If you’ve read my Geometry Wars: Galaxies review for the Wii, you know I thought very favorably of it. What’s even better is the fact that there’s a portable version of the game available for the Nintendo DS. In that tiny little cart you’ll find a virtually identical version of Geometry Wars: Galaxies. That’s not to say there aren’t differences, but from a gameplay and content perspective you’ve got every Geometry Wars fan’s dream.

Obviously the Nintendo DS isn’t two Gamecubes with some duct tape, so graphically speaking the game doesn’t look quite as good. You won’t get any fancy grid effects, and there won’t be as many colors, but you do still get a great particle engine and plenty of baddies on the screen at once. The game does slowdown at times, especially when things start to get really hectic, but it’s nothing too bad and it’s something you get used to.

The Controls on the DS allow for a few options. The first has the game displaying on the top screen while you use the d-pad (or buttons for us lefties) to move and the stylus on the bottom screen to aim. There’s a small ship icon which corresponds to your ship up top, and moving the stylus around it shoots in the appropriate direction. The second method has the game screen at the bottom and has you using the stylus directly on the game board. The problem I found with this is it can be difficult to see the action on the screen. The final method allows you to have the screen on either top or bottom and you use the d-pad and buttons in a familiar dual analog stick type fashion. I actually found this method to be the best once I go the hang of rolling my thumb along the buttons to aim.

Besides a bit of slowdown the only flaw I found with the game is the sound. While it does an accurate job of recreating the effects, there seems to be a limit as to how many sound cues the DS can play at once. This causes you to miss critical cues of different types of enemies spawning. The Nintendo DS and Wii version of Galaxies allow you to connect the two to unlock an additional galaxy. The galaxy has one of the greatest levels in it which has a giant black hole in the middle that can’t be killed along with constantly spawning enemies. It’s an interesting and hectic challenge.

For Geometry Wars addicts this is the version of the game you need to have. The pick up and play nature of the game is perfect for the DS. On top of that you get online leader boards via the Nintendo WiFi connection to feed your competitive side. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some isosceles triangles to blast apart.

Score: 4 out of 5

Buy it @ Amazon.

In a time when DS games had you performing surgery or solving murder mysteries Cooking Mama stood out as a quirky title about making food. I always figured it was one of those titles that tried to cash in on the DS craze so I avoided it. Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends was recently released and I figured it was time to see what all the fuss was about. The most ironic thing about the game is I found myself playing it while waiting for things to cook in the real kitchen.

The basic premise of the game to cook fast, and to cook accurately. The idea is you are presented with a bunch of recipes, and each recipe is broken down into a step. Each step is basically a mini-game. Does the recipe call for diced onions? There’s a little dicing mini game to play. Does the recipe require skewered eel? Then there’s a little eel skewering mini game. Perhaps you need to blend corn? You get the idea. With 80 some recipes in the game, there are over 150 different mini games. And while the variety of the mini-games follow a few basic patterns, there seems to be enough variety to keep you interested for quite some time. From dicing, stirring, chopping, tossing, spreading, and combining ingredients each mini-game has a unique hook to it that is strangely addicting. Some games require a memory type mechanism, others require your ability to recognize blurry pictures while most of them are basically using the stylus to mimic some sort of motion. Cooking Mama 2 has you cooking not only with Mama, but Mama’s friends for a variety of different recipes. Each step in a recipe has a set time it needs to be completed in, and the faster and more accurate you complete the step the higher your rating is. Eventually you’ll earn medals and unlock content to help customize your kitchen and cook new recipes. Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends also has the ability to have a cooking contest with friends using just 1 cartridge. Just think, you can have your very own Iron Chef Cook-off without the mess!

While the game is strangely addictive, there are a few quirks. In some of the mini-games it isn’t very apparent what the game wants you to do. I also would have loved to see the actual recipes for the dishes so you can actually cook the food (in real life). And while Cooking Mama 2 is a solid title on it’s own, but from what I hear it’s not all that different from the original.

Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends is your quintessential Nintendo DS game. It’s quick pickup and play design, combined with some inventive uses for the stylus make it strangely addicting and fun. If you are looking for a game that’s a great distraction, and to fill those few minutes while you nuke a pizza in the microwave, look no further than Cooking Mama 2. And who knows…soon you might be cooking “Even better than mama!”

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Buy it at Amazon!

Cool little piece of swag for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations on the DS.

Even the cat likes it! MEOW! OBJECTION!

One of the most unique titles I saw at E3 was a little Nintendo DS game from Ubisoft called Jam Sessions. The way the “game” works is it creates a virtual guitar for you on the DS touch screen that you can play. You can then load in chords and note patterns and play the virtual guitar, and even record the music you play. So why not play a real guitar? Well the idea really is to easily experiment on the road without a guitar, and it should help a lot of real musicians write music whenever inspiration strikes. And for up and coming musicians this is a cheap way to start practicing reading and writing music for guitars.

IGN has a preview and demo video up on their site. Be sure to check it out.