Kotaku recently posted a hands on preview of the upcoming Advance Wars game from Nintendo, having played three chapters of the game.

It seems like it’s going to be a worthy successor to one of the best DS games, and this time Intelligent Systems and Nintendo seem to have acknowledged the game’s much bigger Western audience relative to its Japanese one and made the war plot more serious and realistic. The art style, while still cartoony is darker and a little more in keeping with a game about blowing your enemies up.

Of special interest to this game is the new Wi-fi Connection features: yes, online battles are in, including voice chat! An even more interesting feature, for my money, is the map sharing component in which you can upload your map designs, and rate and download others.