I carry my Nintendo 3DS XL with me pretty much everywhere I go. Not only is it fun to just bust it out during idle times when I'm stuck waiting somewhere, it's also great for travel. It has a rather extensive library of classic games, and between older DS games and the increasingly high quality releases of 3DS games, I expect I'll get years of enjoyment out of it.
However, there's one thing I have to admit. See, there are these built-in games that come with it based on the idea that you can "meet" other people who have a 3DS out on the street, and your devices will exchange information. This is assuming, of course, that your 3DS is in "sleep" mode with the wi-fi turned on.
Later, when you open up your 3DS to play, you'll notice that your little "Mii" character has met new people, and when you check that out you have the option to play games with the new "Miis" that have stopped by in your system to visit. These games are evil, cruel, and extremely addictive.
Let's look closer.
The first game you get to play is Puzzle Swap. You have empty puzzle grids that need filling, and the only way to get pieces is to either buy them with tokens or exchange pieces with people you meet. Buying a piece only has one guarantee: the piece will be from an incomplete puzzle, but there's no guarantee it will be a piece you actually need, so it's better to meet more people instead so you can choose specific pieces. Also, certain pieces can only be gathered by meeting other people, which encourages you to either go hang out around other people or go to places that have Nintendo Hotspots (read: McDonalds and Starbucks) within.
It's actually interesting to play, because you'd think that there wouldn't be much strategy to "gather puzzle pieces," but it turns out it's harder to deal with than you think. Start too many puzzles, and it might take longer to complete one, and there's few things frustrating in this system like having a picture down to just two missing pieces and getting the same ones over and over and over again. On the other hand, you can only really get new puzzles by meeting other pieces and taking one of their pieces, so if you finish yours, you're stuck until you meet somebody.
Second is Find Mii, a dungeon exploring game where the Miis you meet fight monsters as they try to rescue your Mii. Each color a person chooses to dress their Mii in determines the kind of "magic power" they'll have, anything from freezing enemies to allow other Miis to get in extra hits to simply unleashing fire or water attacks on foes. You can also purchase "extra" adventurers with coins if, like me, you need a certain color character to get past a specific area and you never seem to meet someone with that color shirt.
Next is Mii Force, a side-scrolling classic shooter (with ships and blasters instead of first person shooters) where the weapons your ship gets are determined by the people you meet. It seems your own ship has no weapons, so it needs to connect to small pods piloted by other Miis. You can get piercing lasers, shockwaves that destroy energy being shot at you, homing missiles, or tractor beams to grab items easier, and you can "level up" the weapons if you have enough pods, making them even more powerful. It's rather entertaining, though I find that unless I meet about four or five people I'm not likely to meet any of the score goals besides "complete stage."
Flower Town seems to be the pacifist game, but I'll admit it's one I find the most intriguing. You're attempting to be a "master gardener," which involves growing twenty different types of flowers. You can only grow one at a time, and when visiting Miis stop by to help water your plant, they bring a flower of their own with them. If your flower and their flower has bloomed, there's a quick sharing of pollen and you can gather a seed which might give you a new flower type or simply a new color, and the game tells you the odds of either happening.
There's also deeper strategy in this game than you'd expect, since you can only keep a certain number of seeds at a time, so you have to start judging which seeds are worth keeping and which aren't. If you meet a lot of people but only have a few seeds left on your flower, you might want to set it into the garden for a bit and start a new flower to get more seeds. You can expand your garden, buy new pots, and purchase seeds to plants you already have, but it also seems surprisingly easy to get new varieties of plants considering I just started and already have seven with others pretty much guaranteed to be new in my seed stash.
Warrior's Way is "Rock, Paper, Scissors" with invading armies. You build up your forces and try to get visiting Mii generals to join your army, then you invade other countries. You have to assign your forces, but keep in mind that calvary beat archers, archers beat spearmen, and spearmen beat calvary. If your spearmen go up against the enemy's archers, your forces are suddenly cut in half before the number of troops are matched up against your enemy's forces.
Oh, and you can't use the same type of force twice. I find that the best solution is to just have overwhelming numbers so no matter which side has the advantage your troops can defeat anything they face. Either that, or strength two sides so they can't lose and just skip the third round of combat by crushing the enemy's forces.
Not a lot of strategy in this one.
Finally, one of my favorite games is Monster Manor, a game where the Miis you meet give you pieces to a map, and you have to assemble the map pieces together to make your way through a haunted mansion. You fight ghosts, level up your weapons and find new treasure along the way, but there also seems to be deeper strategy than first appears. If you get pieces of the map that are all the same color (from similarly dressed Miis), you can build bigger rooms for better treasure, but you won't face as many monsters in combat. If they're all different, you'll have smaller rooms (and smaller treasure), but you'll gain experience faster. I'm still just a few floors through the haunted mansion, but I'm enjoying trying to find the balance between "magnificent loot" and "not being too weak to make use of it."
Overall, I approve of the games, because they encourage people to get out of their house and travel to places where they can meet other people who play games. Maybe it's the local anime convention, maybe it's just checking out the new releases at Gamestop, maybe it's sitting outside of an elementary school until the cops chase you away, at least you're getting out of the house and walking around (which, by the way, is the only way to get coins because the 3DS also acts as a pedometer, every 100 steps gets you a coin up to 10 coins in one day).
I'm curious if the technology could ever work for Microsoft or Sony, if they sold something that you could carry around and then hook into your controller, and if you passed by anybody else who plays the same games you play you can get special equipment or unlock a special feature. I think it'd be neat and I approve of anything that helps break the stereotype of gamers simply hiding in their apartments and basements and only talking to people over headsets.
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