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Advance Wars: Days of Ruin Only a Weekend Away

Jan. 18 7:47 AM by Alicia Ashby

It's less than a week before strategy gamers everywhere are going to have Advance Wars: Days of Ruin in hand. This is an eagerly anticipated title for a lot of reasons, ranging from content to updated gameplay to the initially-controversial new design aesthetic. I've gathered up some tasty Advance Wars links so you can get yourself worked up into an appropriate frenzy.

First up there's Wired's Game|Life with an unusual interview-- with the game's localization editor, Tim O' Leary. Hey, he'd know what he was talking about, wouldn't he? This interview covers a lot of interesting things, but most of all, the "why" behind the grittier new look for Advance Wars.

I've been asked a lot, why the redesign, what's up with the new characters, the game seems kind of dark in tone. The development team, when we posed this question to them, came back and said: Over the course of this franchise, this long-running franchise, they were getting feedback over the last couple of games that was saying, yeah, we love this game, really fun to play... but it's not a lot different.

GamePro has a last-minute preview up that details basically everything you can expect to see in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin when you power it on once you've got a copy in your hand.

The biggest addition to Days of Ruin has to be the connectivity with Nintendo's Wi-Fi service. Now, instead of limiting yourself to local LAN play, you can take your game online and challenge gamers all around the world. Even better, you can custom design maps and share them with others; each map can be rated and ranked as well, allowing you to download maps based on what other gamers think of them.

For a strategy game like Days of Ruin, the addition of multiplayer is a huge bonus and the map editor is sure to open up some amazing possibilities, which in turn just adds to the game's replayability. Also getting a tweak are the C.O. powers; in the past, each commanding officer had the ability to invoke special abilities that usually had devastating effects. In Days of Ruin, that has been toned down. You "attach" your C.O. to a unit and as you rack up the kills, they begin to radiate a sphere of influence, which continues to grow with experience. Any units who sit in its vicinity receives a bonus; you can also expend the sphere for a one-time bonus that imparts things like combat bonuses to all units.

Finally, GoNintendo has the skinny on the Advance Wars: Days of Ruin launch party set to take place Sunday Afternoon outside the Nintendo World store in New York. This event appears to be open and free to fans, so if I was in New York, I'd be sure to show up.

Nintendo celebrates the release of the groundbreaking Advance Wars®: Days of Ruin with a launch party at the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Plaza. Passionate gamers with an appetite for virtual combat will gather for a sneak peek at the latest Advance Wars title and a chance to win awesome prizes. Consumers are sure to line up early, as Nintendo will be awarding the first 25 attendees a free copy of the game. Eager fans of all stripes will participate in Nintendo trivia challenges, create colorful Advance Wars battle maps and compete in a live multiplayer tournament.