Prometheus
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
- Messages
- 9,472
Even though I dealt with a complete disaster, with Amazon UK not even bothering to ship my 3DS in time for launch-day as they guaranteed, I got my Nintendo 3DS on the European release date of March 25th. I'm getting on very well with it, and figured that I would share my impressions in case anyone was curious enough to read them. 
It's a nice and solidly-built device, the same size as the DS Lite, but with a little more heft due to the screen part being a bit thicker and more solid. The finish is very shiny, and the top half has a coloured part with a thick-looking clear shell fixed over it - it's a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but this doesn't bother me too much. Also worthy of note is that the Health Warning that appeared on boot-up on all of the Nintendo DS line is now relegated to a completely optional menu button that you never even have to read - in fact, you can pick it up and move it far out of the way, so that it never bothers you and you've got room to arrange your icons as you want to. It's good to know that the litigious few who caused this to be the case for so many years are being placated in a different manner now - one which no longer affects the rest of us who know how to read the warnings that have been present all over the packaging and manuals for decades.
Curiously, the wrist-strap hole is located at the bottom of the machine, and there are now two of them - one on each side. This actually works really well, as it means that, unlike with the DS line, you don't need to find ridiculously long wrist-straps to use with the console. It also means that you can attach a stylus-on-a-leash, or a mascot, or whatever you like, to the other one.
The default screen brightness setting is ludicrously high, so prepare your eyes for that. There are five brightness settings, ranging from the fairly dim "1" to the eye-searing "5". 5 is the default, and I soon after set mine to 2 (and flipped Power Saving Mode on, which alters the backlighting a little bit), which is just right for me. Interestingly, lowering the brightness and activating Power Saving Mode enhanced the 3D effect further for me.
As I noted when I wrote up my impressions of a hands-on in-store demonstration, the 3D effect works very well for me. What I had not predicted would be how well it worked in games for me. In particular in Rayman 3D (a port of the Dreamcast version of Rayman 2: The Great Escape) and Pilotwings Resort (two of the three games I bought*), it's proven to be useful in judging distances. I had been skeptical of the claims that it would help in 3D platformers, but those claims really are true - there is one section in Rayman 3D which, in the original Dreamcast version of Rayman 2, was hugely difficult to get through due to it being very hard to know when you should be jumping to the next section (for those familiar with the game, it's the section with the slides in The Sanctuary of Water and Ice). I cleared it with next to no effort due to actually being able to judge distances and judge when I should jump, which was something I absolutely hadn't expected. I'm looking forward to seeing a platformer built from the ground up for this machine, because if it works this well in a fairly lazy port of a game that's more than a decade old, I can only imagine it working better in something designed for it. It works great for judging my landings in Pilotwings Resort, too, and for ascertaining how close I am to hazards. It is more than a mere "special effect".
*(I had originally pre-ordered four games. Specifically, Pilotwings Resort, Rayman 3D, Nintendogs + Cats - Toy Poodle and New Friends, and Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition. However, shortly before launch I purchased the CPS2 board for Street Fighter Zero 2, which I think is a much better game than Street Fighter IV, for only a few pounds more, so I opted not to waste my cash on Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition.)
A curious, and positive, side-effect the 3D effect is having for me is that I'm finding myself better aware of things around me in real life as well. I'm noticing that it's improving my judgement of long distances and volumes a bit when working with various things. Previously, this was something I could only leverage at very short distances (such as when replicating Mega Man characters in sewn form ). I wasn't expecting this to occur, and it's actually quite neat.
I really like the built-in software of the 3DS, as a lot of it is finally expanding on what the Game Boy Camera started off back in 1998 (I waited for a long, long time for that...). The social features are easy to set up and use, and it's fun checking to see if you've walked past any other 3DSes when you get home. I'm quite enjoying the built-in StreetPass Quest mini-game, too, although I'm currently just spending Play Coins (you earn one for every 100 steps recorded by the 3DS' built-in pedometer) on hiring heroes to assist me in the quest, because I haven't gathered any Miis via StreetPass yet.
Having Miis on the system is a great idea, and it's good to see them return to the handheld space - they were originally conceived for the firmware of the Nintendo DS, but were ultimately never used. I think that it was a good idea to hold off until now, as the 3DS' connectivity is better.
I really like the Circle Pad (the 3DS' analogue nub/slider/whatever) - it's quite springy and I find that it responds quite well. It's purely a gaming nub, and in that regard I would have to admit that I prefer it over the Pandora's for that. However, that's not to say that I don't like the Pandora's - the Pandora's is a multi-purpose nub, and I use it primarily for mousing, and couldn't live without it. The 3DS' nub would probably not really be usable for mousing, as far as I can tell.
The Circle Pad is also used as an alternative to the d-pad when in DS mode, and to my great surprise, I've found that I prefer using it more than the d-pad for this. It's been implemented very well for this, and has none of the problems typically associated with using an analogue stick to act as a digital pad - it just feels like a smoothly-responding d-pad. I wasn't expecting that at all, but I'm very pleased with it.
