I don’t really understand how Game Daily has managed to stay afloat as long as it has. Its staff is exceptionally incompetent. That they’ve managed to become and continue to be a source of news and information for anyone is beyond me.
Case in point, their recent review of Pokémon Battle Revolution. While not a great game by anyone’s standard, the review manages to get some key issues completely wrong which makes me wonder if Robert Workman even played the game he was reviewing.
More inside.
“Trainers choose three (out of six) Pokemon for battle and issue commands using a menu system. From there, they have absolutely no control over their Pokemon or its direction, watching it lash out and receive damage from its opponent without lifting a finger during each turn.”
It is true that you can only select 3 out of six of your creatures for the battles, it’s been that way since the first Pokémon Stadium games on the Nintendo 64. What isn’t true is that they have no direction once you start playing. You actually choose what moves you want your team to do, either via pointing and clicking on the screen, using the Wii contoller in ‘NES Controller Mode’, or by using your DS as a controller. Building up your team and choosing the ‘perfect’ moveset to battle with has been the crux of the console extensions since their inception. In the very next paragraph, he does mention the control schemes, though how he missed that you actually have control is slightly perplexing.
“Without the DS game, Revolution lets players customize trainers, but they can’t select their own Pokemon. It seems like a bogus alterative, blatantly created to force players (or their exhausted parents) to spend another 150 bucks to get the full experience. Rip. Off.”
It’s not too big a secret that this game is meant to be an extension to the portable titles, just like the games that came before it, and all of them have been overpriced for what you get. I’m not entirely sure where the ‘another 150 bucks’ figure comes in, though. Perhaps the author is saying that to get the full enjoyment out of this game, you’ll have to buy the DS title and a DS to play it on (which, as of this writing is still $35 + $130, or $165). Though by that logic, you could just as well say that you need to spend another $300 to get the full enjoyment of the DS game ($250 for a Wii and $50 for the game), which is lunacy. Just like you don’t include the price of the DVD player with the cost of buying the latest Star Wars box set, you don’t include the price of the games with the system.
The rest of the review is, acceptably, the reviewers opinion. Fortunately, opinions can be neither right or wrong.
Link! to the review in question (GameDaily)