While I already had decided to buy the 3DS whenever there would be games I would want to pay full price for, I caved immediately when I saw a sign today telling me: "the 3DS in stores now!!!!!!!!" (yep with not an exclamation mark less). I hurried in, telling myself I would buy one someday anyway, and when I came out of "Intertoys" I was the proud owner of the Aqua Blue 3DS.
The thing is there still weren't any games I was interested in buying, so I returned home without games next to the pre-installed ones. At home I first tried the augmented reality games. While impressed with the threes, mountains and dragons growing out of my desk, the 3D itself and how cleverly they were both used in de gameplay, the games where rather short and easy and I knew these wouldn't captivate me for a very long time. After that I tried Face Raiders and was immediately impressed by the first level, while advancing further into the next levels I went from impressed to absolutely loving it, playing it for hours.
Face Raiders Basic concept is very simple: SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD! By shooting people who you photographed yourself with the build in 3D cameras, you advance through levels. I have already blasted my way through the Laughing Jesus, Barney the dinosaur, X-zibit, emo Toby Maguire and many more. Doesn't sound very Nintendo like now does it? Thankfully you only shoot at the faces to what Nintendo calls: rescuing them...
When starting a game you have to first take a picture of someone, after doing that it even tries to tell you what gender and even age (boy or men) the subject to be saved is. This already has some hilarious consequences as the game is far from perfect telling me X-zibit was a girl. After the face is cut out of the photo and squeezed it into a funny looking helmet the game starts taking the room or space that your in as your 3d background. Faces start flying towards you from any direction while taking different hilarious facial expressions. Seeing Xzibit flying towards you while putting his lips together to give you a whole screen taking big kiss in 3D is indeed a sight to be seen.
You try to shoot as many floating faces as possible, aiming by moving you 3DS around. The game is way deeper than just that though. Faces take formations, shoot balls from their mouths and even fly trough the fabric of reality. Some faces start to demolish the room or space you are in, sending broken blocks at you. You can die by either running out of health as they keep continually hitting you or after the whole fabric of reality is taken away. This isn't the only way the game uses the background as there are lots of other genius ideas with it. Some faces wearing other sorts of helmets take different ways to "save", you need to learn how to beat some bosses, you can collect a bomb activating it by using b, killing ("saving") a bunch of faces at ones. All in all it's a solid packaging of gameplay.
The usage of 3D imo is incredible in this title. It helps you to determine the distance between you and other objects and makes the game way more engaging. It also looks stunning. With reality tearing away, balls flying everywhere and by 3D even made funnier looking faces coming at you from everywhere.
Playing this game is crazy, trippy and fun. There are only 8 levels, but you'll probably will be playing them at least a few times trying to better your score and collect different faces. For a free game that is tremendous value. Another testimony to how great this game is: When you defeat a level the face you saved is put in a big Afro. Yeah it's that awesome.
