When you walk into an arcade, what do you see? Yes, those are all good answers.

Wait, what's that? One of you hasn't ever been to an arcade? Whatever, Mister Segue. Even though I don't really believe you, I'll tell you what I see when I walk into an arcade.

Upon opening the door, a flood of lights and sounds floods you like a flooding flood. Yes, lights and sounds, like that song! You know. "Lights and Sounds." Don't know it? It's like a Yellowcard song, without the cool and unique violin music.

Muscling your way past the kids with tickets stuffed in their hands with which they wish to redeem prizes, you can find a setup of fighting games with really nice screens, and three thousand kids playing them at the same time. I don't know how they all fit, but they do. And the number is always three thousand.

On either the front or back wall is usually Dance Dance Revolution. Everyone has played Dance Dance Revolution at least once, according to scientific studies. Either you really like it (I CAN ACE MANIAC-LEVEL SONGS, SERIOUSLY) or you were pressured into playing it (WHAT, WHEN DO I STEP, I DON'T UNDERSTAND).

Then there's usually some old games, like the Simpsons arcade game! This is worth paying money to play again for the 100000000th time. If you bring a friend, you can do combo attacks. YEAH HOMER, THROW BART AT THAT CLOWN! Those stupid clowns.

There's also the wall of racing games. These are all exactly the same.

After mucking through all that nonsense, you end up at the wall with all the LIGHT-GUN GAMES. Take aim and fire away at a screen with a plastic gun? Yes please! These test vital skills you will need later in life, such as warding off an alien invasion and blowing up a truck while people are shooting rockets at you and solving crime in the future and shooting random targets haphazardly with no real motivation other than the fact that it's mildly fun. And yes, that one about the random targets is most likely Point Blank.

For those of you who scrolled down until you saw bold letters and just skipped all my hilarious chatter, Point Blank is a light-gun game that was first introduced in the 90's. It's enjoyed a Playstation port that I never had because I only jumped on the Playstation train for the PS2, but I'll assume it was pretty fun for the sake of argument. Point Blank is pretty much a target-shooting game, turned upside-down and fed to a happy animal machine. Yeah, I just made that up.

Point Blank DS is another animal entirely. Yes, it's essentially a port of Point Blank for Arcadestation 1, but saying that they're the same thing is like trying to play Burnout 3 with the Guitar Hero controller. (Ten points if you spot the reference.)

Light-gun games pretty much only utilize one game mechanic. Sometimes you can dodge stuff, and sometimes you can reload, but not in Point Blank. It's pretty much point-and-shoot, and in Point Blank DS, that shooting is tapping. What Point Blank DS basically becomes is a different take on the tapping-related WarioWare games. The formula is basically "shoot these kinds of targets, and not these other kinds of targets, k thx!" This is done with varying degrees of difficulty and different themes, which make you momentarily forgive that you're not holding a plastic gun-shaped device and pulling a trigger.

The modes include Arcade, Freeplay, VS, Games Museum, and Brain Massage. Arcade involves a round of 8 levels (4 in Practice Mode) in 4 difficulty settings, with the ultimate goal of gaining a high score. Freeplay lets you practice any level as many times as you want.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Games Museum. Games Museum gives you four games to play that are "replicas of classic arcade machines." Intrigued, I chose the aforementioned game mode, only to notice that I actually RECOGNIZED two of them. One of them is that alligator game, where you hit the alligators with the foam mallet. Another one has these little alien guys that try to take your boxes that you have to shoot in the eye. I don't know the names of either of these, but they were awesome.

Brain Massage tries to be Big Brain Academy, but with target shooting instead of math and stuff. This is kinda fun, if you want to play Arcade mode but have the game call you a glitzy dancer or say "respect Helen Keller" for no real reason. Has the required amount of time passed to where we can reference Helen Keller when a person gets a low "sight" score on a fake brain test? I don't know, probably. It was a long time ago.

The question you are probably asking yourself is "is this game worth buying," to which my answer will most likely be "yes, if you consider yourself to be a skilled marksman," to which you will respond "I don't understand, isn't it all tapping," to which I will quip back "yes, but it's fast and it's kinda hard sometimes and it will make you feel like a fool if you try to get a decent brain massage."

Overall, it's a pretty fun game. If you haven't bought, say, New Super Mario Bros. yet, however, I'd say get that first.

You can always hit some alligators with a fake mallet later.

Labels: Nintendo DS, Reviews