StreetPass Squad, StreetPass Battle, SteetPass Garden, StreetPass Mansion
|
3DS
| StreetPass Mii Plaza

Who would have thought that StreetPass would be the Nintendo 3DS's killer app?

This innocuous little feature, which lets you silently swap data with other nearby 3DS owners, turns every trip out into a little adventure. You might return home and find that you unwittingly traded details with a barista in Costa and a 3DS-toting tourist from Austria.

But it's not some boring old social network nonsense. In fact, the only personal information you can extract from your fellow StreetPass passerby is her birthday and her preference for dogs or cats. No, these fleeting friends become mercenaries in an on-going RPG battle, or traders in a global jigsaw building effort.

And now, Nintendo has finally released some fresh games for StreetPass obsessives. StreetPass Battle, Squad, Mansion, and Garden are available from the plaza for £4.49 each, or you can buy the lot in a £13.49 bundle.

Like StreetPass Quest, these games inch along at a snail's pace, and you make progress when you've recently been within a stone's throw of another 3DS owner (or have walked enough miles to rack up a war chest of play coins).

And even when you finally do meet some friends or strangers, your progress is artificially halted. Your squadron always departs after one level in StreetPass Squad, for example, and you can only conquer one kingdom per session in StreetPass Battle.

But anyway. On to business - how does each game play, and which should you buy?

StreetPass Squad

StreetPass Squad

StreetPass Squad, a cutesy top-down shmup from Good Feel, is fast becoming my favourite of the bunch, and it's always the game I load up first when I have a new encounter.

You're on an intergalactic mission to duff up some space pirates, and each StreetPass person becomes a weapon on your dinky space ship.

Their shirt colours correspond to weapon types (yellow is an electric bolt, blue is a homing missile, black is a bomb), and if you stack multiple Miis of the same colour that weapon becomes more powerful.

You can assign your StreetPass chums to the front or back of your ship - which is important, as levels are rarely linear, and enemies often spill in from multiple directions. If you've only got one or two weapons, you can always ratchet your weapon wheel around, at clunking 45 degree increments, with a shove of the shoulder buttons.

Squad is, by any yardstick, a good shmup. It's not the next DoDonPachi or anything, but it's a cute, sprawling, and creative shooter with great boss baddies and lots of hidden secrets. It will keep you entertained for a good few encounters, and leaderboards will have you replaying favourite stages after the story is done.

It's certainly the most action-orientated game of the bunch. Whereas the other StreetPass apps can feel like checklists and chores, this one is hands-on, and hard. If you only get one of these games, make it StreetPass Squad.

StreetPass Battle

StreetPass Battle

StreetPass Battle is all about the long game. Unless you work in the Nintendo World Store or live in central Tokyo, don't expect to finish this one while you're young.

This is a game where you slowly amass troops for your military campaign to take over the world. When you meet another StreetPass passerby, you'll recruit all the citizens of her plaza for your burgeoning rebel army.

But the number of troops needed for each battle (the game has 20 countries to invade) steps up dramatically. Right now, I have an army of 5,500 troops, but the next battle is against a warlord with a 11,000 strong battalion. I'm basically waiting for Eurogamer Expo later this year to have enough StreetPass hits to proceed.

As in all these games, you can use play coins (the cash you earn when walking with your 3DS in your pocket), but StreetPass Battle demands such huge payments for such tiny troop expansions that it's just not worth the outlay.

Anyway. When you actually get an army, you'll fight off rival nations (or other 3DS owners who also bought StreetPass Battle), in a game of rock, paper, scissors. Or archers, cavalry, infantry if you want to be precise.

There's some strategy to proceedings. You get to see how the enemy has divvied up his troops between the three categories, and you get to split your units up in response. Archers may technically beat infantry, but superior numbers will always come out on top.

But there's also a whole lot of luck. It is rock, paper, scissors, after all.

StreetPass Battle is a smart use of the StreetPass system, and seeing 2,000-strong swarms of Miis go up against one another is a sight to behold. But it's a slow, plodding game, and you'll often choose to do absolutely nothing after a new StreetPass hit.

If you don't live in a major metropolitan area, you might want to give this one a miss or you won't get your money's worth until the new millennium.

StreetPass Garden StreetPass Garden

StreetPass Garden looks like a cute and casual game. But that charming exterior hides a deep, interconnected web of systems and seeds and breeding and plant pots and species and colours.

The general idea is that you'll pop a seed into a plant pot and then your StreetPass guests will water it until it blooms. You'll then record your new species in your journal, after which you can pop the plant in your garden, or sell it to the florist.

But there's much more to it than that. Miis carrying plants will cause your flower to drop seeds (the StreetPass passerby's shirt colour will help determine the seed's hue), which helps you amass a collection of different coloured and shaped seeds.

Those will help you fill up your journal, make the garden of your dreams, or complete jobs at the gardening centre. This one has a lot of depth, and the different systems - explained in the world's longest tutorial, which stretches out over multiple play sessions - can be overwhelming.

Personally, it's always the one I dread opening when I get the little green light on my console. It's surprisingly deep, sure, but it basically boils down to a whole lot of menus and a whole lot of reading.

If you have the patience of a monk, and a penchant for relaxing games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, it might well be up your alley. If not, skip it.

StreetPass Mansion

StreetPass Mansion

Finally, there's StreetPass Mansion - a dungeon-crawling paranormal adventure from the people at Prope.

Every time you encounter a fellow 3DS owner, he or she will hand over a tiny scrap of a map. You'll then stick this oddly-shaped polygon onto the mansion's floor plan to form new corridors through the building.

Ultimately, you're trying to find the stairs to the next storey. But along the way you'll fight monsters (with a simple but fun little battle system), and - if you put together two coloured map pieces that form a square - find rooms with treasure chests.

Those chests contain items and, most importantly, new weapons to help you fight those ghoulies. You'll have to think about which weapons to upgrade, which weapon types are effective against different monsters, and which weapons you need to carry in your restrictive inventory.

There's a lot going on in this game. StreetPass Quest may have boiled the RPG down to its bare bones, but this is a deep and sophisticated little adventure game that only gets more complicated as you get closer to the top floor.

It's definitely one of the standout games in this StreetPass collection, and it's one I'm always looking forward to advancing in. That means it's an easy recommendation, providing you have a steady influx of encounters or play coins.

StreetPass Squad, StreetPass Battle, SteetPass Garden, StreetPass Mansion

All four games are original and well worth playing. Squad and Mansion are firm favourites, but Garden is suited to those who like relaxing games. Battle is best for those with frequent StreetPass encounters
Score
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer