Top 5 of the Best Current-Gen DS Uses

We can finally get our hands on (through import) Nintendo’s newest iteration of their super-popular portable, the DSi. But before we get caught up in all the shiny-shiny newness hype (TWO cameras!!!), it’s worth noting that not all the DS games introduced so far have managed to use the current DS’s features. Plenty stopped innovating with two screens, or took a big punt and used the extra screen as a map or character info screen; some barely even used the DS’s innovative touch screen. (Press here for start! Now put that silly stick away, you won’t be needing it.)

Let’s take a look back at some of the best uses of the full range of DS features to date:

The World Ends With You

The World Ends With You has an entirely new RPG flavor, for those used to swords, spears and mana.

You’ll either love or hate this entirely different style. It’s the complex battle system that puts this game on the list: as the main character, you collect pins that allow you different attacks in battle, which are activated using both the d-pad, and by using your stylus to draw them on the touch screen.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

It’s a detective story, with a lot of text. Hotel Dusk is less about messing with puzzles and more about characters and their versions of the truth. A lot of the game is built on walking around (stylus guided, natch) and talking to people, but it’s the clever ways of manipulating clues (for example, closing your DS to flip objects and find secret messages) that makes this game noir worthy of its platform.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

I’m a Zelda fangirl, through and through, so I would have bought the latest version even if played like it was built for a Game Boy. It was pure genius, however, when I hit my first puzzle with candles: a quick puff at the screen blew them straight out.

The charm builds with stylus-directed movement, taps and slashes to attack enemies, yelling with a merchant to get a good deal on ship parts, and a system that lets you take your own notes by drawing on the map. It’s all perfectly intuitive, and takes makes good use of the second screen, the touch capabilities and the microphone.

Nintendogs

That’s right. Maybe you got it free with your DS. Maybe you bought it for your girlfriend. Maybe it’s the only game you could get your Mom on board with. (If you didn’t, hey, that’s between you and your fake dog.)

But let’s not mistake it, Nintendogs was absolutely designed to show off the DS’s full features. Walk your dog, call its name to get its attention, pet it with the stylus, blow bubbles with the mic—it’s all there, with adorable fuzziness in a DS cart.

Brain Age

It’s definitely old news by now, but 2006’s Brain Age still makes the grade for its above-average handwriting recognition. It catches on to all kinds of scratchy numbers that my kindergarten teacher wouldn’t let slide. It’s fabulously simple to answer Dr. Kawashima’s math puzzles and the Sudoku puzzles. Brain Age 2 carried on this standard, adding touch-keyboard training, more voice-activated tests (Rock! Paper! Scissors!), and of course, a whole new slew of extremely accessible Sudoku puzzles, since you’re bound to have breezed through the hundred sets in the first game, braniac.