The next-best thing about 3DS? Turning the 3D off

This being Kojima, there are moments of playful fourth-wall dismantling to balance out the melodrama. The demo managed to arch an eyebrow at what has since become journalistic cliché, the feeling that you can ‘reach into the screen’: a guard’s arm flailed through a gap in some roots in search of a dropped packet of cigarettes, inches from the hidden Snake who, as if in response to my fleeting irrational urge to grasp the box between thumb and forefinger, picked it up and moved it under the interloper’s questing hand.

Don't turn your back on it.

Dog’s dinner?

If the Naked Sample brought the big swings, then Nintendogs & Cats brought the follow-through. Mechanically speaking it’s no more than an upgrade, albeit one that mingles feline with canine cuteness, of the pet molesting sims that have sold millions of DS units to bamboozled teenage girls (and, I’ll admit, at least one male twenty-something copyist) over the past five years. The demo comes with three puppies, a Beagle, a Labrador and a terrier, each noticeably crisper than the pick of last-gen’s litter, and a dozen or so toys and items of clothing to mess around with.

While 3D immediately had the generic apartment backdrop ‘popping’, with the furniture in an adjoining room far more apparent, it wasn’t till the doggy leapt up to place his paws on the inside of the screen that the quality of the game’s optimisation really hit home. In some of the less well-adapted demos I saw, the effect was quite obviously layered, foreground and background split apart like the facades of a theatre set; the head of my Beagle (note, incidentally, that I’m already calling it ‘my’) was a fully rounded 3D object, dusted with minute depth of field effects, an accomplishment all the more evident once I’d tossed in a few accessories (a quiff, sunshades and a spiked collar) to sweeten the deal.

What’s more, the sensitivity to proximity cuts both ways: thanks to the 3DS’s inside lid camera, the pet could detect how far my face was from the screen and react accordingly (i.e. lovably). It’s unlikely this functionality will reach Kinect levels of sophistication, but there are still interesting possibilities aplenty between the high watermark of skeletal mapping and the humbler amusements of the likes of Face Training.

Screenshots really don't do 3DS justice. This may be a problem, Nintendo...

A sight for sore eyes

So how exactly, then, does 3DS ‘pay a price’ for being the most awe-inspiring, downright stealable piece of hardware you’ll encounter in the next few years? Where does it put a foot wrong? Answer: it’s inconvenient. Masterful, stylish, contagious, infectious, outrageous, practically perfect in every way… but inconvenient. It asks more of its user than we’ve come to expect from a Nintendo handheld, more than a handheld gamer might feel comfortable with full stop, and for that reason the option to turn 3D off is absolutely crucial.

Simply put, the experience of playing a game in three dimensions takes effort. You’ve got to keep your eyes more or less parallel with the top screen, tweaking the slider to match up the left and right images, or else endure nauseating ‘double vision’. Even when the images are correctly aligned, processing the depth of view is a little taxing, especially in a fast, fireworks-laden rail shooter like Kid Icarus, with objects transiting rapidly from far to near.

I found that my eyes felt tired after as little as 15 minutes, though in fairness some of this should be attributed to my looking at a variety of titles in succession, each with its own graphical make-up and ‘sweet spot’. I imagine that timeframe would shrink were I standing in a dim bus shelter or a tube car, rather than a well-lit, spacious, air-conditioned chamber in one of London’s première business hang-outs.

I also imagine that for many outside the hardcore gaming clique, the attractions of 3DS will have less to do with ‘screen burst’ and the all-new tactility of Samus Aran’s bubble-butt, and more with Nintendo’s continuing to offer what it has offered for many years: a robust, reasonably affordable, attractive means of playing simple puzzlers, lifestyle sims, footie or educational games in 90 second spurts.

See, we love it really.

When 3DS launches, these consumers won’t be found marvelling at the palpability of Mario’s nostril hair, or gasping as a three-headed dragon erupts into close-up; they’ll be scratching their heads over Sudoku, or Brain Training, or taking photos, or teaching themselves bad piano. They won’t want to have to ‘work’ at a game to enjoy it, however ample the rewards. And that’s why perhaps the most conclusive evidence of Nintendo’s cleverness with 3DS isn’t the sheer technological breakthrough involved, but the manufacturer’s readiness, should the user wish it, to let that breakthrough slide.

Watch out for more Ninten-tastic coverage in the near future. 3DS wasn’t the only thing we saw at Tuesday’s event…