The Official Serenes Forest Recommendations List

[Fox]

For this project, Serenes Forest members will be helping to generate a list of games which represent the site's "official" game recommendations for other members. Of course, this list will continually be updated to accommodate new games. Sort of like IGN's Editor's Choice, if you can relate to that. In this topic, list off games which you feel qualify as great games for the specified system, and state why you are choosing them. No title-only hit and runs, you must supply a reason behind your choices, even if it means essentially paraphrasing another member. One or two sentences per game is fine; we just need to see that you are capable of defending your choices.

Conversely, members are also allowed to negotiate a game's candidacy. Say someone recommends Super Mario 64 DS, but another member thinks that's a bad choice. Members are encouraged to debate as to whether or not some games deserve to be placed on the list. If the game seems unpopular enough, then it will be withdrawn from consideration. On the other hand, if it gets a lot of support from other members, or the naysayers fail to provide a compelling enough argument, the game will be added.

So, with all of that out of the way, we'll be kicking off with the Nintendo's Dual Screen handheld. Until the official list is generated, members need only post DS games which they believe deserve to be placed on the list.

I will be continually editing this first post to list off games which members have recommended, to make it easier to contest certain choices. Note that this will not be the official list. When the official list is made, any games that have been cannot be removed.

Bear with me here, I have never tried anything like this before, so it might be a little shaky while I try to hammer everything out. I am going to list off my picks.

Advance Wars: Day of Ruin: DoR abandons the traditional Advance Wars disposition of "war is awesome, colorful and kind of friendly," for a bleaker, far less optimistic outlook. There are few gameplay changes from previous entries in the series, but that's okay, since the Advance Wars formula is pretty great, and doesn't need too many tweaks as it is. Enjoyable and engaging.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: At the other end of the spectrum we have Dual Strike, the first AW title for the DS. Dual Strike inherits the almost comical outlook on war from past iterations of Advance Wars, but the highly strategic elements remain fully intact. A great SRPG for the DS.

Animal Crossing: Wild World: the addictive and immersive demi-sequel to the original Gamecube game is one of the most qualitative games on the handheld. Even if life-sims aren't your bag, it's a damn fine game and should be played by everyone who owns a DS.

Final Fantasy III: FFIII is a no-frills JRPG with a lot to like. The job system is a little clunky and the story is half-baked, but everything's there when it comes to gameplay. It'll last you a week or two at least, and there are a satisfying number of highly rewarding side-quests. DS doesn't have too many great RPGs, but this is one of them.

Final Fantasy IV: better than the original, this is the best iteration of FFIV to date. The graphics have received substantial upgrades since FFIII, and the battle system is much more streamlined. A lot has been done for the presentation, between newly-added cut-scenes and above-average voice acting. Not to mention, god damn is it hard.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon: I don't have to defend this and neither do you.

Kirby Canvas Curse: I maintain that Canvas Curse implements the usage of the stylus and touch screen better than any DS game currently available. Canvas Curse is a break from traditional Kirby but it's a great game and shows what the touch screen can sometimes be used for non-gimmicky purposes.

Kirby Superstar Ultra: a remake of Kirby Superstar with updated visuals and a fuck-ton of extra content. Are we done here?

Mario Kart DS: Shit, do I have to defend this? If you have a DS and somehow don't own this, what the hell is wrong with you?

Metroid Prime Hunters: The DS wasn't really designed for first-person shooters, and many developers have failed utterly in designing control schemes which are even remotely workable. Hunters controls well, looks amazing, and most importantly, feels like Metroid Prime. It's a testament the DS's often understated abilities.

Moon: a recent entry from developer Mad Dog, Moon is a first person shooter which takes place on Earth's largest satellite in the near future. Your objective is destroy the aliens which have been discovered under the moon's surface. Moon is another example of an FPS which controls very well on the DS. With amazing visuals and really solid gameplay, it's definitely worth picking up if you're looking for something off the beaten track.

Pokemon Diamond Version and Pearl Version: Shit, I don't need to say why. And neither do you guys.

Super Mario 64 DS: A remake of the original Super Mario 64, SM64DS adds some new elements to make the game a different experience from the Nintendo 64 title. While often decried for its poor control scheme, Super Mario 64 DS is an otherwise successful remake of a classic and should be played by anyone who owns a DS.

