing now?' syndrome that the others - and, indeed, pretty much every RPG ever - suffer from).

It's simply more streamlined and less complex, and those don't have to be bad things. It sticks to the core of what Pokemon is all about. Chances are that if you get deeply enough into it you'll want to try out the other games anyway. So yeah, I've changed my mind now - get Fire Red or Leaf Green first. They are, after all, where the series began.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

01:09 / 25.08.05

I picked up Astro Boy for a tenner new from GAME (hasn't sold shit, sadly, at least in the UK) and on hard it's a whole other game. It's fucking brick. The whole thing's a lot more alien soldierish, with the need to teleport to stay invincible and power up your super attacks and that. I think I've slightly knackered the "up" button on my DS using the finger laser and I'm stuck on the Pook/Seven Force type battle. Fucking monkey force thing.

Anyway, I now completely endorse Astro Boy, even if the bits between the bosses are cack filler.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

08:24 / 25.08.05

I can completely support FFTA, though the menus may take some getting used to. I love games like that, I love playing specific teams for certain battles and fiddling with tedious equipment and breaking rules and killing judges for being jerks and all of it. Good times.

Golden Sun is alright, too, though it had some quality that made me stop playing it just before the final dungeon - it might have been that of the four [objects], you only get to two, but that's forgiveable. It may just have been that it's an RPG, and I always abandon them before the final dungeon for several months. It may have been that the guy I borrowed it from wanted it back. But now I live with him, so I might go steal it again...

I had quite a bit of fun with Mario and Luigi - Superstar Saga, for a while, but then I got to a boss where I needed to have my hand-eye co-ordination and my strategicisin' mind on at the same time, and I couldn't do it (the second ? time you fight the bean guy, at the lazer-bounce puzzle-place). I should really go back and finish it sometime. Damnit.

Mario Kart is good, too. If you're into that sort of thing.

semioticrobotic

13:31 / 09.03.06

Looks like MeFi is having a go, too.

17:16 / 20.09.06

I decided today that having a DS and only playing one game was a like a spear without a tip or a pencil without a lead, so I went into town today with the express intent of getting a new game. "Maybe Electroplankton", I thought. Except that both game shops in town de-recommended this as soon as it was mentioned. The better of the two shops even went as far as to not sell it or stock it because they insisted that it "sucked donkey balls".

(I wasn't impressed.)

However, one shop gets American imports in - so I'm now the proud owner of Starfox command! (And I also can't feel much past the middle finger of my left hand having played it for an hour!) So I will post more on it later when I have sensation back... But... Fun!

12:58 / 20.10.06

I've been abusing my new DS over the past week or so, very much enjoying the New Mario and Mario DS games. I got Metroid yesterday, but that bugger just hurts my hands so much, I feel like they're going to fall off. That, and it completely misses the point of mobile games - the pick-up and play aspect. Once you start a level, you're in for the long-haul (in fact, most levels take longer than I can confortably hold the system for). Does anyone else have holding problems for this, and what do you do to help it? I'm loving the game itself, and the control method is very good. It'd all be fine if not for the first button, which being on the shoulder requires some major contortions for this man's hands. I've used the thumb-strap too, but that is much less accurate (for me) than using the stylus, especially in a big fight. Help me Barbelith! What do you do?