I picked up The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass a few days ago and I'm really glad I did. This is a great game. And it does a phenomenal job of utilizing the touch screen of the DS. Many of the tried and true Zelda conventions are given new life with the advent of the touch screen and the stylus. You don't just throw the boomerang in the direction of your choosing, you can actually plot out its course by drawing a line on the screen.
Even the sea travel system is reborn in Phantom Hourglass. While that aspect was, in the opinion of many, a detriment to Wind Waker, in Phantom Hourglass, it's actually fun. Again, you can plot your course using the stylus. And, instead of directly steering the ship as in Wind Waker, once your course is set, the ship essentially steers itself while Link is free to man the cannon.
All of these new ideas work together to create a unique Zelda experience. Even though this is primarily a top-down adventure with gameplay similar to A Link to the Past or any of the other Zelda titles for the handheld systems, everything seems new. The level designers were able to use the new functionality of the boomerang and other tools to create fresh puzzles.
This one seems to be more of an adult game than previous Zelda titles. I don't mean to say Link is dropping F-bombs or giving his patronage to hookers ("yo honey, I'll show you a real good time for twenty rupees!"), but some of the puzzles require a depth of thinking that is, frankly, unusual for a Zelda game. And many of the puzzle hints are vague at best.
Playing Phantom Hourglass has reawakened my taste for the older, classic console games. Luckily for me, many of the old games that I cut my gamer teeth on are now available for the GBA. And, it just so happens, the GBA games are compatible with the DS. So now my handheld game library is stocked with games like A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI. Once I finish Phantom Hourglass I'm going to start those journeys again. Rockin' it old-school. Hells yeah.
I've always really enjoyed playing tabletop RPGs. Most of all, I enjoy running them. You know, being the Dungeon Master, the Storyteller, or any other game-specific term for the guy who makes crap up and tries to kill the PCs? However, as it sometimes goes, the older my friends and I grew, the harder it became to find the time to come together to actually play. We all started spawning children and settling into careers (well, some of us, anyway) and those things tend to suck up a lot of time.
So I was very pleased when, while wandering around the internet, I found a program called MapTool at www.rptools.net. This small, simple, but powerful program is all you really need to play a game of your favorite tabletop RPG via the internet. Combine MapTool with your choice of VoIP service and you're practically all in the same room. Only, you can play in your undies without the awkwardness of doing so at a traditional gaming session.
Basically what MapTool does is it provides a grid (square or hex) which you can use to move your tokens around on. You can load a map image from just about any map generator, then lay the interactive grid over it and there you go. Now your map is ready to be used for play.
The program works just the way you think it should. One of the things that I always struggled with in my old traditional games is how to handle darkness. No matter the system, the whole process seemed really cumbersome and seemed to only slow the game down. But MapTool makes it simple. It allows you to designate any areas of the map which should be solid and that should block a character's view. So, from the player's screen, they'll be able to see that 5x5 pillar, but they'll never see the enemy standing behind it. It also makes it easy to determine line of sight.
There are also three other programs that are provided by the same site. One is DiceTool, which is an extremely versatile dice rolling program. The second is InitTool, which the GM can use to run the encounters and keep track of turn order, which can sometimes be complicated. There's also TokenTool, which provides a quick and easy way to create your own tokens for use with MapTool.
The best thing is all four of these great programs are completely free. You don't even have to register at the site. Just go to www.rptools.net, download the files, and you're ready to go.
