CUTTING CORNERS: NINTENDO 3DS

Having played the majority of the first wave of games for the Nintendo 3DS, we can say one thing for sure: The glasses-free 3-D handheld, which hits U.S. stores Sunday, will be stuck in the launch doldrums for a while.


Yes, many of the 16 games that will be available at launch prove entertaining enough. And there's a lot of fun stuff to do with the hardware, even if you don't buy a single game.


But in the rush to make it out on Day 1, developers have cut corners. Some games last only a few hours, others lack the communication features that were supposed to make 3DS games special and some are rush-job ports from other hardware. It's not that there's anything particularly bad about them; it's just clear we're going to have to wait for games that fully exploit what 3DS can do. GAMELIFE