Pokemon Diamond for DS

Overview:
I have bee a fan of the pokemon game franchise since pokemon red and blue came out. So naturally, I had to get Diamond and Pearl. The graphics were amazing! But other than that and the new touch screen abilities, this installment has nothing new.

Graphics:
Wow, I was blown away with the way Nintendo made the landscape look, it really felt like I was looking down on this character's story. Gone are the days of buildings that look like the front are parallel to the ground. In Diamond, they gave the buildings and rocks, and trees depth. For instance, If I passed a building while I was running up, once The building got to the bottom of the screen, I could see more of the top and a little of the back. The only disappointment in this was the the pokemon sprites were still 2D pictures. 3D pokemon would really bring the game to life.

Audio:
The sound was fantastic. The moves and yells and cries of the pokemon sound real and different. Even when you're battling, and when the other pokemon appears, the roar only sounds on one speaker. (you can really hear this with headphones on) But one thing we can really apprieciate is the music. Gone are the days of 1 tone harpsichords (or whatever that was back in the yellow age) playing out all the music. Now I can hear guitars, flutes, trumpets, violins and other instruments in the mix, with no harpsichord in sight.

Gameplay:
I could tell that Nintendo was striving for simplicity for controls with the touch screen. And the hit it in some spots, and missed in others. Sometimes cycling through options with the touch screen can get a little crude. But battle and accessing the map is so much easier. Now, during just normal gamepay, no battles, the touch screen only functions as a tool/watch thing. It allows you to see the time, see the map, see what pokemon in your party like you, see how your pokemon are doing in the daycare (thank goodness, I hated to keep going back to that old lady in the daycare and ask over and over how strong they were back in the older games) all with one touch of the screen. Battle mechanics are the same, with some new stuff mixed in for a better experience. New pokemon are always what catches people's attention, and they made this one no different. Over 100 new ones give it a nice new feel, and that's why people keep buying more games. One nice little branch of the game is the Underground. It's a place where you go into a rocky map that's underneath the Sinnoh reigon. There you can mine for things like stones (water stones, fire stones, etc.), orbs to trade in for items for you're secret base, and now, fossils. No more of looking through caves only to find out that you can take only one. Then you have to trade with other games to get the other one and all that junk. Well, no more of that, in theory, you could get 12 of the same fossil if you mine long enough(I should know, I'm at 9) And another nice aspect is, on rare occasions, you can dig up fossils from past games as well, all the fossils from all the games are available in the underground, and it makes finding them so much easier.

Story:
Well, the story didn't impress me. It was boring, and there was no real controversy. It was full of the, you know, you meet guy, guy acts like you're friend, guy betrays you to gain control over the legendary pokemon that's in the game. All the same stuff. And the ending was really anti-climatic to me. I mean the Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald was a great story-line. With the thing about the two legendaries fighting each other and the world's weather was starting to act up and potentially destroy the world, that was fun. Diamond's story was really boring and had no climatic build up.

Online:
The GTS (Global Trading Station) was a huge leap in online abilities. I traded with a guy in Japan once. The way they set it up was very clever. What you do is that you kind of put it up for trade, and when other people want a pokemon that you put up, when they search it, yours will come up, and he can read ho strong he is, want you want in return, how strong you want the one you want to be, and what gender you want it. Once you log back in, and somebody has traded with you, as soon as you log in, that pokemon will be traded to you. Battle was nice but could have been executed better. The search feature was crudely done, and it took forever to find somebody to Battle.

Closing Comments:
Pokemon Diamond is a good game that Pokemon fans and normal gamers will love. But players familier to the older games will find that they developers didn't strive for a revolutionary game. Nintendo could have struck harder.