Nintendo Dreams - Bionicle Heroes DS

Learning to jump, I feel like a baby deer learning to walk. What's a baby deer called? Venison.

The enemy robots roll up in ball form. So far I have been unable to emulate this maneuver. They also come at me incredibly quickly, which would be menacing if they weren't so easy to destroy. The next enemy I meet is a humanoid like me. I shoot him, (which is probably the one simple action a robot performs.) And he dies.

I'm not even sure that these robots are alive. But I am, so I treat them as such. And yet I kill them, go figure. It is the nature of the game. They are very eager to kill me so I consider it self defence. A few more advance on me, but I stand well back and shoot them while they are balls.

I hear a strange noise. Not exactly a buzzing. It sounds like car radio static doing an impersonation of  a buzzing bee. It's not in my ear and I'm not sure if it's coming from above, though you'd expect as much. The field and sky are filled with this noise and it has no centre. Finally, I find the culprit - a robot locust with guns. Well I assume it has guns because all of the other robots do.

Except it isn't actually shooting at me yet. I very slowly aim at it, because that involves looking up. Because I take so long, it shoots first. But when I blam my guns, I kill it quickly.

There are two others, so I repeat the tedious process and arise the victor. Suddenly, I begin to shake violently. Again. And again. I'm being shot at, but I can't see the perpetrator of this heinous crime. I use my radar and gradually turn around to view my enemy. It's a green spider-crab thing. I'm concerned about my health, because turning around has taken a long time and the spider-crab thing is a fast shooter. But it dies just like the rest.

The enemy squads seem inexhaustible. As soon as I finish killing the next batch, new balls roll up. But less than a second after they transform into humanoid form, they fall to pieces because I've been shooting at them since they appeared. It's only the high and low robots that seem to be giving me trouble.

Looking up and down is unfortunately the only complex challenge in this entire experience. Whenever a robot falls to pieces, it drops a number of cogs. Collecting the cogs recharges my health. Apparently cogs heal robot wounds.

I find myself in a room alot like all of the other rooms, fighting enemies that look alot like all of the other enemies. Enduring a process of slowly aiming and quickly killing which is becoming all too familiar. Only somebody shoots me and it's all black again.

I do remember dying. Neglecting to keep an eye on my health report and pick up cogs to compensate probably made an early death inevitable. But because I'm a robot, it didn't hurt. Come to think of it, I haven't felt physical pain since this journey began. I guess I could say that a robot's death lacks gore.

It isn't very interesting, either. So I won't go on about it.

Nintendo Dreams - Star Trek: Tactical Assault DS (part four)

There is a destination on the warp screen called The Neutral Zone, which means I'm not actually in the Neutral Zone, like I thought I was. So I hit the warp button. It's becoming less fun now. As soon as I arrive, we receive a distress signal from some planet that's being attacked. We warp over there, slickity-whip. I hail the green planet and the citizen tells me that the enemy are based on the moon. And guess what? We have to warp over there.

We finally reach the enemy ships. I can see one coming out from behind the moon. I hit L to lock on. It starts firing at me. Uh oh, I realise it's a freighter, but guess what? It's been customised with bigger guns. And there are two of them. This is not going to be easy. Because I don't know any better, I apply the same strategy as every other battle I've had so far in Star Trek Land.

Get close, shoot phasers. Tilt, swing by, side phasers. Turn, photon torpedo. Fly away, other side phasers as I retreat. Get the heck out of range while I recharge. I even over-clock my photon torpedo. Then repeat.

The problem with this strategy is that while I'm systematcially bruising one of the freighters, the other freighter is blasting me in the bum continuously with some kind of mega phaser. My shields are down pretty quickly. I've lost one of the ships tails, and I'm pretty sure I need that.

Now the rest of the ship is falling apart, beneath me. Mission Failed. Everything is dark. Darker than Space. Again.

That's the only life I've lost in this game world. So either it's random, which from what I know about Nintendo, is unlikely, or it's on some kind of timer. I spent about five minutes in training, three minutes foolishly wandering through Space. And I lasted two minutes in my first real battle. I probably was in Mech World for about ten minutes as well. I wish I knew how many game worlds there are, then I could calculate how long I have to live.

I'm a robot. Not inside a robot or a robotic suit like last time. I'm an actual robot. And the differences in the way my mind now operates are very confusing. For example, if I want to move any part of my body to my right, I move it to the right. It's the same with the left. As one might guess, this is normal.

