Dinosaur King (DS) Review
Dinosaur King (DK) is essentially a Pokemon game in disguise. Whilst DK has a few ideas of its own, it doesn’t take much time with the game to realise that it is heavily influenced by the incredibly popular Pokemon series that has seen several releases on Nintendo’s handheld consoles. Unfortunately, despite the similarities between DK and Pokemon, DK falls a little short of the quality exuded by the Pokemon titles. Continue after the jump to find out why DK is simply a poor man’s Pokemon.
DK is based on a trading card game and an anime cartoon of the same name. The game involves a group called the D-Team, who have a love for all things Dinosaur. Within the D-Team are two young boys called Max and Rex; strong-willed lads who have a passion for Dinosaurs and are basically DK’s version of Ash from the Pokemon anime series. In any case, the D-Team discover mysterious stones which have the power to summon extinct dinosaurs. The team combines the stones to create a DinoShot, the tool which ultimately allows for the resurrection of Dinosaurs. Unfortunately for them, an evil gang dubbed the Alpha Gang, led by Dr Z, have caught wind of the DinoShot and steal one of the DinoShots. With the power to raise Dinosaurs, the Alpha Gang bring to life a number of Dinosaurs, including a T-rex. With the DinoShot in hand, plus a number of menacing Dinosaurs, the Alpha Gang set out to wreak havoc on the world. It then becomes the duty of Max and Rex to save the day. Also equipped with a DinoShot, Rex and Max must raise an army of Dinosaurs that can battle the members of Alpha Gang whilst retrieving the stolen DinoShot from the Alpha Gang.
At the beginning of the game, you need to make a choice of whether you will use Rex or Max throughout the game. The key difference between the two characters is which Dinosaur you will start out with. Depending on your choice, you will either get a Carnosaurus or a Triceratops. Both are equally cool dinosaurs, and you will encounter a heap of other powerful dinosaurs along the journey, so it really doesn’t matter which player you complete the game with. Regardless of your choice, the entire game basically follows the Pokemon format in that you will visit various towns and areas talking to the many NPC’s whilst all along battling members of team alpha. You will also have a choice to complete a number of side-quests, which usually involve finding an item and bringing it back to whoever was stupid enough to lose it. There is certainly nothing special about the story of the environments you visit, but the formula works well and does the job.
Two important items you will have throughout the game are a radar and a drill. Using the radar will help you find the location of hidden fossils. Once you have located a fossil, you need to use a drill to dig up the fossil. There is a limit to how many times you can use the radar before it falls flat, so you will need to keep an ample supply of batteries on hand if you intend to use it frequently. Once you have dug up the right type of fossil (some fossils are just sold for money), you take the fossil to one of the D-Team headquarters to clean it. Cleaning the fossil is a pretty unique process, though it does get tiresome after a while. What is requires is that you pick away at the fossil using the Nintendo DS stylus. You need to touch the screen to break away rock to slowly reveal the skeleton of the dinosaur. From time to time, you will also need to blow into the DS’s mic to clear away any dust that has accumulated. The key to this process is to be careful, because you only get a certain amount of ‘chips’ before the pick will break. If it breaks before enough of the dinosaur has been revealed, you will still get the dinosaur but it will be a common one. By uncovering a large percentage of the fossil, you will be more likely to get rarer, and usually much cooler, dinosaurs. As said, the process of uncovering fossils is fine initially, but after doing it a thousand times it becomes pretty annoying and more of a nuisance. It would have been nice to have the option to skip the process in favour of receiving a completely random dinosaur.
One of the major differences between DK and Pokemon is how battling works. Whilst Pokemon allows you to choose different moves and more or less is turned based, DK has taken an entirely different approach. Essentially, a battle in DK is a game of rock, paper, scissors. Attached to each of these choices if a different move, but you will only execute the move if you win the rock, paper, scissor battle. Each dinosaur will also have one move which is much stronger. So, for example, your dinosaurs special move might be the rock move. Using rock, paper, scissors as the method of battling was a strange choice. As is the nature of the game, RPS is luck based more than anything. And to make matters worse, to ‘counter’ the luck nature of RPS, Sega have decided to make the majority of enemies practically tell you what move they will use. The early part of the game is particularly boring as the majority of enemies will tell you what move they will use making your choice so, so easy. This system of battling takes away any excitement or challenge the game has. Some enemies towards the end of the game, and the boss enemies, are harder and won’t give you much to work with. However, even when this is the case, the game shifts from being too easy to frustrating as you are relying on luck to win battles. I can appreciate the fact that Sega tried to come up with a novel battle system, but this one needs a lot of tweaking before it is attempted again. I will say that the battle animations look cool, particulary with the 3D dinosaur models, but it still doesn’t make battles fun.
Aside from the flawed battle method, there is one other issue that stops DK from being a really good game, and that is the frequency at which you will enter battles. Unlike Pokemon, where you could avoid battles to some degree (e.g., not walking in grass), DK throws random dinosaurs at you every 10 seconds. It becomes incredibly annoying having to fight every 10 seconds. Sure, you can run from fights, but waiting for the battle sequence to load up before you can quit still makes the experience frustrating. Getting from point A to point B ends up being a complete chore because it takes forever due to the 300 battles you will have to endure through on the way. It also makes exploring the games various areas a pain, as you will want to just take the shortest, most direct route to avoid battles. You can buy an item that stops battles for a short amount of time, but they don’t last long and cost a heap to buy constantly. I found myself not enjoying the game because of this problem, and it’s a shame Sega did not put some more thought into the random battles.
Graphically and visually, DK is a solid affair. The game looks like a nice SNES game with its colourful sprites and top-down view. The dinosaurs (all 70+ of them) look particulary good. The music is suitable, though not particularly brilliant in any sense. There are plenty of Dinosaurs to collect and raise (aka level up) in the game, so it is sure to keep you busy if you can persist through the flawed battle method and the constant battles. In all, DK is a solid Pokemon clone that ultimately falls short due to a battle system that is more about luck than skill and the fact that you can’t go 10 seconds without being attacked. If these issues were addressed in any future DK titles, then I anticipate that it could be as good as the Pokemon series. For now though, it falls way short of such quality. It’s worth a look, but be warned that it can be frustrating.