DS mode works nicely, although it's a shame that you have to hold down Start and Select to boot DS games at their native resolution - I would have liked it if an option in the user settings were available to set a preference for this. 2D DS games look really ugly when using the 3DS' filtered upscaled mode, but look great if you run them at native resolution. Polygonal DS games look fine pretty much either way, although I'm sure there are examples of some that may benefit from the upscaling, and others that may not.
There is no real delay in booting DS games, and anyone claiming that there is is grabbing at straws in an effort to try to claim that there is a problem with the system that actually does not exist. In fact, it wasn't until I remembered that people had been claiming that this is a problem that I tested it personally (I used a DS, a DSi, and my 3DS). The original DS and DS Lite took two seconds to start them, the DSi and DSi XL took 4 to 5 seconds to boot them, and the 3DS takes 5 or sometimes 6 seconds to boot them. If you don't have the time to wait an extra second over the DSi or an extra three seconds over the DS, then you don't have time to be playing video games in the first place.
The charging time is identical to that of the DSi and DSi XL. As with the DS mode claims, I would be very wary of anyone who acts as though the charging time being this long is a new thing.
Now, all of that aside, we come to the battery. It is my only gripe with the system - it is a bit short-lived. With the settings that work best for me, I can get a decent stretch out of it, but for getting the best out of the built-in features, which some games as well as the system itself leverage (and which, no doubt, many more games will in the future), it's still not quite good enough. It certainly doesn't help that I've gotten very used to the Pandora's battery-life, either! The machine is designed for easy battery-changing - the entire back panel is the battery cover, and is easily unscrewed to change the battery. A third-party battery by Nyko that doubles the run-time is already available in the US (but there is no European release date for it yet) which is designed to take advantage of this fact (I gather that you remove the back panel, and screw the replacement battery on in its place). I will be buying one (which for me should bring it close enough to the Pandora's life to be fine for my liking), but it is a bit of a disappointment that the built-in one does not last longer. Whilst Nintendo have stated that there are no short-term plans for a revised edition of the hardware, I would imagine that they may well release an official extended-life replacement battery at some point instead, as the system's casing was clearly designed with an eye to making that very easy to do. Indeed, that's all that they really need to do, as far as I can see, as everything else is very well thought-through and works excellently, at least in my experience.
Inevitably, there are going to be some folks trying to compare the 3DS with the Pandora, for whatever reasons they may have, but I personally don't think that that's really a good comparison to make. The fact is that they are vastly different systems that perform quite different tasks (I'm very grateful that my situation is such that I can afford to have both). If it comes down to a choice between them, you'd have to weigh up what your wants are against what both systems offer - I don't think I could make such a comparison, here, as they're just too different.
It's a nice and solidly-built device, the same size as the DS Lite, but with a little more heft due to the screen part being a bit thicker and more solid. The finish is very shiny, and the top half has a coloured part with a thick-looking clear shell fixed over it - it's a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but this doesn't bother me too much. Also worthy of note is that the Health Warning that appeared on boot-up on all of the Nintendo DS line is now relegated to a completely optional menu button that you never even have to read - in fact, you can pick it up and move it far out of the way, so that it never bothers you and you've got room to arrange your icons as you want to. It's good to know that the litigious few who caused this to be the case for so many years are being placated in a different manner now - one which no longer affects the rest of us who know how to read the warnings that have been present all over the packaging and manuals for decades.
Curiously, the wrist-strap hole is located at the bottom of the machine, and there are now two of them - one on each side. This actually works really well, as it means that, unlike with the DS line, you don't need to find ridiculously long wrist-straps to use with the console. It also means that you can attach a stylus-on-a-leash, or a mascot, or whatever you like, to the other one.
The default screen brightness setting is ludicrously high, so prepare your eyes for that. There are five brightness settings, ranging from the fairly dim "1" to the eye-searing "5". 5 is the default, and I soon after set mine to 2 (and flipped Power Saving Mode on, which alters the backlighting a little bit), which is just right for me. Interestingly, lowering the brightness and activating Power Saving Mode enhanced the 3D effect further for me.
As I noted when I wrote up my impressions of a hands-on in-store demonstration, the 3D effect works very well for me. What I had not predicted would be how well it worked in games for me. In particular in Rayman 3D (a port of the Dreamcast version of Rayman 2: The Great Escape) and Pilotwings Resort (two of the three games I bought*), it's proven to be useful in judging distances. I had been skeptical of the claims that it would help in 3D platformers, but those claims really are true - there is one section in Rayman 3D which, in the original Dreamcast version of Rayman 2, was hugely difficult to get through due to it being very hard to know when you should be jumping to the next section (for those familiar with the game, it's the section with the slides in The Sanctuary of Water and Ice). I cleared it with next to no effort due to actually being able to judge distances and judge when I should jump, which was something I absolutely hadn't expected. I'm looking forward to seeing a platformer built from the ground up for this machine, because if it works this well in a fairly lazy port of a game that's more than a decade old, I can only imagine it working better in something designed for it. It works great for judging my landings in Pilotwings Resort, too, and for ascertaining how close I am to hazards. It is more than a mere "special effect".
