A good man I may never be called. I have laid waste to thousands and hundreds more in my command have been sacrificed for the sake of our cause.

These sins would weigh heavily on my mind if it weren?t just so damn fun. Yes, Advance Wars has returned and this time calling it just a sequel would be a tad disingenuous. Unlike Advance Wars 2, Advance Wars: Dual Strike has new modes, units and tactics to the point where it approaches being obscene. This is the sequel fans have been waiting for.

Gameplay/Controls:: Gameplay is what this series is about. On a superficial level, the game appears to be a simple, and perhaps shallow, experience; yet, once the game reveals itself the amount of variables that take place in any given battle clearly declare this as a thinking man/woman?s game. Perhaps you want to take out an anti-air unit; well, you won?t want to send infantry as it will absolutely demolish their ranks; a tank would be good but then you have to worry about other indirect combat units and bombers; infantry won?t be a problem for the tank unless they are a mech unit, but they only pose a threat if they hit first. Damn, forgot about the battleship off shore and now your tank is easy pickings for lesser units, at least you have the cover of the forest to maybe last until your next turn and return it to a friendly area for repair. Screw it, use it as bait so you can move other units in and maybe steal a few cities and possibly a base giving you unit production on their turf.

This is what makes the game so enjoyable. There are so many different ways to go about a given battle that it is unlikely any one battle will unfold exactly the same. You can play conservatively and hold onto units for a technique bonus or you can run though battles Schwarzenegger-style and accept the casualties given and get a time bonus. There is a possibility of nailing both through careful planning or missing everything entirely due to bumbling goofs. That's the beauty of Advance Wars.

But this is Dual Strike. And while most of the gameplay remains the same, a bit is tweaked or completely different. The CO (Commanding Officer) power are mostly the same but now you can level up COs and each CO also has a super power which is usually an amped up version of their default power. The next feature I am a bit torn on. Some battles allow there to be 2 COs per side and when they are powerful enough they can perform a tag attack. Here?s my gripe: it?s too powerful. Not only does each CO perform their super move but they also each get to move so the army performing it gets two turns in one round. CO Powers used to be either a minor irritant or a slight boost, now they can single-handedly determine a winner, though this is an extreme.

A new mode was added called Combat. Combat is essentially a simple RTS where you control a unit with the d-pad and shoot by taping on the screen. The objective is the same as in the main game: capture all the bases or route the enemy. It?s nothing that will keep a player from the main game but it is a fun little time waster for when you are between magazines on the john. You can also purchase harder versions of this mini-game at the shop when you beat the first round.

Visuals:: It could be said that this game looks very similar to its predecessors, and it would be very wise to make note of that. This is by no means a great looking game. The unit models are taken verbatim from the GBA titles, with the exception of the new units. But let?s face facts; if this is really bothersome to a person they probably weren?t going to play the game anyway. The game has never been very pretty. That said, Intelligent Systems did add a few camera scales to battles to make them seem more dramatic. And that?s about it. Nothing really new going on over here; oh, you can change the color of your COs clothes. Surely that accounts for something.

Audio:: Ditto for sound; nothing really new aside from a better sounding sample here and there. Other than that they are the same sounds that were present in the 2001 iteration of the game. Granted the music is well-composed and it should be noted that they do sound better because of the DS?s more capable hardware, but they are still the same.

If there is one thing that could be said about Advance Wars it is that the titles are extremely replayable. First, you have a map editor that is just so much easier to use thanks to the use of the stylus; second, there is a wireless mode to trade maps; third, there is wireless multiplayer and finally, there is the war room where you can play purchased maps and play them for points as well as rank. There?s also Combat mode which was mentioned earlier. This is a complete package, and a great value. I?ll put this in perspective. I still regularly play the first GBA game and I bought it on its release day on September 11th, 2001 (eerie, no?). I never played multiplayer and I never created my own maps. The campaign and war room were more than enough almost four years later.

Overall:: Advance Wars: Dual Strike is the pinnacle not only of its series, but also of the current North American DS library. If you have even a passing interest in the strategy, genre it will suck you in. If you have never played a strategy game, this is a great series to jump into due to its simplicity and extensive tutorials. The next Great War begins on August 22nd, 2005

Score:: 9.0/10