This could have been a contender...

User Rating: 6 | Brothers In Arms DS DS
This was one of those games that looked like it would be a disaster from the beginning, then things turn out great...only to have it fall apart in the end. I had never played a Brothers In Arms title until I had picked this one up. I've been a fan of the Medal Of Honor series for a while, but never branched out because I was always just a casual fan of WWII titles. Even then, I only play the FPS games. But I figured it was time to give another series a chance considering it's the first one to make it to the Nintendo DS.

I was skeptical at first of this title, but after seeing gameplay video, I decided it looked like something I would enjoy. The graphics are better than most on the DS, and it's got some decent sound effects and voice work (though minimal). This is far better than the 3/4 top-down GBA Medal Of Honor Infiltrator in terms of graphics, but that's about where it ends.

One problem developers seem to have is getting the touch screen to work for them. I appreciate that they're trying to use it in place of an analog stick, but it needs to work. Dragging the stylus repetedly across the screen in order to turn around is just down-right annoying. It made for imprecise aiming and unnecessary deaths when enemies would attack from behind. I'm not saying that the game is overly difficult; it's just made more so by the controls. Speaking of the difficulty of the game, it isn't terribly difficult at all. You'll have more trouble fighting the controls and figuring out exactly where you need to be going. And that isn't very difficult to begin with. The game almost holds your hand through the levels but there are some points where the objective wasn't clear enough to figure out that you need to kill off certain soldiers in x-amount of time, or you need to watch all sides of your ally's tank for enemies coming from behind and dropping grenades in. It's not that I don't like a challenge, but some clearer objectives would have been nice.

Now for the biggest problem: checkpoint saves. On numerous occasions I had the misfortune of hitting a checkpoint with no way to pass it except to start the level over from the beginning. One such incident left me with no grenades in my possession and the only way to advance was to destroy an enemy tank with a grenade. This left me wandering the playing field only to be killed and have to start from the checkpoint again with no grenades. Another checkpoint glitch left me stranded on an airfield with no cover and as soon as my character would respawn, an explosion would quickly end my game within 10 seconds of continuing. Try as I might, I could not continue from that point without restarting the entire level. Overall, this is not a bad game, but there are too many things I could point out that could be done better. If you really have a craving for WWII action, this is currently your only choice on the DS, but it could be far worse. Just don't expect to enjoy it for long with only 13 levels and a serious lack of replay value.