Here are some quick thoughts about a few of the other DS games I checked out.
Tiger Woods 2005
This game looks amazing. It's in full 3D and comes packed with all the character customization features you would expect from a Tiger Woods game. The top screen shows the hole you're on and your golfer while the bottom screen displays an overhead map. You can use the stylus on the touch screen to drag your target cursor around the mini map. Once your happy with your aim you tap a little club icon and a swing meter pops up. This is where the game sort of fell apart for me. I respect the fact that they want to create a game you can play entirely with the stylus. However the current system they have for using the stylus to swing just isn't any fun. What comes up on the screen is a little "U" shaped arrow. Starting at the left side of the arrow and tracing down, through the curve and back up to the point simulates your swing. It doesn't matter how fast or how slow you do this, all that's important is tracing the line. If they can tweak the swing feature and make it a little more interactive I think this could be a really solid game. The funny thing is the DS version supports 4 player multi, something they didn't even do on the Xbox.
Mario 64 DS
This is a port of Mario 64 with some more stars, a new level and the ability to play as different Mario characters. It's a good looking port, in fact I think the textures are a little bit better than the N64 version. If you ever played Mario 64 then you know exactly what to expect from this game. Probably the best feature is that it comes packed with a ton of mini games. I honestly spent more time playing these then I did on the regular game.
Picto Chat
This is a little program that comes built in to the DS. It allows you to join chat rooms with up to 16 other DS owners and send messages back and forth to each other. You can draw little pictures or play tic-tac-toe if you want. As far as I can tell, it's designed for girls to send messages about cute boys back and forth to each other during lunch. Since I don't eat lunch this really isn't for me.
At the end of the second day they gave us all copies of Paper Mario: The thousand-year dialogue bubble. I know for a fact Tycho loves to read really long, really boring stuff so this game will probably be right up his ally. I think it's better if he tells you about it. Maybe I should force myself to play some more of it and maybe if I didn't have a stack of awesome games to play right now I would. With Shadow Hearts, Myst IV and the new Counter Strike, I just don't have time for a game that doesn't immediately engage me. Maybe I'll tuck it away on my shelf and pull it out again some night when I'm having trouble sleeping.
-Gabe out
