Hands on, with the 3DS.

Recently my friend Kurt got hands on with the 3DS here are his thoughts.

The 3DS to be released in March may look and feel like a DS Lite but the experience could not be further from Nintendo’s last portable outing. I was lucky enough to get a go on a 3DS for the first tine recently and whilst I wasn’t overwhelmed with excitement sprinting to the nearest GAME to place my £10 deposit, it did leave an impressive lasting impression.

I experienced two of the features that the 3DS has to offer; photo mode and an augmented reality game where a card was placed on a table and a shooting game appears where I had to hit targets on an animated dragon.
Firstly the photo mode, the 3DS has a camera on the back that allows the user to take 3D photos which worked very well. Over a range of photos it was clear to see that to get the best effect the ‘right type’ of photo had to be taken. For example taking a picture of an object or someone pointing at the camera and the 3D stands out of the screen, but just taking a picture of someone sat on chair and the 3D is less impressive, it may as well be a normal 2D photo but with a bit more depth. The quality of all the pictures was good though to say the 2 camera on the back of the console are only 0.3 megapixels.

 Then there was the Augmented Reality dragon shooting game. Wow is all I can say, this game is crap. The 3D on the other hand was rather amazing and for a short while I could feel my hand reaching for a tenner in my pocket but the game was holding me back. We all know that the graphics on the 3DS will be far superior to the last DS and matching those of PS2, it’s a mighty powerful little thing. But the graphics of this dragon game were similar to the DS Zelda outings, so OK but I was expecting better after seeing trailers for Resident Evil and PES. Despite the graphics the dragon had real depth and was animated superbly, its head coming right out of the screen so much you think you can touch it.

Overall then its Nintendo working their magic again and I am sure the 3DS will be a sure fire hit critically and sales, personally though I still reserve judgement as I wait for the all important games line up which at the moment I am not convinced by. So far what has been revealed (bar a few) have all been re releases of old games like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (f which rumour suggests is better played in 2D with the 3D slider all the way down) or re-imaginings of old series like Starfox. One of the main criticisms of the PSP was that the games were just shoehorned efforts of PS2 games. But this is Nintendo who like Valve and Rockstar always seem to get it right. Touchwood.

Kurt Lewin