[Review] Art of Balance Touch! reminded me that 3DS games are still better than iOS games

I got an iPad a few weeks ago.

Since then I’ve nabbed a ton of games for it, from the terrible free ones like McDonald’s Happy Meal Builder (seriously, try it) to the top-notch like Plants vs. Zombies HD. The accessibility of games and the dangerously cheap cost of them had me all but convinced that this was the way casual gaming would be from here on out. I thought “Well, this is it. Gaming as a whole sure isn’t dead, but it may very well be slipping out of its casual hayday.”

Then, to my great luck, I got a review code for Art of Balance Touch! on the 3DS eShop. A simple game upon first glance, but given a few minutes with it and I realized something rather pleasant: Games are still better on dedicated gaming platforms than phones and tablets. They just are.

So, Art of Balance Touch! is a puzzle game of incredulously simple concept: You take blocks and stack them up so they don’t fall. Like all incredible games though, the idea is simple, but the design is impeccable; challenging and addicting, it is a game that will seemingly bore you after 15 or 20 minutes of play, only to have you clamoring back an hour later so see if you can steady your hand just enough to keep a complicated stack from falling into the remarkably JELL-O-like water below. If you’re a fan of slow-paced puzzlers (Picross, Sudoku, etc), you will absolutely love this game.

The way it works is straightforward enough: Like Nintendogs, you move pieces around using the stylus on the bottom screen, the motion of which is mimicked on the top screen. This allows you to grab one of many pieces, stack them on the precarious surfaces given to you on the top screen, and then hold your breath to see if it’s going to stay.

Then you get to do it all over again with the next piece. And the one after that. Until all of them are used up, after which you must wait about three seconds. If your structure is still standing after those three seconds, you pass.

In the game, there are regular pieces that function as just blocks, pieces that can only take so much weight before shattering, pieces that automatically shatter after a few seconds, and more types that rapidly change your strategy from level to level, and you repeat this process for probably something like 160 levels. Maybe more, I dunno. It’s tense, frustrating, and difficult in all of the best ways. Really the mark of a well designed puzzle experience. Which brings me pack to the whole “iPad” thing.

See, playing games on the iPad is fun. I can’t deny it. But so few that I’ve experienced thus far have anything close to the level of sheer quality in production of the casual games I play on 3DS. They play well, but they don’t FEEL as good. I think I wrote an article about this a while back, but there’s a list of things that great developers pay attention to, and good developers pass over. The great iOS games tend to gloss over these important things, but the great 3DS games don’t. High frame rates are common, smooth menus are standard, satisfying sound effects can’t be forgotten, and if your controls aren’t flawless you’ll get torn apart. On iOS, not so much. Your controls can be a little clunky, menus sort of dull, sound effects sub-par, and framerate 30 or lower and nobody will care.

So yes, if you settle into that mindset and allow those things to slip by, you’ll have a good time on iOS. Me? Not so much. And I’ve got Art of Balance to thank for helping me remember that there’s a reason I like dedicated gaming platforms.

Bottom Line: Art of Balance Touch! is about as polished a puzzle game as you can get, and it’s one of those games that will frustrate you enough to make you put down the 3DS- only to draw you back in with the allure of its beautiful, addicting simplicity. If I gave number scores, it would get an 8.5, but I don’t give number scores. So it gets a picture of a Toad without its hat: