I recently had the opportunity to go to E for All in LA… and while I’ll have up impressions of the event later in the week, I thought I’d start out with some impressions from a game that left me surprised in a good way, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.

Let’s start out where Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin didn’t surprise me. Days of Ruin still has the fantastic battle system in place. The stylus-based control is still great. Both are streamlined from previous games, which quickens the pace of the game slightly. Units, factories, airports, and the like are all still present. It’s Advance Wars… no doubt about it. But where Advance Wars: Days of Ruin takes a departure from previous entries in the series is where it gets interesting.

If you’ve never played Advance Wars (shame on you!) here was the deal. Advance Wars USED to feature a bright, colorful world in which war was presented in the most kid-friendly way possible. Characters were anime-based, the plot was sufficiently toned-down to be kid friendly, and the action was very much in the realm of the Saturday morning. War always felt like a tactical game of play rather than an actual conflict.

Days of Ruin takes the previous formula and covers the entire thing in a heavy dose of grit and grime. Gone are the bright colors, replaced with a more subdued tones. Gone are the typical-anime style characters for more refined (although still definitely anime-inspired) animation. And, most jarring, gone is the sugar-coated storyline… replaced with a fairly engrossing post-apocalyptic world where 90% of the human race has been obliterated. The surviving 10% are trying to eek out a living on a destroyed planet Earth that reminds me a lot of Gears of War (sans the aliens). These people are living in fractured, scummy factions that most post-apocalptic societies tend to form into. The story seems to be based around protecting, fighting, and interacting with these various factions.

While some may have reservations about the change here, I must say it was really refreshing. With the anime-aeshetic gone, Advance Wars feels, well, more appropriate. Where before I’d simply cycle through the saccharine story because it didn’t really matter… now the COs and the setting has some depth.

In the short three missions I played seemed to have more story and texture than what I remember in the entirety of the previous games. In fact, I can’t remember a more “realistic” story in a Nintendo-published game in a while. The PR people I talked with on the show floor said they were working very closely with Japan in order to make sure that the maturity of the title shown through.

It should be noted that despite the reinvention of the setting, there are still some fun moments in store. In the small demo I played, one mission had you interacting with a doctor who had a knack for horrible puns. It brought it smile to my face to see some humor in what seemed to be a much more dramatic game.

In line with the more mature bent the gameplay has been toned town a bit as well. Gone are the previous dual screen battles, over-the-top CO powers are now toned down, and a couple of new units that are balanced out. Combine this with the robust online battle system Nintendo has announced, and you’ve got yourself a must-own DS title. This is truly a breath of fresh-air for the series… and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.