by Matt Bird

Created on: April 08, 2009

Personally, I was happy with 150 pokemon. The first pokedex was hard enough to fill.

Now we're at 493 of the critters. I think you've gone overboard, Nintendo.

But at least they're still fun to catch. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl don't deviate too much from the old Pokemon model - why mess with a good thing, after all? - and mostly just add on lots of new stuff to do. The most significant and obvious change is a three-dimensional Pokemon on a hand held screen: your surroundings, though still in a top-down format, are all rendered in fairly basic polygons. It's a decent update, though to be honest I would've been happier with the usual sprite-based world as the polygons tend to slow down play.

Both games come packaged with the same bare-bones story about being kind to your pokemon that the other games had. Set in the land of Sinnoh, Diamond and Pearl concentrate on the efforts of a new trainer (no surprise) fighting his way to the top (again, no surprise) against a team of miscreants bent on misusing pokemon (wow, didn't see that one coming). The plot is hardly a whopper, and mainly there to supply the trainer with pokemon in preparation for the post-game material.

Which, I think, is what most players are looking for. Most of the game will likely take place AFTER the player beats the Elite Four and the Champion, as new areas open up filled with new and rare pokemon to snag. The goal, as ever, is the same: build a powerful team to take on your friends and trade like mad to fill up your pokedex. Unlike previous games, however, there are lots of new ways to get all the species of pokemon.

My favorite is probably the Pal Park, which is basically a glorified trading system with your old GBA Pokemon games. Every day you can trade six of your past pokemon over to Diamond or Pearl for recapture in the Pal Park by plugging the corresponding game into the DS's GBA slot. Your invincible teams of old will come over with the same moves and stats they always had. Just beware one thing: once they go to Diamond and Pearl, they can never return to their old games. Think long and hard before making the fateful transfer.

In the end it's probably worth it to trade. Why? Because you'll need old school toughies to take on your friends. Computer opponents can be strong, sure, but your greatest foes will probably appear in person or online. Pearl and Diamond give you ample chances to challenge other humans, supporting WiFi combat, the traditional line-of-sight variety (though it's wireless now) or taking on human-formed teams at the game's Battle Tower. The WiFi also allows players to trade pokemon between countries, which is one of the game's greatest boons.

Yet I still have complaints about Pearl and Diamond, and almost all of them stem from the pacing. Everything seems to have slowed down. Battles take forever to transition into and get through, regardless of whether you leave their move animations on or not. Movement on the field seems slower, as well, and brief - yet frequent - loading times culminate in an experience that's just a bit too laborious for my tastes.

But, if you're a Pokemon fan, you're going to buy these new games, regardless of my complaints. Probably one, possibly both, and perhaps even all three if you want the upcoming Pokemon Platinum.

How do I know this?

Because there's new pokemon in them, of course. And regardless of the misgivings the game's mechanics may generate, the lure of new pokemon is just too irresistible.

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