Current suggestions:

Ace Attorney (series)

Advance Wars: Day of Ruin

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

Contra 4

Disgaea DS

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy IV

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Jump Ultimate Stars (import)

Kirby Canvas Curse

Kirby Superstar Ultra

Mario Kart DS

Metal Slug 7

Metroid Prime Hunters

Moon

Nanostray

Nanostray 2

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

Pokemon Diamond Version, Pearl Version and Platinum Version

Retro Game Challenge

Sonic Rush

Super Mario 64 DS

Trauma Center: Under the Knife

The World Ends With You

Edited June 12, 2009 by Urist McButcherdwarf

[Wist]

Hotel Dusk: Room 215: This adventure title and a visual novel hybrid is worth playing, if you don't mind text heavy games, for its characters. Every individual has a layered personality and well fitting dialogue, and they all contribute to a plausible story. The puzzles in the game encompass an uneven spectrum of difficulty, but that's a terribly minor flaw in relation to the high quality of the story and characters.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Ace Attorney is a point and click adventure series in which the main character is a defense attorney with a habit of acting a detective. The cases are fun to read and play through, and the risks involved in deciding which evidence to present can be nerve wracking. The premise sounds strange, but the peculiarity of this game contributes to it's being worth playing.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword: Decent action game and oddly enough it has some nice storytelling. It's 3D is pretty similar to the Xbox games but in terms of difficulty, this one's definitely much easier so it's easier to get into this game than it is with the Xbox ones. The touch controls are pretty good (the only thing D pad and the buttons do is just block) and easy to get to used to.

Contra 4: Must buy if you love Contra, the gameplay's back to 2D with some good use of the dual screens and the difficulty doesn't disappoint and the game has some good replay value with its challenge mode and the unlockables: Classic Contra (NES) and Super Contra (NES).

Castlevanias: Great 2D platformers with RPG. The gameplay is pretty similar to that of the previous installments which took much after Castlevania Symphony of the night so if you liked those, you'll probably like these too. If you can only get one, get Order of Ecclesia.

New Super Mario Bros: Classic Mario gameplay. Only reason to not play this is if you never liked any Mario game.

Nanostray and Nanostray 2: Go for it if you like arcade shooters. It'll keep you busy as long as you want to improve you scores since weapon selection is crucial when you want to improve and the challenges are good replay value. The "Adventure" mode is pretty short though so if you want a shooter that takes time to just beat its main mode, this isn't for you. Nanostray 2 has pretty good difficulty.

The World Ends With You: I thought this was a great action RPG, the touch controls are solid, the story is compelling and has some decent character development.

Edited March 18, 2009 by Sirius

[Raven]

Sonic Rush: A great Sonic game which goes back to the roots, where it was awesome. Fast as hell.

I agree with Fox on Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, Mario Kart DS and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

[grandjackal]

The Castlevanias. Aria of Sorrow just rocks. Portrait or Ruin is a bit half-baked though, but you could do worse.

Super Mario 64 DS with Mario Kart DS, honorable mentions to New Super Mario Bros.

Shadow Dragon of course. Quite fun, story is wel written though pretty words depth does not make. Gameplay is rather fair, wide variety of difficulty so no one can really feel left out in this one. We finally get to see MArth too. Class swap is great and lets more units be useable too. Only problem is lack of character depth. Great for a remake and pretty good a DS game too.

The Ace Attorney series. I dare you to find better story in a video game than this. If you can, chances are there aren't many. Likeable characters, incredible stories...What more is there to say? I find it a personal favorite as going around searching for stuff reminds me of an old favorite, Return to Zork.

Kirby Superstar Ultra. A remake that rebalanced the abilities (sorta) and actually added a lot of stuff to it. Great music of old along with the new (god, I LOVE the new boss themes!), and some other stuff is actually challenging.

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. I personally liked this as it reminded me of Gold and Silver while having much deeper gameplay. The pokemon are actually interesting, unlike R/S/E's batch...That and a lot of pokemon are actually useable in the story. I think they should focus more on a good story next time though rather than new pokemon, because A. they can't keep making new ones, inspiration will run out eventually, and B. What more new shit can they add before pokemon just become different versions of virtually the same thing?

Games I would NOT recommend

Final Fantasy 3. Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon was a great remake because it actually added a lot of depth to it's gameplay. FF3 on the other hand only added pretty graphics and faces to what would otherwise be faceless heroes. The job system is just garbage, there's nothing even vaguely interesting about the whatever amount of worlds you seem to travel, and...you never seem to notice even a vague sense of danger to what you're up against. As far as you're concerned, you're just traveling dimensions to kick random ass. Final Fantasy is usually interesting because you know what the demons you fight are capable of, and that is why you want to stop them. FF3 is lacking that. You might say "but that's brilliant mastermind work!", but the problem is that no enemy in the game seems to even hint at working at the same goal, they're just there to be evil. We couldn't give a fuck about the heroes and we couldn't give a fuck about the villains...what's left? Virtually bad gameplay? FF has nice gameplay and all while being pleasing to the senses, but this just lacks all that, along with forcing things to happen when you just want to do things yourself. Being forced to shrink yourself, wasting magic and being in a status effect you definitely don't want, pretty much having to go dark knight at a certain point, all while nothing about the game is interesting. It's not even that hard. For bringing over a game that hasn't been seen outside of Japan, they didn't seem to give a fuck with giving it a nice entrence. Then again, they slap Square Enix on it and their fans are garunteed to buy it...Square Enix is financially secure like that.

