Having been overshadowed by its big brother on Wii and GameCube the last few months, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has been kept unwraps following its debut last summer. Nintendo is finally revealing more on this highly anticipated Nintendo DS title at the Game Developers Conference this week, but you’ll be somewhat surprised about what’s being shown. Without any of the single player campaign playable, Nintendo is showcasing the previously unannounced multiplayer battle mode. Running on eight wirelessly connected Nintendo DS handhelds, we spent a little time testing out Link’s latest adventure.
Battle mode allows two players to join wirelessly for head-to-head matches. One player takes on the role of Link, while the other plays as three dark guardians. As Link, your job is to collect the three Force Gems comprising the Tri-Force and return them to your base; conversely, playing as the trio of dark guardians you must prevent Link from reassembling the Tri-Force. Multiplayer matches last for three rounds in which you’ll switch roles every other round for fairness. The concept behind battle mode is obviously pretty basic, but it serves as a framework for some entertaining gameplay.
When playing as Link, the top screen serves as a map of the arena with icons for the locations of the Force Gems, your base, and the dark guardians. Applying the stylus to the touch screen enables you to move abut the arena. The controls are different when playing as the dark guardians, as the top screen serves as a three-dimensional display of the action, while the touch screen is used as a functional map. Unlike Link who is directly controlled, the dark guardians are moved by drawing lines on the touch screen map. In this way, you can control all three dark guardians simultaneously. Getting used to the controls takes a few minutes, but once you familiarize yourself with the differences between Link and the dark guardians it makes sense.
Particularly when playing as the dark guardians, battle mode requires a bit of tactical thinking. You’ll have to draw lines to guide the dark guardians to Link’s location, so you’ll want to predict his location a few seconds ahead. Since Link can’t run while carrying Force Gems, he becomes more vulnerable to attack from the dark guardians. Throw in special power ups like Link decoys that can distract the dark guardians and battle mode offers up a little energetic distraction from the single player story. While we certainly would have loved to take a look at the campaign, at least Nintendo is slowing pulling back the curtain on what is easily the most anticipated Nintendo DS game of the year. - Tracy Erickson.
