Advance Wars: Dual Strike

[Pablo Molinero]

The newest theater of operations for the Advance Wars crew is the Nintendo DS. This time all those nations with the Lucky Charms marshmallow names have formed a united front against Black Hole's reemerging threat. We begin the game alongside rookie COs Jake and Rachel -- who look like the more fashionable European cousins of Andy and Sami respectively -- as they defend their homeland against the launch of Black Hole's latest offensive.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (note the nascent "subtitle with the initials 'd' and 's'" meme) is still much the game we've come to love. You can navigate menus and maps with the touch screen if you wish, but all this introduces is some mild imprecision. It promises the usual sorts of upgrades: new units, new commanding officers, and some rule tweaks on the margins. Perhaps more notable -- and certainly more observable in the E3 floor demo -- is a new dual-front battle system that makes clever use of the DS's second screen.

Dual-front battles will occur periodically throughout the campaign. In the example we encountered, an air battle on the top screen proceeds in parallel to the ground battle on the bottom screen. The air battle, in which your Orange Star air force attempts to shoot down a massive airborne fortress called Black Ark, isn't under your direct control; it's entirely transacted by the AI. But the player can influence the course of the air battle by sending his air units up to reinforce the friendly units on the top screen. Winning the air battle will stop the Black Ark's bombardments of your ground units, but at the expense of the fighters and bombers you've diverted from the battle on the ground. It's a system with the potential to bring us some very interesting scenarios. And the manner in which the two battles simultaneously unfold lends the game a certain drama.

Dual Strike seems to be a further refinement of a winning formula. Thoughtful new details like the dual front battles -- in concert with a consistently high standard of level design -- should make this latest Advance Wars as insidiously compulsive as its GBA predecessors.

From 1up

The basics: It's a turn-by-turn strategy war game using a rock-paper-scissors formula, except the rocks are antiaircraft guns, paper is a heavy tank, and scissors are the deadly bombers flying high in the sky. You get a ton of units to manage, from foot soldiers to battleships, and now the tactical action takes place across two screens. Throughout the campaign, you can move troops from one map to the other and back.

How was it? Advance Wars 2 on the Game Boy Advance was a relatively minor upgrade over its predecessor, but Dual Strike feels like the sequel fans have been waiting for. New vehicles (like the stealth fighter, aircraft carrier, repair boat, and megatank), officers (who can gain experience through battles to upgrade skills), and modes (survival and combat, which is like a real-time strategy game except you control one unit at a time) mean I'll be glued to my DS for a long, long time.

From EGM

Who else is psyched for this game? It's going to be the main reason I'm buying a DS. It's great that they're finally adding more unit types; I was kinda put off that the only new unit was Neotank in AW2. The CO experience idea sounds good, adding more customization to the COs can only be a good thing (especially if I can make Grit more badass). But I don't know what to think yet of the dual front idea, having something randomly blast my troops from the sky sounds like it would get real annoying, fast. Perhaps It'll just add extra incentive to end it quickly, we'll see.

[TheRetreater]

having played the GBA games this would be my absolute TOP game for DS if I cared about DS.

It actually seems like they are finally finding ways to use the second screen well.

so, unless I fold and get a DS (i won't) I will just continue to dread the Advance Wars game for GC that they renamed and altered the mechanics of.

someone tell me to be optimistic

[Mr. Keith]

Even though I really wasn't fond of the second one, I still enjoy the Advanced Wars game and due to my lack of DS titles, might give this one a shot. But I might just hold out on it and hope they make another version of it with an Online mode. Now that would rock.