Dinosaur King

Review from Anna - Thursday, 13 November 2008 @ 10:11am

I have the vaguest of memories of when I was a kid, beating my brother to the T-rex figurine in one of those weird museum/giftshops my family stopped in on the way to Queensland one summer (yes we drove every year. The only good thing about the petrol hike is that it’s now cheaper to fly). Tyrannosaurus Rex was the badarse mofo that beat all other dinosaurs (excusing recent studies finding otherwise… I don’t want to believe my Rex was outclassed ;__;). But the point is, I got chookarms and my brother got stuck with the herbivorous Stegosaurus (they have a new name now I think but Stegs sounds better than anything else they may have come up with). My T-Rex was awesome. It was maroon and bossed the mustard yellow Stegs around all the time.

It was around this time the Pokémon came out and made stops at abandoned museums along the Hume redundant. We had two Gameboys amongst three kids but with a copy of Red (my brother’s) and Yellow (mine – and it was so much more awesome cos you got Pikachu to follow you around and you could see him!) so my sister missed out if she didn’t bug the front seat passengers. It was fun, it passed the time and most of all, it was ever so slightly addictive. We used to have competitions to see who could reel off all 150 (and only 150) Pokémon the fastest. I’m sure we drove the front seats nuts.

The local F1

After numerous reiterations of the Pokémon series, there were of course a flood of products trying to replicate their success(such as the conceptual cousin of Dinosaur King, Mushiking, an originally GBA title only released in Japan) plus the offshoots from the franchise – such as Digimon, etc.

Fighting consists of rock paper scissors. Yes. You heard right. None of that taking turns to see who can bash the other hardest, now your turn is decided by how well you can get into the opponents head to work out what they're going to play next. To begin with, it's quite easy. The person/evildoer/robot you're fighting will give it away with “Haha, I will use my Critical Move first!” (and yet the first hour or so I was playing this I missed that due to a habit of text skipping) and then move onto the more challenging “I'm not afraid of your Critical Move”. Each action is coupled with your move card – to start, you've got basic Tail, Throw and Ram which can be upgraded to other, more devastating moves. The more powerful the move, the more move points you'll need to use on it. The MP regenerates between turns though of course, your opponent knows how far along you are for it so may just choose the move that will not be in danger of being challenged. This can be avoided later on in the game when you receive your Fourth Move. It's still one of the hand signs but a secret.

Collecting Pokémon, erm, Dinosaurs, you get search for them like a “real” paleontologist searching with your “radar” and then digging with your “drill”. Despite me never really doing much with paleontology apart from the odd kid's show, I don't think drilling is the answer for something so delicate as fossils... When you find a fossil, you can take it back to the D-lab where you'll find one of the few DS specific aspects of the game. You have to chip out the extra rock around the bones to get the skeleton that will be used to resurrect the dinosaurs but in doing so, there's all this dust so you blow to get rid of it.

And don't go poking around in the big ole chest over there that doesn't have any health potions at all!

The whole “blow” function on the DS is pretty iffy for me. It's doesn't take much to turn it into a joke, much less make you look ridiculous while doing it. The portable aspect means you're in public playing these games and generally blowing anything in public isn't seen as a good thing.

Then again, this is a kid's title. It's not supposed to make adults comfortable enough to play it in public. It's easy enough for kids with the Sim Sim Sum (did anyone else call it that, or was it just me?) in battles without getting too monotonous for older players.

The things that would sell this for kids are the same as they were for Pokémon – there's the elements of fun, time wasting and ever so slightly addictive. While not on the same level, I'd still say Dinosaur King is at least, something similar enough to keep a kid occupied on a long drive. The soundtrack isn't so annoying that it'd drive you nuts within minutes. In fact, it's pretty awesome for a game soundtrack. It keeps you entertained even when in those rare times, the game forces you to backtrack through previous areas.

I choose you!

The dinosaurs in it are real dinosaurs. When I came across the Wuerosaurus and the Irritator, I had to wiki it up to make sure. So extra points for including the educational aspects without detracting from how much fun you can get from it. There are very few educational games left that still actually remember the game part of their genre.

The game suffers from a lack of mechanics that fully utilise the DS's capabilities like most releases on the DS do. You don't need to use the stylus at all except for when cleaning up the fossils. You have to use the d-pad to move, no double tapping to send your character across the screen.

In a nut shell, if you took the awesome parts of the Jurasssic Park series (mainly being all the dinosaur scenes minus the second film's bit with the guy on the toilet being 'surprised') and then put it over a Pokémon game then you'd have Dinosaur King. It's fun, and while aimed for kids, can appeal to a few nostalgics looking for a little twist to an old favourite.

Pros

Awesome soundtrack, educational without forgetting the gaming, has the same elements as Pokémon so good for the nostalgics and those who can't/won't keep up with the 9736th mutant Pikachu.

Cons

I mentioned the Pokémon more than the actual game in this review - that says something. Stylus is practically useless.