Welcome to a "review" (as some would call it) by Me. This review combines the 3 Bs: Boring, Biased, Bad.
B as a letter grade is good (and everyone else's review on the topic is bad for being biased in the other direction), so really it is Good. Honest!
Just out of curiosity, I managed to play around with that Pokemon Diamond (for the DS) today. It didn't take long, though, to realize: They're wasting a golden opportunity. Gamefreak is going with one great idea from about 10 years ago, and they are taking it nowhere in the realm of video games. They have put it on 4 different handhelds now (Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS), and probably the most significant enhancement the poor game has seen is the addition of colour. A new Pokemon game is more like an update to an operating system: Nothing has changed except for compatibility, and maybe a few bonus features because the developers felt like it and deemed the addition safe (worth the risk of breaking compatibility). The only difference is it cost you as much to update as the first version.
Oh, they added more Pokemons did they? At what expense? There are lots of games out there - MMORPGs especially - that pride themselves on stuff like "19 races! 1451 Spells! 15812 Items! 672971951 Rooms!". Does that make the game better? No. If anything it makes the game worse because they just spent their entire budget on content.
I hoped that, after all these years, someone at Gamefreak would have figured this out.
What really baffles me about that is not their blatant ignorance of the importance of having an actual game to hold the content, but how even with all that damned content I can hardly tell it's there!
This game world is lifeless. It looks as though nothing inhabits the game except midget-sized humans, which is exactly the opposite of what they want to get across. Again, that isn't helped by how the controls feel like I'm moving a tank. If they at least want this game to show some kind of life, they could give it, hm, 8-directional controls like everything else, or at least make the controls feel more responsive. This game still reacts like I'm on an original game boy, with snail walking (minus smooth corners), snappy movement (tiles done wrong), (to hell with metaphors) and stupidly slow menus. I swear, just flipping through the beginning without reading anything (skipping through all the dialogue) takes 5 minutes.
With this system (let's compare the specs to the original game boy, for which the gameplay was designed, hm?), the Pokemon could potentially be visible from overhead at all times. It would take some imagination, but with a bit of inventiveness it could really create some neat, fresh gameplay for the DS. I'm thinking simple turn based strategy elements beyond just "What move do you want now?" (which is a gameplay element older than 10 years)... maybe managing multiple Pokemon at once. Perhaps the battle scenes could be done from the same perspective, seamlessly transitioned from the regular world view (zoomed in, of course); they could get away with those detail-less battle scenes and have everything look like it is happening where you were instead of in some strange white room.
That was pretty random. Anyway, they could try just something -- ANYTHING -- that isn't the same as 10 years ago, hm?
There must be at least one big thing for the DS, right? Well, the world is 3Dish now (depressing, actually; they put a pile of effort to make it look like software for a system that has half the capabilities). I will give it this: The graphics this time round offer some more crisp visuals, a nice day / night cycle (very smooth!) and lots of little graphical details that go a long way.
They made use of the two screens: The 2nd screen has this really cool blue colour on it for the entire first part of the game (apparently later shows information in a way that, again, tries hard to look old - monochrome TI83-esque display but with a backlight - and turns out worse). It really just sits there, draining your battery. If they simply turned that screen off, the game would live for longer and they could push sales that way! No, no. They didn't. Does dialog appear there (so that it can be displayed on more than 2 lines)? Menus? Of course not! What do you think they are? Rocket scientists?!
...Oh, and they have online wireless multiplayer. Well, no, they don't. These guys clearly hate Nintendo's online service, so they want it to look as bad as possible by exaggerating the already irritating Friend Codes system. If you want to play online, 'with anyone, anywhere, any time,' (the advantage of online play, no?) you must: Know that person, be able to contact that person to trade friend codes, and both be online looking to play at the same time. What idiot killed that feature? This game is perfect for anonymous online play!
Speaking of locked down, I should mention another really cool feature that is completely fresh on this platform. If you own the GBA Pokemon games, you can put them in your DS's slot 2 and have your old Pokemon beamed up to Pokemon Diamond in slot 1. That happens with a lot of games (Advance Wars, for example), but this one is one of the most adventurous doings yet. The most adventurous part is how they gathered the willpower to simultaneously shoot themselves in the foot. Okay, you can transfer your characters from the old game, but only when it doesn't matter. That is, you must first reach the grand finale (beating the elite 4, again, as usual... speaking of stagnation), and only then can you transfer your data from the old game. Spectacularly, it even empties the GBA game's data as well, so if you ever wanted to pull it out again since there's really no difference between the two... you have to start again. That's almost a favour, though, since the content in these games (rich though it claims to be by its enormous numbers) kind of disappears after the first 6 hours of gameplay. The 'world to explore' is made up of characters that spend their entire existence standing in one place and saying one line. At least for the first few hours they will make some scripted movements which appear as though someone put an effort into creating a story. (Don't worry, your hopes for some kind of intrigue won't be dashed for a while yet).
There is a lesson here: If you are going to spend 10 years toting the exact same franchise as the one game you develop, at least let it grow! Pokemon pushed the edges of the Game Boy; it did something that was very advanced for such simple hardware. Why can't it do the same for the DS?
