Finally, after the long wait, my 3DS came yesterday. It is an amazing piece of kit. The box it arrived in is stylish. The colour scheme on the console itself is beautiful. Three shades of Aqua Blue candy paint. The analogue nub is a great addition, and third and first person action games will benefit greatly from this. The power button is in a better position and is an actual button rather than a slider now. The three buttons below the touch screen, select, home, and start, are also a great addition, making them a lot more accessible whether playing a game or not. All the other buttons also feel a lot more refined, and sturdier. The touch screen itself has been vastly improved from its predecessor, which I always found sluggish and a bit of a chore on certain games, this new touch screen is very fluent and requires no effort at all, no more pressing down hard just so the touch screen recognises you. The Nintendo 3DS Camera and Nintendo 3DS sound are nice little apps to have included. The Mii Maker is a lot better suited to this console than the Wii, with the Mii's being used for a greater range of games than they were on the Wii, even the ones built into the console itself. The Mii Plaza is used to a greater extent by this new console, StreetPass Mii Plaza makes great use of StreetPass feature which I will give a more extensive test on this coming Monday. The Mii Plaza has two great games which require you to pass other 3DS owners in the outside world, which brings a whole new meaning to portable gaming. The augmented Reality Games are also a fantastic feature, containing many minigames to show off just a few of the 3DS's capabilities. Face Raiders is one of the best games included, and is hilarious when you see it in action, the game actually made me smile while I was playing, giving some credibility to Nintendo's commercials for the Wii, they just used the wrong console. The activity log holds some more weight and more intuitive than the similar app they used with the Wii Sports, tracking not only your top played games, and how long you've played each of them, but also tracking your total hours played on the 3DS, which days you recently played the 3DS, and how many steps you took, as well as what days you brought your 3DS out with you. Notifications are nice way of using just one of the many features with StreetPass. The Game Notes app could bode useful, with certain games. The Friends List is also a nice feature, hinting that Nintendo were too safe with their previous consoles and have learnt the error of their ways, they catered for the casual gamers, but with their main target audience (Children) not being able to play this, they had to target the Hardcore (Yes!), and they're coping well, so far. With the Internet Browser, and Ninetendo 3 eShop still to come, as well as more, I'd say Nintendo are onto a winner. At Last. Ghost Recon Shadow Wars is a nice starting game, and shows off that Turn-Based Stratagy games will be a lot more suited to this new console, with its predecessors not holding up nearly as well as this one. Ghost Recon SW is a great starting game, in my opinion. I like the series as a Turn-Based Strategy game more

P.S. This blog would have been up yesterday, but my Notebook glitched, crashed, and my previous blog was wiped from the page.