This past weekend, Jeff and I got to get some personal fondling time with the Nintendo DSi XL. My verdict? I actually like the product. Before, I thought that there would probably be no reason to upgrade to it from my beloved Nintendo DSi. However, it could be gear-envy that is overcoming me right now.
Most of the photos were shot while in the hands of the equivalent of an overly opinionated teenage version of Majin Buu from Dragon Ball Z. Buu stated that he had no real reason to want to upgrade because he thought that Nintendo was going in the wrong direction of going bigger vs. smaller. Buu continued to say that he didn’t like the screen and that he hated the new game, Photo Dojo.
On the contrary, I liked the DSi XL. The large screens makes it resemble a small book, actually. The screen doesn’t appear to be better than my DSi’s. It is not awkward to handle at all, and if by a miracle a seat is snatched on the NYC subway then you’ll be able to whip out your XL and have some pretty good gaming time. Standing though, the DSi is still king in my honest opinion.
Still, it has a nice grip on the XL. It feels better, too. The DSi had a very textured feel to it while the XL is a bit grainy, similar to that of some DSLR cameras. It felt nice.
However, once again we need to remember that this is hardware. What about the games? Photo Dojo was very fun. The nicest part was creating your actual character using the microphone and the DSi XL’s camera. It made for quite a funny experience that actually drew in loads of people around us.
Photo Dojo‘s controls are simple and everything is well explained and thoroughly laid out for you. The only problem that gamers may feel that it may be a bit time consuming to set up as you have to input photos and sound effects for each in game scenario.
When you get to the actual part where you go beat other people up, you’ll have some fun. A problem I noticed is that players can jump over oncoming attackers and they will just avoid you. Otherwise, the gameplay was very straight forward to any side scrolling action game. It got much more challenging as time went on.
I didn’t get a chance to test out my games on it as the DSi was in my hotel room. However, I’m confident that they could surely perform up to par.
So while you’ll have a great gaming experience on the DSi XL, remind yourself that it will ultimately be the software that makes it worth loving. Let’s hope the game developers work wonders.
