The BIG DS Voting Thread, Coming to You Weekly: Thanks For Voting!

I forgot this week whilst visiting my parents. I've only played Jam With The Band and Rhythm Paradise(?) though and I didn't think much of the latter.

I can't say I was fond of Paradise either. Looking back, I don't think it deserved a vote from me.

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Some strategy games, as apparently I'm doing these lists each week:

Spoiler:

This is as an exhaustive a list as I can come up with. It's not really my cup of tea. Some of it is debatable I suppose, but I've explained my logic in the Wii thread. Do as you please. You could probably find a way to call Super Mario 64 DS a strategy game, if you tried.

I think Animal Crossing and the myriad of Harvest Moons are the ones that are going to draw the most consternation from that list.  For me, certainly, ACWW was other.  (Maaaaaaybe New Leaf could be strategy, given that you're doing all the town planning and building?  But probably not, and anyway that's for another thread.)  I've never played an HM (any of them!), so I can't say.

Can I also add Heroes Of Mana and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings to the list of strategy games?

In other news, I now own Sonic Rush, purely off the back of this thread.

Yeah, Animal Crossing is probably an "other" game, bizarre genreless game that it is. And yup, Heroes of Mana and FFXII: Revenant Wings are strategy! Good to hear that this thread has helped people discover new games.  

Animal Crossing does have a genre you could stick it in - as does every single game ever developed - but it isn't one that fits easily into this thread. I had always seen Wild World (and Harvest Moon) as a strategy game in the sense that planning, management and perseverance yield the best in-game results. It's not as conventional an example of the genre as, say, Lemmings or Command & Conquer, but it's the same sort of thing to me. I don't think that'll convince reading though. I think Animal Crossing is too smart, too strategic and too good to be chucked in with the likes of Art Academy, to be honest.

I'm sending votes now.

I will ask you then: how did you arrive at your opinion of those five in bold?

They're the same thing, surely. God sims, war simulations, football management titles, open-ended city-building games; they all require a similar level of strategic planning in order for the player to succeed. There's no worth in this week's thread vote if we have that Shin Tensai NCFELBNEV;WJBVEWKBVK: CKWQFNOQEWNLEW;VK;EKFBVEQWVEWK;VNOV[ stuff and not the SimCity games.

I think that half of genre-definition has to come from "gut feeling", and that's where people start trading blows (so to speak).  But on the other hand, there definitely has to be a "planning" aspect to strategy games, whether it's placing your troops to deal with enemy manoeuvres in Advance Wars or placing your hot-dog stands to bring in income in Theme Park (yes, I do think that feels like a strategy game).  

With Wild World, I don't feel that there's enough tactics or planning.  Much of the game for me was running around catching bugs, or fishing, or digging up fossils, or just talking to the animals, compared to developing your town or upgrading your shops (New Leaf is slightly different, as I've said, but even then the public works are hardly the main gameplay facet).  Even paying off your debt isn't strategic: what are you planning for?  More furniture?  That doesn't seem enough.  And I suspect that The Sims is the same.  

That's my reasoning, anyway.  I'd put AC and The Sims in other, SimCity and Theme Park in strategy, and could be swayed either way for Harvest Moon on the basis that I have no idea how it feels to play.  And Wikipedia describes Devil Survivor as "a tactical role-playing game", so that's that one settled, I hope.

Pleasantly surprised by last week's winner! It wasn't my first choice, but I'm very glad it was played by more people here than I thought.

@Balla: No way was Ouendan 2 better than Ouendan.  

Also: Booyah for me getting comment of the week.  

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Strategy, eh? Some solid choices on that there list, though I would also call Animal Crossing 'Other' rather than strategy.

I never played the original, so you may well be right!

Both great games, though I personally felt the soundtrack in the sequel was weaker, and they were trying just a bit too hard to be wacky. Felt more natural in the original.

Balladeer wrote:

That's my reasoning, anyway.  I'd put AC and The Sims in other, SimCity and Theme Park in strategy, and could be swayed either way for Harvest Moon on the basis that I have no idea how it feels to play.  And Wikipedia describes Devil Survivor as "a tactical role-playing game", so that's that one settled, I hope.

