Sunday Roundup: 3/23/14

Exit DS has been on my radar for years now. I would constantly see it on the shelf for under $5, consider picking it up, and then ultimately deciding against it. But this week was the right week, and I decided I would grab it. A port of the original PSP version, this Nintendo DS version looks like a fun puzzle game for sure. The visuals remind me of the awesome DS game Ghost Trick as well!

Here’s the story behind this weird game. I saw it at Toys R Us a few months back and had no idea what it was. Fast forward to now and the game randomly came up on Amazon on the cheap and I couldn’t pass it up a second time. In the game you control Taz by rolling a ball on the touch screen in some parts of the game, and then guiding him through a level in a more traditional fashion on other game segments. Overall the game’s supposed to be kind of poor, but it was novel enough to warrant a purchase.

You might notice that the rating in the lower right corner of this game looks a bit different. That’s because it’s a PEGI rating, which is the European equivalent to the US’ ESRB rating system. So that makes this game the first European game in the collection! Honestly I thought I’d get a Dreamcast game first from Europe just because that system can easily play imports. But I suppose a PC game is fine too: it should also work fine on my computer as well.

A launch title for the 3DS, Steel Diver is a submarine themed puzzle/war game? I’m not really sure what it is, but I do know that it was a game I certainly was not going to pick up the day the 3DS came out. I mean, it doesn’t really look all that fun. But for just a few bucks it’s nice to finally own it. Oh, and there’s a free-to-play sequel that came out on the eShop not too long ago as well. So there’s that…

This one came up online super cheap so I decided to buy it. Besides being an excellent remake and great strategy RPG, Tactics Ogre is one of the few games that I received an early copy of for review (as in a prototype version) and had to send back when my work was completed. It was pretty neat to see the game as a prototype UMD, but not owning a copy meant I couldn’t experience it after I was through (which sucks because the game has tremendous replay value). Read my full review here!

I’ve been on this weird Amazon kick lately, where I have found myself look at the related entries to games that I am vaguely interested in playing. That’s where a few of today’s entries come in, including The Chase. A puzzle game by Atari, you control either Felix or Felicity as they attempt to meet one another. You guide them through the city in a puzzle-like fashion. It’s an odd concept (which I love!) but apparently it’s good enough to earn the game positive reviews.

Again, I only know that this game exists because of the related games listed on Amazon. Apparently this week I was in a puzzle game sort of mood, because To-Fu Collection is another DS exclusive, touch screen infused, puzzler. Doing some research lead me to understand that this is a collection of two iPhone games. In them, you stretch the titular character, who is indeed a wad of to-fu, and bounce him trough each level, avoiding obstacles, picking up goodies, and reaching the fortune cookie at the end of the level. It’s… kind of lame sounding, but it did come out way late into the DS’ life cycle, which is somewhat notable.

The last in the TouchMaster series of mini-games on the DS, TouchMaster: Connect allowed players to post their high scores online through Facebook and Twitter. I’m not sure if the service is still available, but it is why the game comes with the “Connect” moniker, instead of just being called TouchMaster 4. The first game in the series was supposed to be pretty good, but when you get this late into a franchise that bases itself around mini-games I can’t imagine there’s any creative juices left.

Call it a curse of perseverance, but when I own one game in a series of games I have to own them all. And yet again I came into possession of two games in the series in just one week. TouchMaster 2 has decent reviews, so it’s likely the better of the two here. I picked up this one because it also came with the case and manuals. I can usually find all four games in the franchise loose at any given GameStop, but coming across the cases is a different story. Now that I want them, I’ll probably never find them with cases. But only two more to go!!