Trace Memory

Submitted by Karen

The Nintendo DS game Trace Memory was just recently released in North America, but has been available in the UK and Australia as a game called Another Code – Two Memories since early summer.

Trace Memory is an adventure game, a genre that is somewhat neglected by the gaming industry, partly because the talent involved in creating a good storyline with challenging puzzles is quite different from other game genres, and partly because the market is dominated by gamers who prefer a more visceral and less cerebral style of gameplay.

Enter Nintendo DS, with its emphasis on innovation. An engaging storyline that draws you in from the beginning is one of the most satisfying aspects of this game.


Synopsis

Just before her fourteenth birthday, a girl named Ashley Robbins receives a small machine called a DAS as a gift from her father, who she thought was dead. Ashley’s father had been a scientist, along with Ashley’s mother Sayoko, when he disappeared eleven years ago. After being mysteriously contacted by her father, Ashley goes to Blood Edward Island with her Aunt Jessica, who has raised Ashley since she was three. Jessica appears to know more about Ashley’s parents than she lets on.

When they reach the island, Jessica and Ashley become separated, and Ashley is convinced that she will find Jessica and her father together on the island somewhere. While searching for her relatives, Ashley meets a ghost who appears to have no memory. From that point on, the game revolves around Ashley’s search for her father and the ghost’s attempt to recover his memories.


Gameplay

The dual nature of the quest is one of the least satisfying aspects of the game. Without consulting a detailed walk-through, it would be very difficult to achieve 100% success your first time through. Half the storyline proceeds without difficulty to the end, even if you miss things here and there; the other half of the storyline is so closely dependent on event triggers that it is easy to reach the end of the game without achieving the solution to the quest.

Navigation in the game is mostly intuitive. Sometimes maps change orientation from one area to the next, which is confusing for those of us who are directionally challenged, but most people would not have difficulty finding their way around. Areas requiring investigation are clearly marked, even if they are not always in the same state for each visit.

In fact, gameplay is very linear. When collecting inventory, you can sometimes see an item that the game will prevent you from picking up until you see why you need it. Other troublesome aspects of inventory pertain to an item you carry with you hoping to find its owner, only to have it disappear automatically when you meet that person, without ever showing the transfer. Or an item that is an important event trigger, which is meant to be given to a specific person. If you offer the item to a different person too early in the game, the item is accepted and disappears. From that point forward, without warning, you have destroyed any chance of completing the game with 100% success.

In general, the puzzles are just challenging enough. They are not overly difficult, and except for the inventory issues already mentioned, do not involve irksome repetition or running around. Innovative use of the dual screen and microphone of the DS, as well as a unique method of blending images, make for a novel gaming experience not seen on any platform previously.


Conclusion

The engaging storyline and innovative gameplay make this adventure game a valuable addition to the DS game library. It is held back only by an unnecessarily linear design that relies on easy-to-miss event triggers to complete one half of the game’s dual quest.

Trace Memory gets an 8.5 out of 10.

Burnout 3: Takedown, and Burnout: Revenge

You just got home. It was a busy day and you were stuck in traffic for longer that you care to think about. To top it all off, you have this case of barely suppressed road rage which is eating away at your soul. Well, I have a game for you. Actually two games. The people at Electronic Arts and Criterion software have given us Burnout 3: Takedown and, more recently, Burnout: Revenge. Both offer the best road rage relief possible on a game platform.

I’ve played both these games now on my Xbox (they are also available on PS/2) and I love them both for many of the same (and different) reasons. The racing is more arcade style (like Need For Speed) than true simulation (like Forza Motorsport). Each also has many of the same types of races which include:

1. Races – This is a fairly simple concept – beat the other racers.


2. Eliminator Race – The car in last place gets eliminated after each lap (Burnout 3) or after each 30 second interval (Burnout: Revenge)