That's essentially what I was going to say. SimCity definitely feels like a strategy game, and by extension (although I've never played it, but I can guess) so does Theme Park. They're RTS games without the combat - it's city planning and a strategic putting together of your town/theme park.

AC just doesn't possess that strategic element in my eyes, it's a "life game" in my eyes. There's no real strategy in Wild World, although I haven't played New Leaf to chip in on that front, but that's 3DS anyway. Wikipedia describes it as a "social simulation game", so make of that what you will.

So that leaves Harvest Moon!  Anyone?

Don't think it matters what happens with Harvest Moon. We've now essentially wound up with another week for types of RPG's, except with Advance Wars, Theme Park and some SimCity games nobody's played.

See, I originally had strategy combined with other - but because it was likely that strategy RPGs would be included in this week, I decided to separate them out so we didn't have a clusterfuck of a week like the upcoming RPG week. Gives some more games a chance to stand in the spotlight, y'know?

If that's what's happening then that's cool, but to me they're all RPG's all the same. It's like splitting up 2D and 3D platformers into separate weeks. They still share the same core gameplay mechanics and should be appreciated as such.

My original idea of this sort of thread (as sent on NGamer) was that we'd find the ten best games from ten distinct genres. Though it's not my thread anymore, I don't think I (or many others using the forum) appreciated how multifaceted games are on last-gen Nintendo consoles. They're not as distinct as I originally thought. Nonetheless, I still think that should be the aim: to find the best ten games in ten different genres. That can't be done if there's two RPG weeks. I've been encouraged not to vote for a load of individual games as they apparently don't fit a certain genre, yet we're allowing people to vote for RPG's over two rounds as it's a wee bit busy in one week? That's only an individual opinion. I'd have wanted two weeks for puzzlers and four for platformers if those were the rules.

So is that your vote idea phillps, vote for our top 10 games in fps, platformer, etc. Sounds good would that be all formats or just games that have been on nintendo's systems.

I could see problems though with a big vote as I still feel lego star wars etc should be in platformer, bioshock is a rpg not a fps but can see people wanting to put in fps, mass effect is a rpg but my mate says its a 3rd person shooter, mortal kombat isn't a beat'em up its a fighter etc.

masofdas wrote:

So is that your vote idea phillps, vote for our top 10 games in fps, platformer, etc. Sounds good would that be all formats or just games that have been on nintendo's systems.

Nah, that's not the idea. The idea behind this thread you're reading right now was born on NGamer: Balladeer asked me if he could use an idea from one of my old threads, I made him aware that I had something else planned, he liked my new idea and tweaked and expanded on it to be his own Wii vote thread, which JayMoyles then repeated here with the DS.

I don't think any of us could do an all-formats top ten justice: I know my Nintendo and SEGA, but I couldn't give an honest opinion on any of the non-Nintendo modern classics, like Mass Effect, Uncharted, Bioshock, and Red Dead Redemption. As for a Nintendo-exclusive one, you'd have to ask how much everybody likes this genre idea. Personally - and without wanting to cause Balladeer or JayMoyles any offense, as I think they've done well - I think it sounded better in theory.

The reason there's a lot of issues with the whole placing games into genres idea is that there's no clear-cut answer to where games fit. Being distinct and clear about where a game would lie is tricky, and you can argue for some games to go anywhere really, as you've already said Phillips. But it does need to be done I reckon in order to give games their proper due. I think this is the best system I can roll with for now, and I'm genuinely sorry if it's not meeting your expectations.

Having said that, I do see your reasoning with the strategy RPGs - the only issue is that it might be a bit late to change it, and that it might leave the remaining strategy games a bit sparse. Also, I've nothing wholly against anyone voting for a game that they reckon is strategy or whatever, it's just the whole "giving a game its due" thing.

Ah well, hope that was somewhat coherent. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your votes guys.  

Maybe, a best of nintendo vote would make sense and we just pick our favourite ten or possibly include sega aswell. As doing genre as it could be a pain due to us all having different opinions on what fits were. And if let's say there was a FPS category, I would want to vote for halo on xbox and avp on jaguar but like Philips said his not played many newer games and I know balla only sticks to nintendo.

I was meaning in regards to this Best of DS vote - I'm not going to change how I've been doing this for now, but perhaps for the next voting thread somewhere down the line the system could be tweaked somewhat.