So I caved in and bought a DS Lite....

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

There are a few things you can try such as sending the other person off to find food (they get better food than you can find early on) and getting packed lunches done certainly helps but there IS a lot of micro-management. It's a tricky game but I'm finding it rewarding. Especially since I found the big stick I could turn into a spear and start going fresh water fishing!

I noticed on gamespot that the critic reviews aren't high but the user reviews ARE higher. The critics seem to be mostly grumpy about so much stuff being ported over from LIB1 but I liked LIB1 so that's not a bad thing for me, and the "minigames" like lighting fire are cool. The only downside for me is that (I'm the fella) the girl's an idiot who can't look after herself but I just make sure my average in-game day goes like this:

+ Wake up, cook a meal for both of us (stomach up to around 25% or so - we're never very satisfied).

+ Every other day take her to the river to drink take her back, tell her to go forage for food or wood or something.

+ That same day I'll forage and generally do stuff to build up stores.

+ The other day I'll head off in a new direction, check out some new stuff, generally nose around.

+ Come back in the evening, cook a three or four course meal and go to bed.

I'm still really enjoying it but yeah, it DOES take some getting into cos to start with it's rock hard. The things to remember are:

+ Your companion's an idiot, you have to look after them just like you. However if you manage to escape you can play through it as a solo survivor which will be cool.

+ You CAN use them to forage for stuff though which is useful to keep you going when you're exploring.

+ Don't let them "cook" as they always seem to either prepare raw potato/coconut or raw poisonous mushrooms - yeah thanks mate :pinch:

+ It DOES get a little easier later as you get more different, and more filling, food. I'm looking forward to finding meat!

+ You'll never have a full stomach, or be particularly energetic unless you rest, which increases hunger....grrrr.

+ Some stuff is longwinded (in order to get stuff from the other person you must talk to them, offer them something, then move stuff from them to you....a bit fiddly but ok).

Anyway my wife's now been playing on it for about five hours solid and she seems to be enjoying it the more she plays it, like I am.

[King Ellis]

As a little follow up to a post you may or may have not seen in donators, here is my haul of DS goodies as I look to finally embrace the console I have overlooked for the past year. All thanks to eBay I now have the following:

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - £13.81

Advance Wars: Dual Strike - £14.01

Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time - £13

Elite Beat Agents - £14

Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow - £9.58

Point Blank - £16 (If it sucks I blame Dragsy)

Contact (US Version) - £8.50

Those last two are still in the mail. For GBA:

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - £6

Super Mario Advance 2 (Super Mario World) - £7.50

It's amazing what a pay slip, a new found addiction to eBay and a dead 360 will drive you to.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Meh the 360 is a whore's console anyway.

[Toe]

I don't see how anyone could buy a gaming system that doesn't have a single hockey game to choose from.

[Cactus Drags]

You say that as if there'd be any chance of a hockey game on a handheld console being any good.

Point Blank sucks, I traded it in >_>

I got rid of Lost In Blue 2, I now have Advance Wars Dual Strike and it's awesome. I have £20 left on credit note, so someone tell me what to buy, I currently have:

Advance Wars Dual Strike

Harvest Moon DS (but I'm getting bored of it - tbh I've only kept it as my girlfriend likes it)

Tetris (how could anyone own a Nintendo handheld and not own Tetris?)

Mario Kart

Sonic Rush

Yoshi's Island

I seem to be lacking in RPGs and sports games. I tried Madden 2007, but I couldn't really get to grips with it. I heard PES6 is pretty nifty, but I'm unsure. I love Advance Wars. Quite like puzzle games, and I was tempted by Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 after playing a demo at Gamestation (why do all the fucking stylus' on demo machines go missing?). But yeah, any puzzle, strategy or sports recommendation for under £25 would be axesome.

[King Ellis]

Clearly they should chain the stylus down. I wondered how it'd work on the Wii when my brother and I went into Toys R Us. They didn't have a Wii station

For a puzzle game, Meteos gets good reviews and should be cheaper on pre owned since it's relatively old. Picross came out recently so that's another option. Don't much on that though. Something called Puzzle Quest which is apparently some form of RPG/Puzzle hybrid. Might be worth reading up on.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

PES6 on the DS is laughably bad. Looks bad, plays bad, massively limited teams, stadia, animations, gameplay. I'd suggest avoiding.

I've decided to not bother with sport on the DS as the PSP is actually pretty decent, especially with PES5, Footy Manager 07 and Everybody's Golf.

Also my Lost In Blue 2 addiction continues unabated. I've made my way up to the north of the island and can now start building a big treehouse there as a second base to live. Our cave is full of furniture now and I'm getting the lass to weave me baskets for hunting and ropes for construction.

Happy days.

[Dan]

You say that as if there'd be any chance of a hockey game on a handheld console being any good.

Point Blank sucks, I traded it in >_>

I got rid of Lost In Blue 2, I now have Advance Wars Dual Strike and it's awesome. I have £20 left on credit note, so someone tell me what to buy, I currently have:

Advance Wars Dual Strike

Harvest Moon DS (but I'm getting bored of it - tbh I've only kept it as my girlfriend likes it)

Tetris (how could anyone own a Nintendo handheld and not own Tetris?)

Mario Kart

Sonic Rush

Yoshi's Island

I seem to be lacking in RPGs and sports games. I tried Madden 2007, but I couldn't really get to grips with it. I heard PES6 is pretty nifty, but I'm unsure. I love Advance Wars. Quite like puzzle games, and I was tempted by Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 after playing a demo at Gamestation (why do all the fucking stylus' on demo machines go missing?). But yeah, any puzzle, strategy or sports recommendation for under £25 would be axesome.

I enjoy Mario & Luigi: Partners in time.

[Cactus Drags]

I got sick of the PSP essentially being a platoform for half-hearted PS2 ports, and as awesome as Wipeout was, it's not worth keeping the console for one game. And the thumbstick ruined my hand.

I have been looking at golf games for the DS, apparently Nintendo Birdie Challenge is pretty good, but I always see loads of preowned copies about, which isn't a good omen, and no one I know owns it.

I'm not terribly keen on Mario to be honest, but I'll look into that. Ta for the recs.

[Scott McFly]

I don't think Tiger Woods on the DS is too bad if you want a golf game. As for RPGs, I've heard the new Chocobo Tales game is reasonably good, and of course there's Final Fantasy III too, which I've heard mixed things about. To be honest, the new Spider-man 3 game is pretty decent if you like Spider-man. The control scheme works pretty well and the graphics are fairly good, although it's neither an RPG or a sports game, but what ya gonna do. >_>

And I agree, Advance Wars is awesome.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Borrowed Advance Wars and, while I'm still subject to annoying tutorial pop-ups it's clearly a great game.

But not as great as Sim City DS or Settlers DS are gonna be!

[Cactus Drags]

Press start to skip through any and all messages.

[Scott McFly]

So this is kind of relevent, as my brother got a DS Lite today, I'm looking for some fun local-multiplayer games, single card preferably (since there's no point in 2 copies of the same game in the same house >_>), but multi-card if it'll be very, very worth it.

Here's what's in my collection that supports single-card and we've already tried:

Brain Training

Advance Wars

Nanostray

Tetris

New Super Mario Bros

Elite Beat Agents

Metroid Prime Hunters

Mario Kart

Actionloop

Any other suggestions? Metroid Prime Pinball is out here in a couple of weeks, any North Americans played that in multiplayer since I think it's been out there a year or two already?

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Bomberman?