Times change, sales drop, ideas get old. How do you fix it? New ideas. Don't worry, you can keep the franchise.
B as a letter grade is good (and everyone else's review on the topic is bad for being biased in the other direction), so really it is Good. Honest!
Just out of curiosity, I managed to play around with that Pokemon Diamond (for the DS) today. It didn't take long, though, to realize: They're wasting a golden opportunity. Gamefreak is going with one great idea from about 10 years ago, and they are taking it nowhere in the realm of video games. They have put it on 4 different handhelds now (Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS), and probably the most significant enhancement the poor game has seen is the addition of colour. A new Pokemon game is more like an update to an operating system: Nothing has changed except for compatibility, and maybe a few bonus features because the developers felt like it and deemed the addition safe (worth the risk of breaking compatibility). The only difference is it cost you as much to update as the first version.
Oh, they added more Pokemons did they? At what expense? There are lots of games out there - MMORPGs especially - that pride themselves on stuff like "19 races! 1451 Spells! 15812 Items! 672971951 Rooms!". Does that make the game better? No. If anything it makes the game worse because they just spent their entire budget on content.
I hoped that, after all these years, someone at Gamefreak would have figured this out.
What really baffles me about that is not their blatant ignorance of the importance of having an actual game to hold the content, but how even with all that damned content I can hardly tell it's there!
This game world is lifeless. It looks as though nothing inhabits the game except midget-sized humans, which is exactly the opposite of what they want to get across. Again, that isn't helped by how the controls feel like I'm moving a tank. If they at least want this game to show some kind of life, they could give it, hm, 8-directional controls like everything else, or at least make the controls feel more responsive. This game still reacts like I'm on an original game boy, with snail walking (minus smooth corners), snappy movement (tiles done wrong), (to hell with metaphors) and stupidly slow menus. I swear, just flipping through the beginning without reading anything (skipping through all the dialogue) takes 5 minutes.
With this system (let's compare the specs to the original game boy, for which the gameplay was designed, hm?), the Pokemon could potentially be visible from overhead at all times. It would take some imagination, but with a bit of inventiveness it could really create some neat, fresh gameplay for the DS. I'm thinking simple turn based strategy elements beyond just "What move do you want now?" (which is a gameplay element older than 10 years)... maybe managing multiple Pokemon at once. Perhaps the battle scenes could be done from the same perspective, seamlessly transitioned from the regular world view (zoomed in, of course); they could get away with those detail-less battle scenes and have everything look like it is happening where you were instead of in some strange white room.
That was pretty random. Anyway, they could try just something -- ANYTHING -- that isn't the same as 10 years ago, hm?
There must be at least one big thing for the DS, right? Well, the world is 3Dish now (depressing, actually; they put a pile of effort to make it look like software for a system that has half the capabilities). I will give it this: The graphics this time round offer some more crisp visuals, a nice day / night cycle (very smooth!) and lots of little graphical details that go a long way.
They made use of the two screens: The 2nd screen has this really cool blue colour on it for the entire first part of the game (apparently later shows information in a way that, again, tries hard to look old - monochrome TI83-esque display but with a backlight - and turns out worse). It really just sits there, draining your battery. If they simply turned that screen off, the game would live for longer and they could push sales that way! No, no. They didn't. Does dialog appear there (so that it can be displayed on more than 2 lines)? Menus? Of course not! What do you think they are? Rocket scientists?!
...Oh, and they have online wireless multiplayer. Well, no, they don't. These guys clearly hate Nintendo's online service, so they want it to look as bad as possible by exaggerating the already irritating Friend Codes system. If you want to play online, 'with anyone, anywhere, any time,' (the advantage of online play, no?) you must: Know that person, be able to contact that person to trade friend codes, and both be online looking to play at the same time. What idiot killed that feature? This game is perfect for anonymous online play!
Speaking of locked down, I should mention another really cool feature that is completely fresh on this platform. If you own the GBA Pokemon games, you can put them in your DS's slot 2 and have your old Pokemon beamed up to Pokemon Diamond in slot 1. That happens with a lot of games (Advance Wars, for example), but this one is one of the most adventurous doings yet. The most adventurous part is how they gathered the willpower to simultaneously shoot themselves in the foot. Okay, you can transfer your characters from the old game, but only when it doesn't matter. That is, you must first reach the grand finale (beating the elite 4, again, as usual... speaking of stagnation), and only then can you transfer your data from the old game. Spectacularly, it even empties the GBA game's data as well, so if you ever wanted to pull it out again since there's really no difference between the two... you have to start again. That's almost a favour, though, since the content in these games (rich though it claims to be by its enormous numbers) kind of disappears after the first 6 hours of gameplay. The 'world to explore' is made up of characters that spend their entire existence standing in one place and saying one line. At least for the first few hours they will make some scripted movements which appear as though someone put an effort into creating a story. (Don't worry, your hopes for some kind of intrigue won't be dashed for a while yet).
There is a lesson here: If you are going to spend 10 years toting the exact same franchise as the one game you develop, at least let it grow! Pokemon pushed the edges of the Game Boy; it did something that was very advanced for such simple hardware. Why can't it do the same for the DS?
Times change, sales drop, ideas get old. How do you fix it? New ideas. Don't worry, you can keep the franchise.