Sunday, February 27, 2011: DAY TWO

Arbitrary 3DS excitement rating: 9/10

Another busy day, so an hour with Super Street Fighter is all I'm going to grab. What's impressive is how feature rich the game is. It seems to have pretty much all of the content and modes from the console equivalent (arcade, online multiplayer, training, and trials -- the latter being as difficult as I remember from the PlayStation 3 version of Street Fighter 4).

Plus, there's the added attraction of being able to collect figurines. Winning in single- or multi- (presumably) player garners you points you can spend to buy randomly chosen figures, which you then assemble into a team to fight on your behalf should you pass someone on the street in real life with the game. I'm at home right now, though, so on with arcade mode.

I'm not a fighting-game savant, but I start to see some issues with the 3DS at this point. It looks glorious -- super moves in particular exploding off the screen -- and apart from static rather than animated backgrounds, it has a good deal of parity with its console older brothers. Unfortunately, though, fighting games are not designed to be played with an analogue nub, and the D-pad kind of sucks on the 3DS. Spongy and with weak diagonals (a must for pulling off combos), it's not a deal breaker but a bit of a shame. That four special moves are mapped to the touch screen makes up for things, and the icons are big enough to jab at with a thumb rather than the stylus.

Speaking of big, the top screen has an impressive amount of real estate to it. It's more noticeable perhaps to me since I'm graduating from a DS Lite, but it makes the visuals all the more striking. Despite the slight control woes, this is still unmistakably Street Fighter, and this will be a good thing to many.

Monday, February 28, 2001: DAY THREE

Arbitrary 3DS excitement rating: 8/10

Time to take the 3DS commuting, and given the bus and the train I have to take today, oddly, I'm spending more time with it now than on the weekend. I put the machine in sleep mode while I walk to the station and open it up to see I've walked one and a half thousand steps and been awarded ten shiny gold coins for my efforts. For all of Nintendo's reluctance to get into the meta-game market of achievement or trophy hunting, this is a very meta console. A channel on the home screen tracks what games you're playing and for how long each day and assigns them popularity rankings. Your steps are also measured; walk a bit with your machine and you get these play coins. 

The play-coins concept is one of those things that I wasn't really sure of before the machine debuted, and I'm still not entirely sold. Not an allegory for achievements or trophies as I had assumed, play coins are rewards generated solely for walking around with the machine in sleep mode.

They can then be spent on in-game items or preloaded apps, the most appealing of which is the Mii adventure game, a simple role-playing game wherein coins are spent on sending warrior cats to save your imprisoned avatar. Bizarre, but progress unlocks extra outfits for your Mii, and there's also a jigsaw puzzle minigame where extra pieces are available for coins. Again, it's striking how much is actually tucked away in the hardware itself, and unlike the AR games, there's incentive to come back to this one. Alternatively, of course, there are more Street Fighter figurines to be had. 

The coins are a very interesting tactic, though. It's unclear really what they aim to promote -- is it an encouragement for gamers to get up and exercise? Or is it to encourage already active people to carry their device with them at all times? With street pass also encouraging you to move around with your machine switched on -- swapping Miis, figurines, and data on the fly -- it's an interesting take on social gaming...passively social, perhaps. 

I'm playing Winning Eleven 3D Soccer today. I was interested in how looking at a 3D screen while being jostled about on a moving train or bus would affect my enjoyment or sense of balance or vision altogether. The train turns out fine, but a couple of times, a sudden stop on the bus means I have to blink and refocus on the screen. The game itself is enjoyable but unremarkable -- Winning Eleven as it always has been but with a disarming amount of loading. It's not a huge deal, but five or six seconds to start a match is a shock when playing with cartridge media.

Using the sprint on the shoulder buttons reveals another hardware feature joining the D-pad in things that will likely be renovated in inevitable future hardware. That the top of the unit plays host to an infrared port, the charger port, the cartridge slot, and the little hole for your stylus means the shoulder buttons are pretty dinky (think Game Boy Advance SP, if you're familiar). It's not a deal breaker, but it fails to meet the ergonomic niceness of the analog slider, which is perfect for the tip of your thumb to sit in.

The battery starts to neatly give out as the train ride home reaches its destination -- the hardware announcing its imminent coma with a flashing indicator light and home-screen logos spinning ever faster as they approach oblivion. I had at least two hours of play with 3D and Wi-Fi in effect, and it was in sleep mode the rest of the day. Not amazing battery life but not too bad.

Tuesday, March 1, 2001: DAY FOUR

Arbitrary 3DS excitement rating: 7/10

Excitement at the new arrival is evolving into the 3DS being accepted into my gadgetry fold. I purchased a USB dongle for my PC to allow my computer to act as a router for the 3DS and let me connect online. As I thought, there's little to see or do as yet. Clicking the internet browser icon just brings up an error message while that's still forthcoming, which makes the connected 3DS experience seem like a turn-of-the-millennium website complete with "under construction" messages.

I'd heard about the friend-code rigmarole being made simpler on 3DS than the Wii, but with both parties still having to jot down and enter in a 12-digit number before they can become electronic buddies, it still manages to be a pain. That done, though, you can enjoy some online matches that seem largely lag free in Street Fighter with the same persistent battle-points system awarding you for wins as with the console versions. Hopefully, the same can be said for Winning Eleven, but it's hard to say as I couldn't find a game and don't know anyone else with it.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011: DAY FIVE

Arbitrary 3DS excitement rating: 3D/S

Opened the 3DS on the train today to find I had connected to someone via street pass for the first time. Hiroyuki's Mii appeared inside the little Mii RPG world and helped my gang of cats fight a ghost while I loaded Super Street Fighter 4 to find that my motley team of figurines had been demolished. It was a nice little smile raising occurrence, and I was pleased that at the end of my five-day blogging period, I could finally experience that final lauded feature of the hardware.

My purchase is not one that I'll be regretting. In terms of graphical clout, 3DS beats anything handheld at the moment, and the social internet aspects presented by street pass and the online connectivity are interesting and exciting.

Of course, the big asterisk by both of those statements leads to small print that reads "until the NGP comes out." Naturally, that means an exciting time for gamers -- everyone loves a good fanboy war -- but in the meantime, the 3DS is a piece of kit I can imagine loving for a long time...inevitable newer versions with improved 3D viewing angles, battery life, and buttons notwithstanding. The proof of the hardware is in the software, meanwhile, and the jury is out on that. Super Street Fighter 4 is impressive from the standpoint of being a big-console game squished onto a tiny card, but it isn't its own experience, whereas Pilotwings Resort may yet turn out to be. Winning Eleven, meanwhile, is overly familiar and underwhelming. As the hardware gains traction, and more specifically, 3DS-oriented material becomes widespread? Exciting times, exciting times.  

Still on the fence? Questions? Opinions? Ask and opine below.