SHOE: That sub just sank my battleship! Fine—I’ll send that sub to the ocean floor with my cruiser’s torpedoes. But then that cruiser has to watch out for long-range missiles from shore. But I can take care of those with my new megatank, if that stealth bomber doesn’t drop its load first.... The ultimate in rock-paper-scissors turn-based strategy returns—this time on the DS—and unlike Advance Wars 2, this sequel has a whole lot new going on.

The six new units really make this feel like a significant upgrade over AW2, which showed off only one new AT-AT-like tank. Having one or two vehicles on every front (repair boats on the water, black bombs in the sky, etc.) forces AW vets to think up new offensive and defensive strategies.

And you can now fight battles on the two separate screens, send units from one front to the other, swap between commanding officers to optimize their powers, upgrade those COs with new skills gained from experience, capture communication towers to increase your power.... It’s all great for fans of the series looking for something new, but it may be a bit too advanced for greenhorns.

The difficulty ramps up in no time, and the new modes (combat and survival) can make a newbie swear off tiny-tank strategy games forever. Regardless, something this deep and fun at the same time is a rare treat, especially on a portable system. I’ll be replaying this one for months....

DEMIAN: Shoe’s right about Dual Strike’s complexity—rookies will need to sleep with the manual under their pillows to get a grip on all the unit types, CO powers, and how terrain modifies combat. But dogged beginners will discover what the pros already know: All that complexity makes for fascinatingly deep, strategic battles. You’ll feel like you deserve a silver star just for beating the CPU.

I absolutely hate the between-battle anime-style talking heads, though—new guy Jake is the worst,

always going on about “owning” and serving “hot bowls of smackdown soup”—and while the stylus speeds up combat somewhat, it’s too easy to slip up and end a unit’s turn accidentally or tell a factory to make the wrong unit.

1UP.COM—MILKMAN: A winning combination of style and substance, Dual Strike’s true beauty lies beneath the surface. It’s the expanded portfolio of vehicles and strategic subtleties and wealth of new commanding officer combos that really make this game sing. While the actual battlefields and unit graphics haven’t evolved much and the Jake character sounds like an Eminem wannabe, the new survival and combat modes (eight can play combat using one cart, by the way) more than compensate. Result? Super-addictive strategy gaming. P

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Intelligent Systems

Players: 1-4 (2-8 via local Wi-Fi)

ESRB: Everyone

www.nintendo.com

Good: New modes, units, and ways to play

Bad: Accidentally selecting the wrong things with the stylus

Not Aight: New character Jake is a bit too hip and in our faces

The verdicts (out of 10)

Shoe 9.0

Demian 8.5

Milkman 9.0

Combat Evolved

The new combat mode, coincidentally or not, plays a lot like the Atari 2600 game of the same name. With a limited budget, you buy units and then send them out one by one to destroy foes or capture buildings (move with the D-pad, shoot by tapping the stylus toward your foes). Advance Wars vets’ll find it to be a fun little distraction, especially in multiplayer. If you’re a rookie, however, it’ll probably seem way too simple...and stupid.

Going Wi-Fi

Dual Strike untethers players with wireless multiplayer support. We got dropped only once during our hours of playtesting, though we were sitting quite far apart from one another (about 30 to 35 feet away). You can send preprogrammed messages to each other, too, so break out the dirty-language dictionaries....

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Electronic Gaming Monthly.