Need For Speed Carbon: Own the City @ PocketGamer

Ask the typical Trisha viewer about video games, and they'll probably look momentarily confused before a lightbulb moment – Need For Speed! Because if there's one franchise that embodies current mass-market gaming tastes, it has to be EA's all-pervasive racing mod 'em up.

Fact fans note: a Need For Speed game has achieved the Christmas number one spot for the last two years running, and you can guarantee this latest iteration will be thereabouts once again.

This isn't to criticise popularity for its own sake, but Need For Speed is fast becoming the Police Academy of the games industry. We're half expecting to be playing Need For Speed Party Time: Assignment Miami Beach next year.

The subtitle of 2006's DS variant continues in the usual vein. Own the City? How? By racing around in a yellow Golf GTi and indulging in gratuitous smack talk? It's a bit ludicrous, although it does contain a nugget of design truth too, as the game sees you driving around the usual gritty urban environment, challenging your rivals to street races.

Assuming you win, then you get to take back that part of the city under your dominion. The goal – getting to own the city – even in a yellow Golf GTi.

Let's get one thing straight, the DS version of Need For Speed Carbon isn't a disappointment because it sticks to a tried and tested formula. It's a disappointment because feels rushed, lacks long-term challenge and fails to play to the DS' and the franchise's core strengths.

Most obviously, the DS wasn't designed for fast 3D racing, as Need For Speed Carbon's blocky textures, scenery tearing and twitchy handling attests. The game runs at a reasonable clip of speed, but when you hit the 'nitros' button, a lurid warping effect kicks in, blurring the screen and making navigating anything other than a straight road next to impossible.

The series' other notable strength, the customisation of vehicles with engine parts, spoilers, decals and rims, is also compromised by the general visual paucity. There are certainly plenty of parts to fiddle around with, as well as the opportunity to get your hands on 50 vehicles, but you will be hard pressed to notice much difference onscreen.

Equally, enabling players to design their own decals via the touch-screen is a welcome touch, but when your efforts translate into a barely discernible mush when placed on your vehicle, it's a bit disheartening.

Indeed, the art design lacks punch and clarity throughout – the entrancing neon cityscapes and souped-up vehicles that work so well on next-generation consoles appear grey and drab here.

Some sophistication has been attempted in terms of vehicle handling; along with braking and a sharper handbrake, the D-pad can be pressed in either of the forward diagonal positions to execute a narrower turn. But it's seldom necessary in practice. Rivals rarely mount any real challenge, and at speed the cars simply can't react quickly enough to sharper twists in circuits. Stick to boosting on the straights and a cautious approach to cornering and you should win every race.

So, any positives? Well, yes. Get into the rhythm of the races and there's a certain amount of entertainment to be extracted.

There is also one good new feature: wingmen. These buddies can be called upon to help you beat your rivals using typically street methods such as ramming them out the way. Another option they enable sees you regaining your nitro power if you can follow their neon trail, like a sort of boost slipstreaming. Their artificial intelligence is sometimes wayward, but together with the 'rewind time' option that you can unlock, they are the most interesting areas in the game by a long shot.

The developer should also be praised for using the DS's second screen in novel ways, too. You can customise your vehicle's dashboard with different dials and even fluffy dice, giving you a vehicular affinity not reflected in the other iterations of the game. It's a cute touch, if hardly a saving grace.

Perhaps most disappointing is just how short the game is. Experienced players will be able to polish off the single-player element inside four hours, the multiplayer mode is limited to two players, and the career mode is also accompanied by a simple revenge plot that doesn't so much border on the risible as cross the line and set new standards in game narrative pap. For us, it's the final nail in Own The City's inner-tube.

While Need For Speed Carbon may well offer a joyous experience on the other platforms and go on to dominate the charts, the DS version is a classic example of unsuitable original material and rushed porting. Even given the paucity of decent racing games on DS, we suggest you drive on by.

DS prepped for Inuyasha, a manga-based RPG @ PocketGamer

To the initiated, it's a shonen adventure romantic comedy manga that became a hugely popular 167 episode long anime series. But for us Brits (who haven't been exposed to either), Inuyasha is just another of those weirdly-named Japanese cultural phenomenon we may or may not get a decade after its launch.

That said, Namco Bandai's DS interpretation of Inuyasha – full title Inuyasha: Secret of the Divine Jewel – is looking tasty in that touchscreen turn-based battle-way that seems to have become the standard for DS role-playing games.

Graphically, it's also looks quite lush. Thankfully, Namco Bandai has gone for a traditional sprite-based (that is, 2D) approach, which plays well to the DS' technical abilities, as well as to Inuyasha's manga roots.

Checking out the released video (hit the 'Watch It!' button for the 4MB download), you can see clearly see how the battles work, with the five player-controlled characters making up the battle group each having their attack moves selected using touchscreen buttons. The screens then switch, with the enemies moving down to the touchscreen to enable you to select an attack sequence in terms of who to target. Finally, it's cue battle cutscenes, and the bad guys getting it in the neck.

Not shown in the video but highlighted as a key game feature is the ability of the characters to work as a team, using the Cover Fellow System. This seems to be a more advanced version of the simple cover commands used in role-playing games such as Final Fantasy.

As for a bit of background to the game, it includes various main characters such as pretty schoolgirl Kagome Higurashi, who can travel in time, having been pulled down a magical well by a centipede demon. She's joined by another demon, the eponymous Inuyasha, a monk with a black hole in his hand called Miroku, the demon slayer Sango, and orphan fox demon Shippo.

A more normal bunch you couldn't hope to meet. As the game's titles suggests, their mission is to unlock the mystery of the Divine Jewel. Could it be any more simple?

Inuyasha: Secret of the Divine Jewel will be bringing its comic demon-battling wares to the UK sometime in 2007.

Getting into DS homebrew @ PocketGamer

It was a wild evening, and one we've been excited about recreating on the DS ever since we got hold of some flashcarts.

Oops! While our sobriety will attest to it not meaning quite what we thought, DS Homebrew is nevertheless an exciting, potent concept – with the right kit, fans at home can now make code that runs on the DS. Including your DS, if you buy the hardware.

The implications are massive. Linux, emulators, mp3 players: the same community who made all those available on PCs are focussing on your console. Games are being made without time or licensing constraints. Obscure Japanese role-playing games on the Game Boy have been hacked and translated.

In fact, the giddy feeling's actually not too dissimilar to the one we had that July evening. And neither is the headache. If an infinite number of monkeys can reproduce the works of Shakespeare, then that leaves a lot of rubbish to wade through. It's no different with homebrew.

But we're tough. We're up to the challenge. Stick with us while we begin to scratch the surface.

NintenDON'T
Nintendo, like all the major console manufacturers, does its best to make sure you can only run the games it approves (and is renumerated for) on your DS. This is done by putting a digital signature into licensed code, which your console then looks for before booting any software. No signature and the machine won't boot.

DS hackers have got round this with various techniques, the most popular of which (though not the easiest to use) is called FlashMe, which enables you to overwrite the machine's firmware with code created by hackers.

With this alternative firmware, you can get rid of the health and safety screen, fade the backlight and run unsigned code – well done, Neo: you made it.

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