The Nintendo DS is probably the greatest handheld ever created. It's got some of the best games out there for any handheld. And those lucky enough to have a DS Lite can still enjoy those classic GBA games as well. Here's a list of the DS games I own, and a little bit of how I feel about each one!
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I adored Wind Waker's art style, I did not care so much for the LONG ASS boat rides from island to island...no matter how beautiful the water was. This game took the look of WW and made it a more tratitional over the top view Zelda game. I played the hell out of it when I first got it, but as with many handheld games I have played, they almost always hook me for the first few weeks then slowly take the backseat to my console games. I'd love to get into this again, but it's been so long since my last play. I tried it not too long ago, but found myself in that main temple you go into over and over and remembered that was the main thing I hated about it. I could figure out what I was trying to do at that point, so I gave up. But I hope to pick it up soon, and maybe check out that Spirit Tracks one as well!
The GB crew expressed their distaste for this back when they were still a part of GS. Even though it isn't really a game and more like a group of fun little instruments to play, I still liked this one a lot. I never played it for more than 20 mintues or so, but it was fun to mess with each of the plankto and create some cool music. It was a major letdown that you couldn't save any cool sounds you made. Still a fun little toy to mess around with every so often.
I love the handheld Castlevania games. I didn't own Circle of the Moon for the GBA when it came out, but I played the hell out of Aria of Sorrow. I am a huge fan of the explorative platformer games. I'd probably say that either Aria or Dawn of sorrow are my favorites of them all. As for Order of Ecclesia...I don't know. Last time I played it, when it first came out, I got stuck on the crab boss that chases you up a tower. I tried that boss atleast a hundred times and could not beat it. I looked at online guides and YouTube videos. I could not do it. I got too frustrated and never touched it since. I may try again as I have recently gotten into my DS again, but I'm not sure.
I only found out about this one randomly on the internet. The art style looked pretty cool and the concept intrigued me. It reminded me a bit of Grin Fandango and Psychonauts, which are both two of my favorite games ever. While the art surely was cool looking...I couldn't stand the rest of it. It felt like a game that was made for the PC and ported poorly to the DS. It had so much potential but the combat and bad camera made it no fun at all to play. I really did like parts of it where you got to play detective, but this one was really just a big letdown. From what I know the PC version was released in episodes, but only the first of 3 came out as Gamecock went under. It's too bad, this one looked so promising! A little side note. The site for the game offered an art book and a mini toy gun from the game if you sent your info. I got sent both, but the art book was literally 3 pages of what looked like screenshots that were just ones released from PR and the toy gun looked nothing like the image on the site. I know it's a dumb thing, but I thought it showed overall how lazly put together all aspects of the game were
Got this one for Christmas a few years ago when my mom got me all DS games pretty much. Haven't played much of it at all, but it seems like a fun puzzle game. Some of the controls seem a bit bad, but I really like the style of the game.
I'm not sure where to start with this one. I really liked it a lot at first. It had a cool cartoonish art style and a decent blend of Tetris Attack like puzzle solving and an action platformer. It was fun for a while until the game starts to get super hard and unforgiving . The boss battles mainly consist of you barely being hit by each attack they throw at you and a life bar that quite possibly couldn't be longer. Each hit from Henry's sword/cane took like nothing off their life bars. I got lucky for most of them and was able to activate Tea Time where Henry dons a big steampunk robot suit while rock guitar plays in the background. The further I got in the harder the bosses got and it got to the point where the platforming levels got way too hard and way too long between checkpoints. I recently picked this one back up after beating Monster Tale, which was made by pretty much the same dev team. The platforming in each is almost exactly the same. Monster Tale makes a refrence to it's protagonist, Ellie, being the niece of Henry and that she learned all her moves from him. It makes sense, but it doesn't make up for having EXACTLY the same gameplay in two different games. I liked Monster Tale tons more, but even that game had some excruciating boss battles that nearly made me quit it for good like I did with Henry Hatsworth.
