Nintendo 3DS Review (3DS)

It’s here to gouge out your eyes with mystical splendor

It’s been just over a year filled with high hopes and dismayed expectations for the most controversial DS to hit the market, yet it’s finally hit UK shores for us prehistoric 2D morons to behold. Before you slot a cartridge in, you’ll be forced to leap around the room, witness fields grow from your bed and finally witness 3D with no glasses. Yet is it really all about the literal eye grabbing, or is there more depth to Nintendo’s latest addition to the DS clan?

It’s easy to be disappointed thanks to the high speculation and dubious ‘You have to see it to believe it’ remarks. When booting up the 3DS for the very first time, your pupils sort of invert in upon themselves and objects have this pastel like blue and red haze about them. Thankfully the 3D slider that comes equipped with it manages to cater for the needs of your eyeballs. Should the popping graphics present too much of a strain, the 3D effects can be turned off quickly with said slider which is a thankful addition for the fussy. Though it’s somewhat worrying at first whether you’ll be able to find something that suits you, you soon find that adjustment that is ‘just right’, and can become one of those facts that lies in the back of your brain alongside how many sugars you have in your tea. For my girlfriend who wears reading glasses, the effects were somewhat poor unless she wore her glasses and turned the slider to the highest setting, where upon it really took its stride.

Once that balance is found, the 3D effects are a great addition to the games. However, despite the depth in the images you can see on screen, there is a lack of it to the images trying to reach out to your face. It doesn’t feel like anything is trying to pounce out at you in the same way you would if you donned some glasses at the cinema. The graphics are a step above its predecessors, with only a slight lack of polish forcing it not to dominate the Wii’s own graphics engine, and it combines well with the 3D effects, just not enough to drop your jaw.

Those who’ve shelled out so much money on the nifty piece of gadgetry that they have none left for actual games need not fret. The 3DS comes with several pieces of software to dig into to show off the capabilities of the console. The Dsi staple features of microphone and camera are tagged on, but the camera comes with much cooler add-ons than its predecessor. Photos can now be made into three dimensional, if slightly blurry works of pixelated art, yet the poor megapixels suggest that it’s much more of a gimmick than a digital camera to be taken seriously.

The software bundled intends to get the most fun out of the camera, yet with varying results. The first and most bizarre would be Face Raiders, a peculier shoot-em-up where you and your loved ones are the 3DS’s sworn enemy. Things weren’t off to a great start when the software identified me as a young female, and then preceded to morph my face into headless minions with heli pack hats and viking helmets, all wishing to ram into and kiss me till death. Once defeated, the face is rather sinisterly added to a ‘Face Gallery’ for future games, and so an encyclopedia of battered family members and friends is born and encouraged. It’s quite a laugh, but also bloody bizarre how the game morphs the innocent faces into grimmacing menaces with furrowed brows and gawping mouths, and makes those horrid nightmares of facing waves upon waves of Sir Patrick Moore in his torsoless Games Master days leads to a strong desire to explore the 3DS’s other features rather sharpish. If people thought you looked weird flailing a Wii remote, just wait till they get a load of you glued to a portable device scanning the bed room for floating faces…

The 3DS is just plain fricking awesome

The more impressive camera/gameplay functions hold hands with the accompanied AR Reality Cards. The concept of the cards are unusually vague, depicting some of Nintendo’s trademark and most loved characters along with one simply with a yellow box and question mark. Only when casting said card in front of the camera does the environment truly come to life. Landscapes generate, trees spout forth, dragons grow and the hills emanate from the dining room table and is strangely exciting to behold. You’re encouraged to rotate around and shoot targets or play a hybrid of golf/snooker in the weird landscapes that generate, and the character cards create figurines for you to arrange in humorous dioramas. It’s a feature which can be implemented in games in the future, and if done so with ingenuity, could potentially be awesome.

The Mii character creation from the Wii makes an entrance here with a whole inbuilt plaza for the strange alter ego critters. Your Mii can be used in particular 3DS games, but for the time being are more active using the StreetPass feature. Meet anyone else on your travels equipped with a 3DS and data can be transferred between the two consoles, and Miis can pop in to visit. When in your plaza, these Miis can help you out with mini-games and help you trade puzzle pieces to form pictures. Not too intriguing, but some games integrate this feature, and will scope out possible players and friends in your vicinity to fight with.

Nowadays, it seems that everything must come with a pedometer attached to it, and the 3DS is no exception. An ‘Activity Log’ tracks down how many steps you’ve taken during the day and converts them into coins which help your Mii through the StreetPass mini-games as well as don them with new accessories. It’s a strange feature, yet one which isn’t necessarily bad, and one that goes hand in hand with StreetPass. The activity log also tracks how long you’ve been playing on games for, tracking your sessions in a bid to slowly babysit your 3D habits.

Yes, as soon as you turn the console on, a massive yellow warning sign flashes up, telling you your eyes will literally glue to the screen through extensive use. Short (recommended) sessions of half an hour are all good, and left me with nothing but a short eye strain and a weird sick feeling in my stomach which I have now thankfully built an immunity to, but it’s still something that could put off the cautious. Follow precautions, and you’ll be fine. Be an idiot, and you eye whites will turn pink, eggs will look like decapitated heads and you’ll star seeing dead people…everywhere.

There’s no doubt about it that the 3DS is the coolest looking handheld Nintendo have released. With a streamlined futuristic look of the original DS, the handy size of the DS Lite and the commuter friendly glossy finish of the Dsi XL, it looks like a prop electronic diary from Tron. The Cosmo Blue version beams a Smurf like caricature of your face upon it’s surface and gleams in the light, with a matte like finish on the bottom. Inside, the D-pad is now accompanied by an analogue stick which feels comfortable to use and prevents the thumb from cramping up with extensive use. It’s most definitely an awesome looking console, and will make your old DS’s look like novelty paperweights, practically asking to be traded in and replaced by its new brethren.

With all the marketing jargon and ‘Revolutionary’ self-praise out of the way, the 3DS is just plain fricking awesome for those still in cahoots with ha
ndheld gaming. Somewhat ironically, the 3D is actually the least gimmicky thing about it when compared to its software and features which prove more enjoyable. It’s certainly impressive for a portable console, but doesn’t beat 3D with glasses. The design, the slight tweaks and the great (if at times freakish) software bundled with it offers up features which could prove to make some awesome additions to future games, and the StreetPass feature allows to open up multi-player in a more social way. Slick design and great presentation means that the 3DS is a definite must buy for the DS enthusiast and the first truly landmark portable Nintendo console to make an impact since the original DS.