But if I want to look up, I actually have to move my head down, and vice versa. This is very confusing and so it is also annoying. Walking is easy. Battling is not. The other robots are positioned all over the place, so this takes a lot of looking around and it's awkward. I do have radar. For this I am grateful, otherwise I would simply sit down and wait to die.

Except that I can't actually sit down. Or crouch. I can jump. But this is is also confusing...

Nintendo Dreams - Star Trek: Tactical Assault DS (part three)

I hit him. He's damaged. But my ship is almost a wreck. I back out of range while my photon torpedoes recharge. I decide to chance it and overclock them, (overclocking increases their power, but also increases recharge time.) Once recharged, I can't afford to get hit anymore, so I swoop in on tilt. Carefully centre the front of my ship (where the guns are) on the drone. And fire, destroying it. I let out a whoop, because this time I earned it. I won. But my ship is black and blue.

I can see really blackened damage on my ship's hull. But there's an emergency. Without repairs, I have to go into an actual battle to rescue a vessel from a rogue freighter. Apparently the freighter has small guns, but it's big and hostile.

I warp to the location, which is still fun despite my anxiety about having no shields. I find the freighter and start hitting it with my starboard phasers. And a photon torpedo for good measure. It's not going down. The vessel I was supposed to rescue explodes. The freighter is still firing, so I continue firing back.

As much as I enjoy certain elements of the experience and everything looks so cool, this battle really is no different from my last battle with the drone, and the one before that with the first drone. The only real difference is that this one is taking a really long time to kill - long enough that even with feeble guns, it might eventually destroy my ship.

I receive a hail from the Admiral, which is almost a relief. He's telling me to abort mission and return to the Training Facility. I respond that I don't want to, because I haven't killed the enemy, yet. He repeats the order, so I comply.

When I return, I am told that the battle with the freighter was a training exercise and I didn't fail, after all. Far from it, according to the Admiral, I and my crew acted outstandingly, with one exception - I need to learn to follow orders.

Finally, I am ready for my first mission: patrolling the Neutral Zone. As mundane as this sounds, it's pretty obvious I'll run into hostiles. This is a game, after all. As I'm leaving the Training Facility, I see a ship, so I hail it. This only results in idle chatter, so I try hailing the Training Facility. The Admiral offers his goodbyes and good lucks officially and that's the end of that conversation. So I set out on patrol.

I don't know which direction to go, as patrolling is pretty vague, so I pick one at random. I'm not going very fast, can see nothing but Space, and am unsure if I'm even going in the correct direction. After three minutes of this, I decide warp would speed things up a bit, and I discover my error...

Nintendo Dreams - Star Trek: Tactical Assault DS (part two)

There are drones in space that I need to track, shoot and destroy. But they will shoot back, so I have been informed that we will need to go to red alert to turn on the shields and the weaponry. So I click the 'red alert' button. I'm not joking, it's that simple and obvious.

Tracking the drone is concluded sooner than I expected and the fight takes me by surprise. I can see two weapon buttons, already we're being shot at. Both of the weapons take time to recharge after firing. My first missile is a near miss. I remember now, a woman on my crew was telling me that firing range is about 46. I'm guessing that's kilometres.

I steer the ship out of range, watching the number on the view screen. Then I go in for the rematch in melee. As soon as the drone starts firing, I tilt the ship. Click the phaser, direct hit. I notice his shield integrity has been damaged by the blast. My instinct is to fire the missile again, but I don't want to miss. So I line up just so and fire before he can. I think maybe his shields will absorb the impact but then he'll lose shields. Instead, the missile goes straight through the damaged shield and detonates on the hull. The drone is destroyed.

I'm so excited, I do a little dance. Then the officer at the Training Facility says, 'We also have photon torpedoes.' Cheeky sod. Eventually I realise that the missiles I had been firing actually were photon torpedoes. What I also didn't realise is that I also have side phasers. So instead of always attacking my enemy head-on and losing most of my shields in the process, I can do drive-bys.

Gearing up for my second training battle, I have time to contemplate my situation (my Star Trek Land situation, not my stuck in Nintendo World situation.) Firstly, I have still not lost a life while being in Star Trek Land. Secondly, I doubt the Admiral will let me die while undergoing training in a Training Facility, ie the drones are non-lethal.

The second drone doesn't fall for the same trick. His shields are completely unaffected by my phaser strike, which I take to mean that I missed. Meanwhile my shields are taking major damage from the drone's phasers. Twenty seconds and I've lost outer shields. Ten more seconds and I've lost inner shields. My phasers are still having no effect. I have no shields. I finally hit him with an overclocked phaser, but his shields are showing green.

Screw it. I fire photon torpedoes...