Game Statistics

• 32 megabit cartridge.
• One game pak required for link play.
• 100 maps + Map design
• 16 unit types
• A save slot for each mode of play.

Game Design
Advance Wars is a 2D tile-based game. Which you and the opponent take turns to command an army. Each tile is a piece of terrain, like mountains, forest, plains or sea. So if some troops are in the forest, they have more protective cover than if they were on a road. The menus in Advance wars are really cool. They scroll up and down with the selected word in the centre. One fault in the in game menu is the save feature; when it asks you to save, it shows the options, but the options aren't active to the D- pad for a second or so. This causes you a lot of irritation, because you may select the wrong thing (save or cancel) causing you to do it over again. Other than that the menus are top notch. The attention to detail in this game is astounding. Everything from fuel to movement rates. You have the option of land, sea or air battles, with countless combinations of all three, with an infinite number of maps. If you get you play all 100 of the maps somehow, you can then make your own. The game modes include, campaign, war room, vs. mode, linked battles, and field training (tutorials). The tutorials are excellent, which really bring you up to speed on how to play the game. Overall, the game is very well designed and programmed. The AI is truly amazing, however it can be fooled. One way I like to fool the computer is to use transport decoy units. The computer seems to always go after this $5000 unit, which is good, when it could be attacking my $15 000 rockets. The computer starts off being really easy to beat, but gets progressively harder. To sum up, this game is top notch in the game design department.

Graphics
The game has simple but effective graphics with a noticeable anime feel to them. The overhead map viewing has nice graphics as well as the fluent animated battles. The animation never gets choppy and can be really fast if you decide to skip the capture and battle animations. The game takes into account everything for the animated battles, like troops firing up, to other troops in mountains, or helicopters shooting down at tanks. And there are many backgrounds for all the different types of terrain. Generally, the nice graphics of the battle animation combined with that of the tile-based map make this game very nice to look at.

Sound
The sound effects in this game are excellent. The background music in this game is excellent. That pretty much says it all. I especially like the sound effect when you use a CO ability, that cool "shing" sound is really awesome.

Control
The controls are great, fast, and efficient. Quick responding, reliable controls are essential for good games, and Advance Wars certainly meets those criteria. The game makes full use of all the buttons making it very easy to operate the game. The inclusion of a cursor for selecting units was a wise move in this game. Overall, the game controls are very good.

Satisfaction
When it comes to satisfaction you can't go wrong. I have noticed this game has received amazing reviews with top scores. This game deserves them. One such review said that it would easily be the top hand-held game of the year, and that it was even better than Mario Kart: Super Circuit. While the game is amazing, I am not sure if anything is better than MK: SC. You won't be disappointed with this game. I have one friend who said he didn't like that game all that much, and when I asked him if he wanted to sell it to my other friend, he quickly said, "No, I want it." (He probably just lost a battle)

Replay Value/Game Length
The game length is truly long. Even if you beat the campaign, you still have about 50 battles left in the war games mode. All the while you are trying to collect more coins to buy more levels for the war games mode. You also have a rank, which starts at 99, and I guess it goes down to one. I played the entire campaign and I was only at 89, and that itself took at least 40 hours. Also, the multi-play mode is very nice. My friends and I had a battle that lasted about a week and a half of lunch times. There is truly so much to this game, that the length in hours has got to be up in the hundreds, which is nice, because it is almost impossible to get bored of it.

Overall
This game is a nice change from the side-scroller or the RPG. The game is paced very well. It is much like chess where you must plan a method of attack and try to outwit your opponent. It is perhaps the most fun playing against your friends, where everyone knows what to do, and alliances and grudges form (just make sure you have lots of time, cause these battle can take a while). This game was truly a surprise, and I did not expect it to be this good. I really mean this when I say it, "Don't judge a game by its Box Art!"

Game Design	10
Mechanics	10
Innovation	10
Originality	10
Extras	10
Depth	10
Graphics	9.8
Character/Animation	10
Environment	9.5
Framerate	10
Sound	9.8
Music	9.5
Sound FX/Voice	10
Control	9.1
During Play	9.5
Menus	8.0
Functionality	9.5
Satisfaction	9.0
Challenge	8.0
Fun-Factor	10
Replay Value/Game Length	10
Multiplayer	10
FINAL SCORE	9.7

Review by Xander

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