Metroid Hunters. Yeah, I'm bashing this. Not the worst game ever, but it's rather forgettable. You're virtually visiting mini areas (Prime 3's main problem, you felt trapped in multiple plants rather than exploring a big area of one planet), basically....messing around with stuff before other hunters come in to kick your ass. Nothing really happens. I really can't explain it further than that. It's multiplayer shows promise for Metroid and was actually pretty decent, just a greater selection of weapons and arenas would be nice.

Starfox Command: Remember Starfox 64? Yeah, was a great game. Still play it every now and then. This game is like it's all-range mode in various voids of gray and black and blue. Just floating around...blamblamblamblam...All the time. Don't even get me started on the story because...I don't even know what the hell it's supposed to be. It ends in so many ways, many being rediculous. Also destroyed Krystal's chance of being an interesting character (granted, her kinesis powers pushed it in the past anyways...she did not have a good entrance). In fact, none seem interesting and it all feels tacked on. If I recall, there was a rumor about a new Starfox for the Wii, saying it would go on as if Starfox Command didn't happen. That enough should clue you in.

Any game that basically is just tapping the screen with your stylus. You'll be entertained a couple days, then you'll forget about it. Elite Beat Agents is the exception because of generally likeable music apparently, and something about there being agents doing that sort of shit seems goofy enough to be entertaining. Never played it though, so I can't put full effort into thinking it over.

Wordy, but I tend to blab forever.

[Ike-Mike]

Contra 4: The first three games in the series are some of the best 2D sidescrollers ever with its intuitive gameplay and brilliantly designed and tough-as-nails levels that needed to be mastered. The series' quality declined some time after Hard Corps until Konami instructed the US-based company WayForward to create the direct sequel to the first three games. And they did by putting in the best from the series and craking it up to eleven. Going through jungles, alien bases and cities with all the action now being on two screens, upgradeable weapons, tough sequential bosses, both giant and small enemies coming and shooting at you from all sides, a very awesome and tongue-in-cheek manual, riding a missile while holding yourself on it with just your bare hands, all sorts of alien machinery and going through an alien's innards make it the best DS game and proof that small companies can make great games as long as you give them the right tools. And even after beating the game you get to unlock characters, promotional comics and the first two Contra games.

Retro Game Challenge: A game based on the succesful Japanese TV show Game Center CX. The show's protagonist is supposed to beat challenges related to one or more retro games. The developers took the show's concept and made it into a game that is great on its own. You've been sent back by the show's protagonist to the 80's where you have to beat various challenges by playing mock-ups of various video games from that era. Along with those games are magazines that show you various tips and cheats that help you beat the video games. Retro Game Challenge also has many references to those video games of old from the magazine's editors' names being based on real video game magazine editors from the late 80s and early 90s to The Wizard, The Simpsons and even The Tick. It shows that the developers put in much love into this game and it's a great way to relive those old times.

I wouldn't recommend Advance Wars DS because it's an unbalanced mess of a game.

Edited March 19, 2009 by Ike-Mike

[uguu]

I'll go ahead and like recommend

Final Fantasy IV: It is an amazing remake. The original FFIV is good enough alone, but in the remake they added great things such as a much harder difficulty, augments, a new sidequest character, making Kain useless, giving Rosa 3D bewbz, and more. This is highly recommended to fans of JRPGs, and if you haven't played the original FFIV then you should at least rent it.

The World Ends With You/It's A Wonderful World: This is an extremely unique RPG. Sure, many people may fear unique things but this is a must buy. Its' battle system is fun as all hell and you've never seen anything like it before (I guarantee it lololol), it has a great unique story. You really can't describe this game at all without saying unique a whole lot. Great if you're getting sick of playing extremely similar things over and over

[Suichimo]

Jump Ultimate Stars - Yes. This game is Japanese. Don't let that scare you from importing it as I can guarantee you that it will work on your DS. This game basically took the excellence of the Super Smash Brothers series and replaced all of the Nintendo characters with Shonen Jump characters.

The World Ends With You - Take what everyone else has said and then add in that the company who made this unique game, Square-Enix, is constantly bashed for making sequel after sequel.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars - I don't have this game yet but I plan on picking it up soon. The first thing I should probably point out is that this game is getting insane reviews, I don't think I've seen a sub 9.0 review yet. Then we have the major selling point, for me at least, which is the fact that CW goes back to the old GTA1/2 style. I'll have to add more to this when I actually get it.

