Post by scottiedog on Mar 25, 2011 19:30:16 GMT -5
I don’t know if anyone here plays video games (ED: and if they don't, I totally just wasted my time), but since it was released today (in the UK, and technically, yesterday), I thought I’d make a topic.
I’d told myself I wasn’t going to get a 3DS, at least not on release date (the region lock really put me off), but with my family pressurising me and offering to pay for most of it and call it an early birthday gift, I couldn’t resist.
The 3D is a lot better than I expected it to be. There’s some proper, realistic depth there. The slider helps massively though as I find it can cause a little image blur on max so I’ve been turning it down just a tad.
The inbuilt software isn’t bad, Mii maker is the same as it is on the Wii, and Face Raiders is very fun in short bursts (hilarious too - I took a picture of a screenshot of Hurley from Lost and it thought he was a 4-9 year old girl!), a nice tech demo, but doesn’t quite show off as much of the 3DS as I would like. To be honest the console could have done with being bundled with a proper tech demo game, a la Wii Sports - Pilotwings would have been perfect for this, but instead Nintendo decided to rake in the money by releasing it as a full priced game.
Because of the lack of a proper tech demo, it’s also essential to pick up a game, unfortunately the launch line up is pretty abysmal. I decided to get Rayman as the best of a bad bunch (already having SFIV twice) since I’ve never played it before. So far so good. Not sure the game is really pushing the console graphically, but the 3D is amazing, you do have to be careful to keep the console at the right angle, though I haven't found this problematic.
If you get Rayman, do check out the pause menu. Those little blue dots look like they're actually coming out of the screen. It’s not much, and it’s the first thing I’ve seen do it, but it shows that the 3DS is capable of it.
Now on to DS compatibility mode. I haven’t really played any DS games on it yet, but I started up Pokemon White and wondered around a little to see how it felt. On pre-set settings the screen is stretched, not majorly, but enough to make text slightly blurred, shouldn’t be too much of a problem unless you have poor eye-sight or are a perfectionist. As some of you may know, you can also keep the original aspect ratio of the game (meaning that for every pixel used on the DS, one pixel will be used on the 3DS - rather than the three or four on the pre-set mode) by holding start+select as you boot up the game. This gets rid of the blur completely, and if anything renders it more crisply than the DS, unfortunately it also makes the screen significantly smaller than it would be if you were playing the game on your DS, not much of a problem for games like Pokemon (+ pad based), but a big problem for games like Spirit Tracks (touch screen based). For now I would recommend holding onto your original DS if you plan to play a lot of DS games - unless you really want to use the analogue stick.
Battery life. Well, if you know anything about the console you’ll already know about this. I was playing mine on a full charge for an hour and a half, full brightness, almost max 3D, and it wasted half the battery power. Incredibly poor, my Lite does better than that after four years of excessive playing (and thus charging). So don’t expect much from the battery, I haven’t tried it on a lower brightness yet, but to be fair, max is pretty damn bright, so I don’t think there’ll be a problem with turning it down a notch or two.
In conclusion:
Do I regret buying it: Not yet.
Will I regret buying it: Probably when an Atlus game I really want to play comes out.
It is worth it: Hard to say. I managed to get for £204 with any game (from Tesco). Which is a lot better than elsewhere, but still expensive. It’s a good console but there are a lot of flaws (region locking, battery life and at the moment, lack of games).
Is it good: Hell yeah.
Are the launch games good: Hell no (well that’s debatable actually, but for me they’re not).
I’d told myself I wasn’t going to get a 3DS, at least not on release date (the region lock really put me off), but with my family pressurising me and offering to pay for most of it and call it an early birthday gift, I couldn’t resist.
The 3D is a lot better than I expected it to be. There’s some proper, realistic depth there. The slider helps massively though as I find it can cause a little image blur on max so I’ve been turning it down just a tad.
The inbuilt software isn’t bad, Mii maker is the same as it is on the Wii, and Face Raiders is very fun in short bursts (hilarious too - I took a picture of a screenshot of Hurley from Lost and it thought he was a 4-9 year old girl!), a nice tech demo, but doesn’t quite show off as much of the 3DS as I would like. To be honest the console could have done with being bundled with a proper tech demo game, a la Wii Sports - Pilotwings would have been perfect for this, but instead Nintendo decided to rake in the money by releasing it as a full priced game.
Because of the lack of a proper tech demo, it’s also essential to pick up a game, unfortunately the launch line up is pretty abysmal. I decided to get Rayman as the best of a bad bunch (already having SFIV twice) since I’ve never played it before. So far so good. Not sure the game is really pushing the console graphically, but the 3D is amazing, you do have to be careful to keep the console at the right angle, though I haven't found this problematic.
If you get Rayman, do check out the pause menu. Those little blue dots look like they're actually coming out of the screen. It’s not much, and it’s the first thing I’ve seen do it, but it shows that the 3DS is capable of it.
Now on to DS compatibility mode. I haven’t really played any DS games on it yet, but I started up Pokemon White and wondered around a little to see how it felt. On pre-set settings the screen is stretched, not majorly, but enough to make text slightly blurred, shouldn’t be too much of a problem unless you have poor eye-sight or are a perfectionist. As some of you may know, you can also keep the original aspect ratio of the game (meaning that for every pixel used on the DS, one pixel will be used on the 3DS - rather than the three or four on the pre-set mode) by holding start+select as you boot up the game. This gets rid of the blur completely, and if anything renders it more crisply than the DS, unfortunately it also makes the screen significantly smaller than it would be if you were playing the game on your DS, not much of a problem for games like Pokemon (+ pad based), but a big problem for games like Spirit Tracks (touch screen based). For now I would recommend holding onto your original DS if you plan to play a lot of DS games - unless you really want to use the analogue stick.
Battery life. Well, if you know anything about the console you’ll already know about this. I was playing mine on a full charge for an hour and a half, full brightness, almost max 3D, and it wasted half the battery power. Incredibly poor, my Lite does better than that after four years of excessive playing (and thus charging). So don’t expect much from the battery, I haven’t tried it on a lower brightness yet, but to be fair, max is pretty damn bright, so I don’t think there’ll be a problem with turning it down a notch or two.
In conclusion:
Do I regret buying it: Not yet.
Will I regret buying it: Probably when an Atlus game I really want to play comes out.
It is worth it: Hard to say. I managed to get for £204 with any game (from Tesco). Which is a lot better than elsewhere, but still expensive. It’s a good console but there are a lot of flaws (region locking, battery life and at the moment, lack of games).
Is it good: Hell yeah.
Are the launch games good: Hell no (well that’s debatable actually, but for me they’re not).