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Clubhouse Games Review - DS

Introduction

I holidayed overseas this year, and when I thought about what would be worth taking, Clubhouse Games immediately sprung to mind. Much in the same way that WarioWare works so well when travelling because everything is in bite-sized portions, having over forty games to choose from and play a couple of rounds with is incredibly handy. However, sometimes the overall package seems a little incomplete.

Gameplay

It goes without saying that all the individual games are fully playable and work fine. You should know most of the games, if not by name, then by the way they play. For instance, the game labelled 'Pig' I've always known as 'Spoons'. You'll learn how to play the games (both on the DS and potentially in real life, too) by reading the detailed rules tab located at the bottom of the game entry screen, though for some of the weirder games (Koi-Koi, anyone?) a tutorial would have been useful too. Thankfully, there are absolutely no loading times moving into and out of games, though there is a bit of a lag when it's saving extensive records, which it does every time you finish a game.

There are three main modes in Clubhouse Games. The first is Free Play, which is exactly as it sounds. Complete access to all the games and unlockables you’ve got. You can fiddle with rules where applicable, add or remove computer players, and (assuming you’ve completed a certain task I’ll leave for you to discover) change the difficulty. Yes, that came as a bit of a shock to me too – if you’re looking for some harder fights against the CPUs, you’ll have to work for it.

The next is Stamp Mode, where you progress in sequence through every one of the games in order. You can save and quit, and return back where you were later, but once you’ve completed a game, you can’t go back (except in Free Play, obviously). This is a good way to experience all the games, and work out which ones you suck at and hate. You need three stamps to pass a game. Typically, you’ll get three stamps for winning, two for second place, and one for three or lower. If it’s a single player title, it’s three stamps for winning and one for losing. So even if you have absolutely no idea what’s happening, have no chance of winning, and just want to move on (see "Shogi"), you can just kill yourself as quickly as possible and pick up three stamps (also, if you’ve lost twice on a game, and then won, the two excess stamps are transposed to the next game).

Mission Mode rounds out the set, with certain tasks to be performed in certain games (three bullseyes in Darts, finish Mahjong Solitaire in under three minutes). Besides the hard difficulty settings in the games, this is where the real experts will get their satisfaction. Some of these are downright deadly, ... (continued next page)