Disgaea DS - This is a remake of the original Disgaea for the PS2. This is an sRPG in the vein of FFT and other similar games, rather than being closer to FE. The game play is extremely solid and the replay value is definitely up there. The best thing about this for me was the dialogue, however. The dialogue is usually pretty funny and it can do the dramatic moments very well. You also have the characters constantly going out of their way to break the 4th wall.

[Wist]

Trauma Center: Under the Knife: I've never gotten around to completing this game, but I had fun with what I did play. It's a surgery sim, for those who don't already know, and it's fast paced and unforgiving. I personally adore games with these characteristics, I recommend Trauma Center as a worthy and enjoyable challenge.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon: I don't need to defend this.

[Fox]

The list has been updated. I think I may try to implement a tally system.

[Fox]

So uh, what are we going to do about this.

[Emeraldfox]

Pokemon Platinum- An expansion to Diamond and Pearl. Everything you like about Pokemon is here. New Pokemon to catch like Houndour. Also, the Gym Leaders are a little tougher than they were in D/P.

Metal Slug 7- If you're a fan of the series, you'll love it. Or if it's your first game in the genre, it's simple enough for you to enjoy it. It has more challenges than just the main game, the combat school. You'll be playing it for hours.

Edited June 10, 2009 by emeraldAWESOME_09

[Ike-Mike]

I guess the best solution would be to redo the lists and this time you actually follow the deadline.

[General Spoon]

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

This game is text-heavy, and if you like (or at least don't hate) those types of games, you will likely enjoy this game. The plot is good, even better (imo) than some novels I've read. The characters have depth, and they each have a distinct personality.

Edited June 10, 2009 by Miror B.

[Fox]

I guess the best solution would be to redo the lists and this time you actually follow the deadline.

That's a good suggestion.

<:3c

[Zanarkin]

Why isn't platinum on the list? It deserves as much love as D and P

[Rehab]

Trauma Center: fast paced and unforgiving

Seconded recommendation. Viruses from the future and burn wounds are gay

Edited June 12, 2009 by Mac

[Fox]

DS list updated. Additionally, go ahead and suggest whatever games for whatever system, PC included. Try to keep suggestions within the current or previous generation, and we can work back from there.

[Zanarkin]

Boom blox: let your anger go away destroying the different things in this game.

Tales of Symphonia 2: A good game short but fun.

Mario Kart Wii: Awesome racing game.

Super smash bros brawl: battle it out with your friends

Battalion Wars Wii: Command units in the air water and the land. Awesome explosive action.

Metroid prime 3: the controls are fun and awesome to play with, but make sure your hand doesn't shake too much.

Fire emblem Radiant dawn: No need to say is there?

De Blob: awesome painting action.

I believe thats most of them

[Roxas]

Boom blox: let your anger go away destroying the different things in this game.

Tales of Symphonia 2: A good game short but fun.

Mario Kart Wii: Awesome racing game.

Super smash bros brawl: battle it out with your friends

Battalion Wars Wii: Command units in the air water and the land. Awesome explosive action.

Metroid prime 3: the controls are fun and awesome to play with, but make sure your hand doesn't shake too much.

Fire emblem Radiant dawn: No need to say is there?

De Blob: awesome painting action.

I believe thats most of them

Ah.. Wii games now? I'd be more than happy to add my share.

Trauma Center: New Blood

As if this series couldn't get more addicting, adding CPR, new guilt/stigma, co-op mode, and full-voiceover make this game a real treat.

[Pride]

For Wii...

Super Paper Mario

Solid platformer/RPG hybrid with a script that wins.

Okami

The game was excellent on PS2 with Zelda-ish play, and a compelling story. The Wiimote drawing abilities are just icing on the cake. Finally, I usually don't care for cel-shading, but this game does it very well.

[General Spoon]

When he said games from any system, I think the idea was that you would say the game and the system its from

I'll recommend Professor Layton and the Curious Village (Nintendo DS). The puzzles are fun (expect for puzzle #67...), and believe it or not, they's a good plot as well, with a nice big plot twist thrown in for good measure.

Edited June 14, 2009 by Miror B.

[Kesmar]

I second Okami for the Wii. It's incredibly fun, Zelda-esc dungeons, great story based upon ancient Japanese legends, and painting with the Wiimote is just plain fun. I would ahve to say it's one of the best games I've ever played. I've never played the PS2 version though

[WyvernSageLord]

It's a shame that they had to take out the credit sequence in the Wii version of Okami. :( It would've made it all the more better...

[Rehab]

Any game that basically is just tapping the screen with your stylus. You'll be entertained a couple days, then you'll forget about it. Elite Beat Agents is the exception because of generally likeable music apparently, and something about there being agents doing that sort of shit seems goofy enough to be entertaining. Never played it though, so I can't put full effort into thinking it over.

That. EBA is the pinnacle of stupid exaggerated humor, and is actually fun to play.