Appearing on the scene at around the same time as the original Game Boy Advance, Advance Wars astonished many a fan of the upgraded new Game Boy. A turn-based strategy game on a handheld console is the last thing anybody would expect to find, but find it we did. The game was fantastic, too; a beautifully balanced, simple yet deep game of tactics. It also fitted its platform like a glove: the turn-based nature didn’t just mean that four players could play on one console, the simple, unhurried ... more >>

Appearing on the scene at around the same time as the original Game Boy Advance, Advance Wars astonished many a fan of the upgraded new Game Boy. A turn-based strategy game on a handheld console is the last thing anybody would expect to find, but find it we did. The game was fantastic, too; a beautifully balanced, simple yet deep game of tactics. It also fitted its platform like a glove: the turn-based nature didn’t just mean that four players could play on one console, the simple, unhurried gameplay and portable nature of the machine led to unintrusive showdowns at work and in the pub.

Advance Wars 2 on the GBA was no less inspired, and now comes the long awaited arrival of the DS version, with Advance Wars Dual Strike. Just as its predecessors made use of the GBA’s modest powers, Dual Strike takes to its DS environment like a duck to water. The stylus control is so intuitive it makes you wonder how you coped without it before, and there are options to confine the battle to simply the bottom screen, or to make a two screen battlefield on which to challenge the threat of the evil Black Hole. The number of generals to choose from has been expanded to nine, each with a distinctive style to give you a better range to choose from, and the range of units is broader than ever before. As before, the challenging single player campaign is vital training for combat against your friends, and interestingly there is a real time mode as well as a turn based one this time around.

The all-inclusive Advance Wars philosophy is unchanged. One cartridge allows wireless play for up to eight DS owners using the machine’s game sharing powers, and as well as plenty of new maps, there are old favourites from the first two games. Another welcome development is the map editor. You can create your own maps and, naturally, share them with your friends and enemies over WiFi. A most welcome addition to the DS library. << less