I was a big fan of Ninja Gaiden. As a result, I was happy to hear Itagaki was testing the series on the Nintendo DS with Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (huh; look at that, another DS game with "DS" in its acronym). Dragon Sword is a game that mixes a lot of Ninja Gaiden with a lot of Nintendo DS. Fundamentally, it is a smooth transition. Ninja Gaiden was taken from its original succes on the Xbox and made to a cohesive DS version.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is one of the few games to use the stylus control mechanics effectively, at least for the most part. Ryu Hayabusa is controlled almost completely with the stylus, and this results in some interesting gameplay situations. Although the feeling is a little different, it is clear that you are playing Ninja Gaiden when you turn your DS sideways to play Dragon Sword.

Beware, however: Dragon Sword can be an awkward game, and its stylus-only/sideways-DS design should be a clear indicator of that. Not all Ninja Gaiden fans are going to enjoy playing this game, but some of its mechanics are definitely solid attempts at bringing the series to the DS, and that counts for a lot.

Learn the ways of a handheld ninja after the jump.

We need to talk.  I just finished Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the newly released fourth game of the vaunted Ace Attorney series, and I don’t know what to say.  Your first Ace Attorney game, Phoenix Wright, was a fantastic, novel game with a great plot.  Justice for All, the second in the series, was a bit worse, with most of the cases being merely decent.  However, the game’s final case was amazing, easily one of the top three cases ever.  That case kept the game from being a letdown, with JFA overall being worse than the first but not by much.  Finally came Trials and Tribulations, a triumph on par with the first in the series.  With the Ace Attorney series sporting such a fantastic track record, I was more excited about Apollo Justice than any of the Ace Attorney games before.  After all, this was to be a brand new chapter in the franchise, right?  The Phoenix Wright plot arc was complete, you had a killer concept, and this was your first AA game not made on the GBA.  It looked like all the elements were there with nothing to hold you back from making the greatest Ace Attorney game ever.  So how did Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney end up such a disappointment?

 I think much of the reason this pains me so is because your general story concept for this game was so great.  The player is Apollo Justice, rookie attorney and fan of the great lawyer god Phoenix Wright – except that seven years ago Phoenix was stripped of his attorney’s badge, now forced to play the piano at a Russian restaurant to pay the bills.  What happened to our favorite character?  What event could have happened to turn the man we came to know and love into bitter exile?  Also, since when did he have a daughter?  How could any fan of the Ace Attorney series not salivate when imagining the possibilities inherent in such a premise?  Yet somehow you guys turned what could have been the greatest Ace Attorney plot ever into an anticlimactic letdown.  When I said “anticlimactic,” I meant that literally.  Your climactic case, where there is a great surprising unexpected twist and an extremely satisfying end, is at the beginning of the game!  Everything afterwards feels flat compared to the excitement that defending Phoenix Wright against a murder charge.

 Keep reading, Capcom.  There's plenty more after the jump.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a very difficult game to pin down in any way.  It’s hard to categorize.  It’s hard to describe.  Most of all, it’s hard to really understand just why this game is so much fun.  A puzzle and adventure tag-team equal in greatness to duos like peanut butter and chocolate or chips and salsa, Professor Layton is a truly wonderful intellectual duet of fun.

Just what is Professor Layton and the Curious Village?  Developed by RPG uber-studio Level 5, Layton is a mediocre adventure game combined with brain-twisters, some of which are hundreds of years old.  While this most likely sounds like a recipe for monotony, rest assured such is not the case.  Though both aspects of Layton would be undesirable individually, together you get a mesh of gameplay that will grip you and leave you opening up your DS during red lights and other short pauses, hoping to complete another of Layton’s challenging puzzles.

Hit the jump for more brain-bending fun.

The Advance Wars series is well known for two things: well-balanced, fun, turn-based tactical gameplay and a cast of characters who seem to be completely oblivious to the horrors of war.  Developer Intelligent Systems set out to change that perception with their new installment, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, and for the most part their effort was a success.  They managed to keep most of the fun gameplay, while completely overhauling the look and feel of the game. 

However, it wasn’t a complete victory; while excising the series’ absurd views of death and destruction, they also removed many of the best features found in the previous installments.  The end result is a game that while actually playing better than previous iterations, somehow manages to be an inferior product.

The full review's after the jump. 

I hate stylus-centric gameplay.

I want to make that very clear from the start.  I hate games where the stylus takes the control focus. I especially hate games where the stylus is your only option for control.  I prefer traditional control schemes because they work so well.  After two decades of home gaming, they’ve simply become natural and comfortable for me.  Being forced into a stylus control scheme makes for an unhappy Skittles.

The DS, for all the joy and amusement it brings me, has never particularly thrilled me when one of its games is controlled almost exclusively via stylus control.  Sure, it's extremely precise.  But sometimes, those touchscreen controls are just so bad when compared to a standard control scheme that it completely sours you on the game (I'm looking at you, Star Fox Command)

So you can probably imagine how much I cringed in anticipated horror when I learned that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the first DS entry in the franchise, would be controlled almost entirely with the stylus. Movement, combat, minigames… hell, even the boomerang would be handled by via the touchscreen. Oy.  “Can’t these people just leave well enough alone?”, I asked myself.  A few hours later, when I realized that no answer would be forthcoming, I decided to try and give the game the benefit of the doubt when it finally did get released stateside.

And now that it’s here, I’ve got to hand it to Nintendo.  Stlyus-centric gameplay can be an amazing little blessing when it’s done right, and that’s what Phantom Hourglass does. It gets the controls right.  It gets a lot of things right, in fact.  Zelda fans will want to grab this as quickly as they can, provided they don’t set their expectations too high. This is a worthy addition to any DS library, even if it gets a few things wrong.

Hit the jump.  I hope you brought your swimming trunks.