It's no secret that Nintendo hasn't made life easy for gamers who like to engage in multiplayer competition. Their reliance on Friend Codes can be problematic and frustrating, leading many to give up on the endeavour altogether. While game boxes that support multiplayer usually have a WFC logo clearly visible, this logo is still no guarantee of true multiplayer. WFC can simply mean you'll have access to downloadable content, which is great and all, but not what most players expect. With that in mind, I've made a little list of some true multiplayer games that will hook you up with players all over the world without the necessity for Friend Codes. These games will instantly throw you into battle or competition with no muss or fuss, enabling you to school faceless people with your l33t skillz, which is how God intended it.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

While you won't find any head-to-head action in Portrait of Ruin, you'll still find an enjoyable co-op mode that hooks you up with a random player. Instead of playing through the game normally, you'll engage in a Boss Rush using characters you've unlocked in single-player mode. Another nice feature is the ability to sell any items you've discovered in single-player, which can net you some nice money with the added benefit of not actually losing the item in question.

Custom Robo Arena

Perhaps the purest multiplayer combat game available for the DS, Custom Robo Arena is an excellent game that finds you engaging in deathmatches in a variety of arenas, using a robot you've lovingly built from scratch. While you may breeze through the single player game and think you're hot stuff, multiplayer will undoubtedly humble you as you face off against people who are l33tier than you. Considering the fast-pace of the action and the split-second timing required, Custom Robo Arena shows no signs of lag and every match I've tried has been a very smooth, and enjoyable, experience.

Mario Kart DS

Mario Kart DS features excellent online play that pits 4 randomly selected players against one another. It has a few nice features that are pretty cool, such as the ability for players to vote on a track from a list of twenty. Another nice feature is that the game saves your online win/loss record and displays this information to other players, so they can have a pretty good idea if they are about to get slaughtered or not. Disconnecting from a race is punished by issuing the offending player a loss equal to the number of players who were playing, so the fine is stiff indeed.

Metroid Prime Hunters

Metroid Prime Hunters features the most robust lineup of multiplayer features of any DS game, even offering stat tracking and voice-chat (with friend codes). Game modes include Battle, Survival, Capture-the-Flag, King of the Hill, Nodes, Prime Hunter and Bounty. The stat tracking is pretty cool, as it records such data as ranking, favorite hunter, win/loss record, connection history, play time, win ratio, longest winning streak, longest kill streak, favorite weapon and even the number of headshot kills you've successfully pulled off. You can even go to the Nintendo website and and keep track of your stats there, which is a nice feature.

Planet Puzzle League

The DS has no shortage of puzzle games and it's the one genre that tends to get more WiFi love than any other, though none has done it better than Planet Puzzle League. Two players are randomly linked together where they can play against each other using several different modes, including Free Play Battle, Novice Battle and Birthday Battle, which allows you to play with people who share the same date of birth. Novice battle is great for new players as you'll play against your fellow newbies without the risk of getting totally owned. Fortunately, Novice Mode becomes unavailable after you've met specific requirements, meaning that skilled vultures won't be lurking in the Novice area ready to pounce on a bunch of newbs.

While it's doubtful Nintendo will ever budge from the Friend Code concept, it's nice to see more and more games being released that randomly pit players against one another for a quick fix of multiplayer action. All we need now is some consistency as to which titles support this, as right now it just seems hit-and-miss. I think we're all in agreement that Puzzle Quest is begging for multiplayer and why we're not all shooting at each other in Brothers in Arms is beyond me.