Advance Wars: Dual Strike is a turn-based tactical warfare video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS in North America on August 22, 2005. It is preceded by Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising and Advance Wars. Interesting side note: Advance Wars is the international title of the Wars video game series, which dates back to Famicom Wars in 1988.

Pros:

I have always been a fan of the Advance Wars series, it’s like an in-depth chess with war machines and a fancy “rock, paper, scissors” type set up. I know at first read that might not sound very interesting, but there is enough unit variation, landscape challenges, and leader bonuses to keep this game fun, challenging and interesting. Not to mention how they managed to make the clearly WW2 inspired design for the armies in such a “cute” way.  However, the greatest thing about this version is the use of the second screen for secondary combat, air combat, or just additional information. It’s one of the few games on the DS I have tried which I think the two screen system is actually utilized in a fun and functional way. I never find myself trying to have one eye on each screen or having the second screen be completely useless.

Here is a Japanese commercial for the game, named Famicom Wars DS over there.

Cons:

My only major annoyance about this game is the excessive amount of useless character dialogue. They try to give some personality to the characters, but the reading only really seems to kill my time. The worst part is every once in a while they give you some information vital to the success of the mission, so you really can’t just quickly skip through it all. So that’s pretty annoying.