Way back in the year 2006, Nintendo launched the Wii with a little piece of software called Wii Sports, which ended up taking the world by storm. Arguably, there were better games available at launch (Twilight Princess? Trauma Center?), but Wii Sports was the go to game to play with family and friends, and helped showcase to the world what that whole crazy Wii thing was all about. In North America and Europe, Wii Sports came packed in with the console, and I think we can all agree that this tactic was very beneficial, if not integral, to the success of the Wii in the West. Naturally I expected Nintendo to do something similar with the 3DS, and when they announced that they would be preloading software onto every 3DS unit it made me smile inside. Yet I was a bit perturbed when, leading up to the launch, I didn't see that one title that looked to recreate the role of Wii Sports. As it turns out, it may have been right in front of my...


Who would have guessed my $2 Mario plushie would end up in a game?!
Alright, I'll spare you that pun.

So, as stated above, the 3DS comes with various pieces of software preloaded that utilize its special capabilities, Face Raiders and AR Games being the two to go to if you're looking to jump into some games right away. I'm not going to speak much about AR Games here, as this is not a review of that set of mini-games, but in my opinion they are better used as showcases for the potential of augmented reality in gaming than as games that can actually hold your interest for very long. To be frank, I tried them out early on, found them to be compelling as far as showing me some of what my 3DS could do, but didn't really have that much fun playing them, and haven't been back since. Face Raiders, on the other hand, is both an excellent showcase of many of the features of the 3DS and a decent game in its own right.

When you start a game of Face Raiders, the first thing it will do is ask you to take a (2D) picture of someone's face, using two eye points and a mouth point to help you line it up right. The idea is to take a picture of the face of someone around you, but of course you can get creative as well; I've taken pictures of faces from books, magazines, game and movie cases, etc. as well as pictures of plenty of things that aren't even faces (no not that you sickos!) Your only limit is your imagination. You don't actually have to take a new picture every time you play, you can also select from previous faces you have captured, but where is the fun in that? Face Raiders will then superimpose this "face" onto various 3D models, which will be used as the majority of enemies in the game (the others being random selections from your captured faces.) It's not just a static image on a 3D model, however. Because you lined up the eyes and mouth nicely (you did do this, right?), Face Raiders is able to animate the faces, adding various expressions to them, most of them downright hilarious. It's a small detail, but this game is made up of many small details, all of which combine to make a very polished whole.


This is what happens when you use a mirror to play Face Raiders.
Face Raiders itself is an arcade-like shooter of sorts, where you fight off waves of incoming enemies before facing off with a boss in one of its four main stages. There are also a couple of bonus stages where you have to keep juggling enemies without letting them drop off the screen, etc., as well as some shorter stages that fall under the heading "Show a Friend!" High scores are saved for all of the stages, albeit only locally; there are no online leaderboards or anything fancy like that. However, Face Raiders does utilize many of the major new features of the 3DS.

First, Face Raiders uses the two outward facing cameras of the 3DS to inject your surroundings into the game as the background, in real-time. I'm not sure if this technically qualifies as AR, as it is used only for the background and not incorporated into the gameplay, but it is still super interesting to play a game where your in-game environment mirrors your real life environment. And there is some visual interaction; the enemies in the game will burst holes into the background, turning your "reality" into a shattered world. This looks very, very cool. It also uses these cameras to "capture", in real-time, any faces that it detects in your background, pulling them into the game as well. I'm not sure exactly what kind of face detection software Nintendo is using, but it works remarkably well, and despite the fact that Face Raiders is requiring you to constantly be moving around, it captures faces without motion blur.


Props to the first person who knows what game this guy is from!
Second, Face Raiders uses the gyroscopes of the 3DS to control your aiming reticule, and it forces you to really move. In most stages you're constantly moving the 3DS around to hunt down enemies, at certain points even having to point it behind you, or at the ceiling. This is very reminiscent to me of some of the things that Wario Ware Twisted! did with its gyroscopes, which I found very compelling at the time, and still find very compelling. Of course, it means that if you are trying to play Face Raiders out in public, you might look a bit like a fool, but whether you want to risk that is up to your own discretion. It might actually be worth it to capture the face of a surprised viewer.

What else? Face Raiders can be played in true 3D, of course. It is, admittedly, difficult to keep the sweet spot while moving around to fight off the faces, so I generally turn the 3D down pretty low for this game. But it's worth not turning it off completely, if only to see the pieces of your environment flying at you when the enemies burst through reality, or the silly expressions on your loved ones in full 3D. Face Raiders will also let you take pictures in game to save to your general photo collection on your 3DS, and you can do the reverse, as the game has a mechanic for searching out faces in photos you have taken with your 3DS camera and automatically importing them into your face collection, which, of course, makes them appear as enemies in the game. Is that sweet or what?


Yes, that is my review text in the background of Face Raiders. WOAH.
And that's pretty much Face Raiders for you.

I feel, however, like I'm not conveying a huge part of the appeal of Face Raiders by talking about it without bringing in the context of experiencing it with your family and friends. Because, to be completely honest, if you take Face Raiders on its gameplay alone, it is a fun but ultimately limited experience that you can burn through in an hour or so. The real joy comes from sharing this unique gaming experience with others. I've played this game many times now, but I've also watched others play, and Face Raiders never fails to amuse. My nieces and nephews, for instance, were not only enjoying putting their faces into the game, but when not playing themselves, would run around waving their arms wildly to get into the background of someone else's game. People are intrigued by seeing themselves in a game, they're intrigued by seeing their environment in a game, they're intrigued by seeing how creative they can get with finding faces (or not even faces) to appear in the game, they're intrigued by playing it and seeing someone else they may or may not know pop up in the game, often with a hilarious expression. And of course, if they have any interest in the 3DS at all, they're intrigued by seeing the utilization of the special features of the 3DS like the cameras and gyroscopes. Face Raiders has something for everyone!


There is something oddly therapeutic about battling against yourself.
To come full circle here; do I really believe that Face Raiders can be the next Wii Sports? Well, maybe not quite. Whereas Wii Sports is a game with many different gameplay modes that you can play with family and friends for literally hours on end, Face Raiders doesn't have quite that level of depth and replayability. But I do believe that, like Wii Sports, it provides that initial hook which can get most anyone interested in the capabilities of the 3DS, and that it does so better than any piece of software currently available. Maybe it won't replicate what Wii Sports did for the Wii, but I think it will do a pretty good job of spreading the joy of the 3DS around nonetheless.

And it's also a pretty darn fun game to boot. I'd probably pay five or eight bucks for a game like this. As a free, preloaded piece of software? Sold.