3. Road Rage – Take down as many of your opponents’ cars as possible in the time available


4. Crash – Not really a race. Try to incur the most damage with your car in a given scenario and time


5. Burning Lap – (Also called Preview) These “races” are basically you against the clock.


6. Traffic Takedown – How much traffic can you destroy before time runs out (Burnout: Revenge only)

Both games provide great locales and tracks to race on. All of the tracks are street and highway tracks (no traffic-free racing here) and take place in North America, Europe and Asia. The Asian tracks are especially hard to get used to since they drive on the left hand side of the road. Burnout 3’s tracks are linear – there is only one path, but Burnout: Revenge adds shortcuts and jumps (which give you points for air time and enable the new and very satisfying “vertical takedown”. There is a wide variety of cars in both with both games differentiating between race cars (light and fast) and crash cars (much heavier and somewhat slower). There are no licensed cars in either game but I would imagine that there are not too many auto makers that would like to see their top-end vehicles being used for taking down opponents in whatever way possible.

Moving up levels and unlocking more vehicles and races in the games is a mixture of driving skill and risk. The higher the risks you take, the more you will be rewarded. If you win a race driving aggressively and causing your opponents to crash (i.e., taking them down) you will get many more points and rewards than if you had run a clean, crash-free race. And don’t forget, your AI opponents are coming after you. Take someone down and they come after you. If someone takes you down, they are flagged as a revenge target.

Since they are racing games from EA Games, you can always be sure of a great soundtrack with a lot of licensed songs. Between the two, I would have to give a nod to Burnout 3 when it comes to the music. It’s loud and infectious and fits right into the whole game. I find that the music in Burnout Revenge does not really stand out like its predecessor.

My only real beef with both of these games is that Criterion only developed them for consoles and did not offer them on the PC. I’ve played most of the Need For Speed series on my PC and have enjoyed them immensely as well (Underground 2 is coming this fall!!!).

Both game offer multiplayer (2 players split screen and via Xbox Live) where you can compete in all different types of races against up to 6 opponents.

If there is another Burnout game on the horizon, I’d love to see it combine the soundtrack style, navigation and reward mechanism of Burnout 3, and the racing, takedowns, tracks, and trophies of Burnout: Revenge.

For now, I’m going to vent a bit more road rage.

Burnout 3: Takedown gets a 9 out of 10
Burnout: Revenge gets a 9 out of 10

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory (Nintendo DS)

This is my first of two reviews for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell – Chaos Theory. I’ve been playing the game on both the Nintendo DS and the Xbox. This time around I’m reviewing the DS version. I want to start off by saying that I am new to the Splinter Cell world and have not played either of the two preceding games.

I got this game because I was looking for a game on the DS that was aimed at an older audience and had a story line that would take a good amount of time to play through. Online this game got a lot of mediocre reviews, but I noticed that a lot of the reviewers were comparing it to the console version which is not fair. After seeing some good reviews I decided to give it a chance – I’m glad I did.

The game follows the same story line as the console and PC versions, but the levels have been redesigned for the DS. The levels are mostly linear, but each level has many places where you can choose how you will approach the situation and solve the problems in different ways. The weapons are a bit different and some of them have different capabilities. I found the game play very engaging and I was glued to the game for hours at a time. The overall story is excellent and I often found myself turning the DS trying to look around corners.

The game presentation is very much like the console version with 3D graphics in 3rd person perspective. The graphics are decent for the size of the screens but all of the levels are quite dark (but that is the nature of a stealth-oriented game). I did however find that different viewing modes (thermal and night vision) did slow down the frame rate considerably. Luckily you don’t really have to use the night vision much and the areas you require the thermal vision don’t require a fast frame rate.

I found the controls well laid out. The D-pad is used to move your character around. The other buttons all perform various functions in the game, and the touch screen is used considerably – it is used for camera control, weapon selection and menu navigation. You do have to switch between the buttons and the touch pad often, but I quickly got used to holding my stylus between my index and middle finger while using the buttons and moving between the buttons and touch pad quite seamlessly.

There is a two-player multiplayer mode, but I don’t know anyone else with the game (it is a two card multiplayer) so I can’t really review that aspect.

Overall, I was very happy with this version of Chaos Theory. In fact, I liked it so much I went out and bought the Xbox version to see what big brother was like. I’ll review that as soon as I get through it.

Chaos Theory for Nintendo DS gets an 8 out of 10.