I played a crap load of the original Game Cube Animal Crossing when I was younger. It was a game I found myself playing endlessly at times. I always thought that AC's gameplay warranted a portable version you could play wherever you go. Playing the GC version felt like too much to sit down and devote time to, rather it felt like it should be something I can play in my hands for short 20 minute spurts. I enjoyed Wild World as much as I could before I hit a dead end pretty much. I had done most of what I could and most of my play time was just devoted to getting a lot of coin from fruit I had planted. Pretty much ever tree in my town had fruit from a friend's town which was worth more than the native fruit of mine. It took me probably 45 minutes to shake all of the trees and collect. It got me tons of bells and I payed Tom Nook off pretty quickly. Got all of the house add-ons and collected some cool furniture. After doing that for a while I got bored of WW. It was neat to do the special events, but I always missed them and cheated by changing the internal clock to see them. It became a chore more than a game I enjoyed. All of my neighbors who I liked would try to move every other week and I had to convince all of them to stay. It had it's fun, but it didn't last. I'll check it out here and there, but my town is as full with weeds as I can and I don't want to pick them all. I'd probably be up for a 3DS one if I ever get a 3DS, but even then I doubt enough will be added on for me to keep going back to it every so often.
Moon was the first, and only FPS I have for my DS. I played the Metroid Prime Hunters demo and liked that one a lot (though I never got around to buying it). Moon looked like it had a cool concept and a great look to it. While it has those two things going for it, the overall game has to be one of the most boring ones I have played. I'm not far into it mostly because I really have no urge to play it at all. The enemies take a lot of damage to kill and the save rooms are too far apart at times. If you die right near the end of an area before a save point, you are boned. If it was fun shooter with more variety (i.e a FPS Metroid game) and wasn't too hard I'd be inclined to play the part again. But so far it has deemed to be too tough. Maybe I'l attempt it again, but I'll probably go and find a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters from eBay.
A Metroid-vania exploitative platformer made by the same team who made Henry Hatsworth. If you're reading this list you know my feeling about Henry Hatsworth already. Monster Tale is a much better game overall compared to HH, but it's not without it's fault. HH and MT share the same combat system. A melee weapon attack that has the same combo. A weapon that shoots in the exact same fashion. And enemy types that are pretty much exactly the same. Where HH has levels that get too insanely hard towards their end, MT is a bit easier. It still has some of the most frustrating boss levels ever in a platformer, but if you are patient you can beat them. It does get a bit hard towards the end when they throw many enemies at once towards you in each room. But luckily your companion Chomp can prove helpful in these situations. Although there are a few sections towards the end where it locks you on the screen and bombards you with enemies that can stack up and become nearly impossible. I liked it overall, but majorly pointless backtracking really made it a longer game than it should have been. The game will have you go to the complete end of a map section just to get one power up that needs to be used in the place where you started all the way on the opposite side. It felt like the devs added these just to make the game longer. And unlike Metroid and Castlevania there are NO warp rooms in each section of the map to get you to the other side quicker. Like I said I liked it overall, but it does have many faults that make it fall short of being as great and replayable as the DS/GBA Castlevania and Metroid games it borrows heavily from.
I loved the hell out of this game, despite having yet to finish it. I love adventure games from back in the day when it was all Lucas Arts made. This one reminded me heavily of those games, although a bit different in gameplay. A dialogue driven mystery story is something I wanted the DS to have for a while. I never was interested in the Phoenix Wright games, so when I saw this one I was immediately interested. I also really like detective stories and this is pretty much a handheld mystery. Everything from the art style (despite how much it looked like Ah-ha's Take Me On video) to the characters are superb. This one sadly got thrown on the back burner as I got stuck in a part towards the end of the game. I'm glad it has a “Last time on Hotel Dusk” type re-cap when you boot it up again, but I'll have to look up how to beat the specific part as it is a timed one that causes your guy to die if not completed. I hear the same team made that terrible similarly played Again game that GB did a funny QuickLook of...it's too bad since Hotel Dusk was so great.