*(I had originally pre-ordered four games. Specifically, Pilotwings Resort, Rayman 3D, Nintendogs + Cats - Toy Poodle and New Friends, and Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition. However, shortly before launch I purchased the CPS2 board for Street Fighter Zero 2, which I think is a much better game than Street Fighter IV, for only a few pounds more, so I opted not to waste my cash on Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition.)
A curious, and positive, side-effect the 3D effect is having for me is that I'm finding myself better aware of things around me in real life as well. I'm noticing that it's improving my judgement of long distances and volumes a bit when working with various things. Previously, this was something I could only leverage at very short distances (such as when replicating Mega Man characters in sewn form
). I wasn't expecting this to occur, and it's actually quite neat.I really like the built-in software of the 3DS, as a lot of it is finally expanding on what the Game Boy Camera started off back in 1998 (I waited for a long, long time for that...). The social features are easy to set up and use, and it's fun checking to see if you've walked past any other 3DSes when you get home. I'm quite enjoying the built-in StreetPass Quest mini-game, too, although I'm currently just spending Play Coins (you earn one for every 100 steps recorded by the 3DS' built-in pedometer) on hiring heroes to assist me in the quest, because I haven't gathered any Miis via StreetPass yet.
Having Miis on the system is a great idea, and it's good to see them return to the handheld space - they were originally conceived for the firmware of the Nintendo DS, but were ultimately never used. I think that it was a good idea to hold off until now, as the 3DS' connectivity is better.
I really like the Circle Pad (the 3DS' analogue nub/slider/whatever) - it's quite springy and I find that it responds quite well. It's purely a gaming nub, and in that regard I would have to admit that I prefer it over the Pandora's for that. However, that's not to say that I don't like the Pandora's - the Pandora's is a multi-purpose nub, and I use it primarily for mousing, and couldn't live without it. The 3DS' nub would probably not really be usable for mousing, as far as I can tell.
The Circle Pad is also used as an alternative to the d-pad when in DS mode, and to my great surprise, I've found that I prefer using it more than the d-pad for this. It's been implemented very well for this, and has none of the problems typically associated with using an analogue stick to act as a digital pad - it just feels like a smoothly-responding d-pad. I wasn't expecting that at all, but I'm very pleased with it.
DS mode works nicely, although it's a shame that you have to hold down Start and Select to boot DS games at their native resolution - I would have liked it if an option in the user settings were available to set a preference for this. 2D DS games look really ugly when using the 3DS' filtered upscaled mode, but look great if you run them at native resolution. Polygonal DS games look fine pretty much either way, although I'm sure there are examples of some that may benefit from the upscaling, and others that may not.
There is no real delay in booting DS games, and anyone claiming that there is is grabbing at straws in an effort to try to claim that there is a problem with the system that actually does not exist. In fact, it wasn't until I remembered that people had been claiming that this is a problem that I tested it personally (I used a DS, a DSi, and my 3DS). The original DS and DS Lite took two seconds to start them, the DSi and DSi XL took 4 to 5 seconds to boot them, and the 3DS takes 5 or sometimes 6 seconds to boot them. If you don't have the time to wait an extra second over the DSi or an extra three seconds over the DS, then you don't have time to be playing video games in the first place.
The charging time is identical to that of the DSi and DSi XL. As with the DS mode claims, I would be very wary of anyone who acts as though the charging time being this long is a new thing.
Now, all of that aside, we come to the battery. It is my only gripe with the system - it is a bit short-lived. With the settings that work best for me, I can get a decent stretch out of it, but for getting the best out of the built-in features, which some games as well as the system itself leverage (and which, no doubt, many more games will in the future), it's still not quite good enough. It certainly doesn't help that I've gotten very used to the Pandora's battery-life, either! The machine is designed for easy battery-changing - the entire back panel is the battery cover, and is easily unscrewed to change the battery. A third-party battery by Nyko that doubles the run-time is already available in the US (but there is no European release date for it yet) which is designed to take advantage of this fact (I gather that you remove the back panel, and screw the replacement battery on in its place). I will be buying one (which for me should bring it close enough to the Pandora's life to be fine for my liking), but it is a bit of a disappointment that the built-in one does not last longer. Whilst Nintendo have stated that there are no short-term plans for a revised edition of the hardware, I would imagine that they may well release an official extended-life replacement battery at some point instead, as the system's casing was clearly designed with an eye to making that very easy to do. Indeed, that's all that they really need to do, as far as I can see, as everything else is very well thought-through and works excellently, at least in my experience.
Inevitably, there are going to be some folks trying to compare the 3DS with the Pandora, for whatever reasons they may have, but I personally don't think that that's really a good comparison to make. The fact is that they are vastly different systems that perform quite different tasks (I'm very grateful that my situation is such that I can afford to have both). If it comes down to a choice between them, you'd have to weigh up what your wants are against what both systems offer - I don't think I could make such a comparison, here, as they're just too different.
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