Advance Wars: Dual Strike

"Best of its Kind...by far!!"

War games are some of the best games. Strategic war games are even better. A game that combines both is extraordinary and that's what this game does in gameplay and storyline. This game is definitely on my hit list. The other Advance Wars games were amazing but this game overpowers the others by a milestone. It's a strategists dream game.

Continuing from the previous Advance Wars games, Andy, Max, and Sami, along with many other COs [Commanding Officer], routed out the Black Hole Army and their leader Strum and saved Macro Land from its otherwise inevitable destruction. Afterwards, all the forces [Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth and Yellow Comet] joined forces and became the Allied Nations. At least they thought they defeated the Black Hole. In this game, Black Hole is back with some fresh and old COs. Their new target, Omega Land. The commander of Orange Star named Nell, has sent her sister to check out Omega Land. Along with her comes Jake, another CO. Omega Land has become a wasteland with sandstorms and withered grounds. Black Hole will stop at nothing to take over Omega Land. But how did they get their army back so quickly after being utterly and totally thrashed? Why and how is Omega Land becoming a wasteland? Well one thing is for sure, the Black Hole have a new commander.

First off, there's a range of things to do. you can play the massive storyline in Campaign mode which is brilliant, you can test out your tactics skills in the War Room and get scored and ranked for your success, play a fun match with a computer on many, many maps on Versus mode, try and best the challenges of the three survival modes which are Money, Time and Turn based Survival modes and play an non-tactical game in Combat mode. But that's just half of it. On the other half, you can spend your money earned from missions in Battle Maps, check out how many medals earned and your rank and how you obtained those medals in History, battle it out, trade maps or simply talk to each other via DS wireless connection in Wireless mode, listen to the cool sounds of Advance Wars in the Sound Room, look at the pictures you've unlocked in Gallery[after finishing Campaign mode] or do many things in the Design Room so you can never get bored of playing this game.

Campaign is lots of fun for many reasons. For one, the game explains a few things for the first couple of missions to help you get the feel of the game. The music of the COs your using is unique and catchy. There are many upgrades from the previous games but one of the main things is that you have three save files instead of one. The storyline is absolutely amazing as the Allied Forces dig deeper into the evil Black Hole Army's plans to take over Omega Land, which is where the game is based. You'll meet COs from previous games, and experience some new ones. Campaign is lots of fun and quite challenging too. Campaign is pretty lengthy and imaginative. Some maps require both DS screens, some use the DS real time feature for missions with time limits, or maybe both. But one of the coolest things is that you get to use 2 COs at the same time to create insane combos. But when you finish Campaign, Hard Campaign is available to buy from Battle Maps for people who want insane challenges.

The War Room has a massive amount of maps to choose from once you buy them all. You'll be ranked from a S [the best] to a C [the worst] depending on the way you finished the mission. Also, you can choose to vs 1 CO, 2 COs or even 3 COs!! What's more is that you can also choose to use 2 COs with skills on, use 2 COs with skills off, use 1 CO with skills on or 1 CO with skills off. With heaps of maps to choose from, it will keep you busy, long after you finish Campaign.

Survival mode is absolutely genius. There are 3 modes. The first one, money, is that your given a certain amount of money, and your must go through all the missions only with that amount of money.

Turn based Survival is when you have a turn limit to finish all your missions by.

Time survival is where-using the DS real time feature- you have to clear all the missions within that time limit.

Combat mode is quite fun as you get to control a unit with the control pad and shoot other units. Though it has no strategy behind it, it's pretty fun.

In Battle Maps, you can buy different things with your money earned from missions. To unlock more things, you have to accomplish things in Campaign and other areas. You can buy maps, map cases, COs, CO colours which you can edit in the design room, different difficulty levels for different modes and much more.

In History, you get to look at all of your accomplishments you've made throughout the game and earn medals for your hard work. But with 300 medals to collect, it's pretty hard to get them all.

In the Design Room, you can change your COs clothing, make a custom map or change the background of the select menu.

This game has it all. A massive select of land, sea and air units, COs with special abilities, exciting gameplay, music, and graphics even. You can blow things up with different sized tanks, assault the sky with Stealth Fighters, and move around unnoticed with your submerged submarines. Capture cities with your infantry units, sniper up on...anything with rockets and missiles, hide in the shadows of the woods during fog levels and rescue units with Carriers and Transport Copters.

Also, the unique powers and techniques of the different COs is very imaginative. Also, there are normal powers, Super CO powers and Tag powers. normal powers can be different things like getting luckier when dealing damage, increasing the strength of your troops, increase their movement range, or purchase troops for less. But Super CO powers are brilliant. They can give your troops extraordinary abilities like the ability to gain money everytime they attacked, double the firepower of your troops, make their attacks stronger on different terrains and much, much more. But the best one of all is the tag power. This can only happen when you are using 2 COs with enough power for them both to use their super CO powers. They can move their troops twice that turn and gain firepower abilities for having used a tag power, as well as gaining the benefits of the actual CO's Super power.

Overall, this game is a beauty. Intelligent systems has done it again, bringing out a top notch game. That's the 3rd hit for the Advance Wars, and another hit for Nintendo.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/06