Joseph Luster
October 14, 2007 Publisher: SNK Playmore
Developer: SNK Playmore
System(s): Nintendo DS
Available: Now
Rating: Teen
Those fortunate enough to have snagged a Neo Geo Pocket during its brief yet memorable existence might own a little gem called Card Fighters Clash-an early SNK/Capcom mash-up that planted the seed for the current game in question. The premise is simple: you collect Capcom and SNK-themed cards and do battle with other players, pitting an expansive roster of characters from each universe against one another in a non-fighting arena.
The original game was fun, if a bit limited; something that the recent follow-up aims to remedy with expansions in almost every area. Not only are there more cards available here, but the scale of the battles has been upped some along with a slicker presentation. Whereas you were limited to placing three cards on the table in the first game, Card Fighters DS allows for up to eight at any given time. This makes battles much more briskly paced than before once you really figure out how to set it all in motion.
On that note, one thing that Card Fighters fails to adequately prepare you for is, well, card fighting. The optional tutorial meets the bare minimum requirement of vaguely explaining things to you, as each facet of the battle system is only explored in a sentence or two of text topped with a visual sample. Because of this, you’ll most likely have to learn through experience, which, naturally, involves being decimated by the computer in your first battle.
Your hand is limited at the beginning of a match, as you need to discard characters of certain colors in order to gather enough points to place another on the battlefield. This makes sense as a way to keep you from throwing down and wiping your opponent away immediately, but it’s also annoying to have to build up slowly and sacrifice cards just to throw out some attacks. It also takes a few rounds to get the hang of defending against the computer’s moves, but this can lead to some interesting strategies since you can’t always just set everything on the table to attack and leave yourself defenseless.
The layout of the game is really straightforward; in fact, it’s straight up. Everything takes place in the “Card Tower,” a high-rise split into Capcom and SNK flavors. On each floor, you’ll find a few brainwashed battlers and a boss with which you can duel to the temporary death. You might feel brainwashed after a few floors, though, since things can get a little repetitive as the oxygen thins out. It’s fun at first to roll from kid to kid and put your favorite fighters on the line, but it doesn’t quite pack the same wallop as the original. Maybe it was the NES-style sprites of the Neo Geo Pocket, or the tinny music belting from its little speakers, but there was something charming there that doesn’t quite click in this iteration.
Card Fighers DS is a fun distraction for a little while, but its lifespan would have definitely increased with Nintendo Wi-fi play. As it stands, you can challenge a friend wirelessly if he also owns the game, so find your fellow fighting-game obsessed friends and take them to school, even if you’re both just desperately trying to find out why the ESRB slapped this T-rated game with a “partial nudity” warning.
