here are two types of DS games. The first (and better) type manages to use the DS’s touch screen to simplify and streamline familiar gameplay activities, while at the same time adding new, unique elements that could have never been possible without the system’s technology. The second kind takes genres that we’ve all played for years, and then tacks on ill-fitting, gimmicky control schemes for the sake of saying that it has “groundbreaking” touch-screen elements.

It becomes apparent fairly quickly that Mario Hoops 3-on-3 falls into the latter category. Completely eschewing the DS’s face buttons, all your moves (with the exception of court movement, which is still mapped to the d-pad) are done with the stylus. To shoot you quickly swipe up; passing is done by quickly gesturing towards a teammate; blocking is down, etc. For the first 15 minutes, while you’re still learning, it’s sort of engaging. Then, as you progress through the tournament, you begin to realize that all this “innovation” only serves to make things that – in a normal basketball game – would be completely easy much sloppier than they ought to be. Given the amount of things you have to do with it – passing, shooting, blocking, dunking, even positioning your dribble – it starts to resemble complete chaos.

I don’t doubt that the DS can be a good system for sports, but I really don’t think this is the way to go about it. At this point, I’d advise Square Enix (which, surprisingly, developed this game) to stick to the RPG genre until they have a better grasp of the fundamentals of video game basketball.