Now that demo units are starting to be distributed, I wanted to throw this poll out there. I went and saw the 3DS in San Francisco today and wanted to see other people's impressions.
For me... I picked 2 and I'm verging on 3 and a little bit 4.
The 3d worked and it was pretty cool, but I think it's just been hyped so much that you can't help but be disappointed when you actually see it. They marketed it as the second coming and I thought looking at it would somehow change my life. In reality, it felt like the same game only farther away. It also made me a bit sick afterwards.
The best game in terms of 3d was actually not a Nintendo title. I felt that Lego Star Wars looked really good and used the 3d really well. It made the most sense to me as a 3d game, it didn't strain my eyes, and the 3d added to the game. I think this bodes well for upcoming games like Zelda: OOT and Mario, since they use the same perspective. Nintendogs worked pretty well too.
I felt the worst game, surprisingly, was Pilotwings (Note that this is only in terms of 3d and not the game experience which is probably fine with the 3d turned off). It's hard because you focus on the airplane, which is in the front, but then you have to shift your focus to the background and it gets sickening. The good news is that you can switch to a first-person perspective which is a bit better.
Really any game that had vast distance variations seemed to be the hardest to visually process. This was also true for games that had up-front HUDs. I played Madden and had to turn the 3d off because it was hard to switch back and forth between the game and the interface. It seems like designers are going to have to take that in mind when they design games in 3d.
I played AR games, and while I found it neat, I also found it really shallow as a game itself. Iwata said it is the equivalent of Wii Sports, but it feels like it has less depth than even Wii Play. The target shooting is the most interesting, but everything else gets boring pretty quickly. The 3d, however, was pretty good in that game and added to the experience.
I also played Face Raiders and that actually was pretty fun, but the 3d wasn't as impressive. It felt like turning on the 3d just made the game farther away. The 3d just didn't add anything to the game.
Steel Diver was the game that I really wanted to play, but I sort of left feeling a little off about it. I really couldn't figure it out and it just didn't catch me.
Overall, I can't say that I was really blown away by the 3DS. It was cool, but not jaw-droppingly cool. I'm still going to buy it because I want my 2d Mario, and hopefully the 3d will grow on me as a get into it more, but today I left still on the fence about it.
Post your opinions below!
