Pokemania

Yep, the latest installment in the highly profitable Pokemon franchise is due to hit the Nintendo DS this week. I don't expect that they will do anything to break what works in the game, mainly the need to complete one's collection of the digital critters that populate the game's landscape and cultivating the same critters to win confrontations that occur in the game. These concepts have been borrowed for use in other games. Some work well, some not so well. One of my favorites was Zoids, where you salvage parts from battles to improve your own stable of robot dinosaurs.

The core of these games is the fact that you use these creatures to fight other creatures like them. Which is all well in good, but sometimes the justification for having these fights gets downright silly. Having folks compete in sporting competitions makes sense, but to use the exact same mechanic to deal with people threatening you doesn't. In pokemon world, when a nasty villain attacks you, both parties resolve their dispute in a gentlemanly way by letting their surrogates fight for them and abiding by the results of the combat. Indeed, in Custom Robo Arena, there appear to be gangs of thugs who use robots to rob people, and the only way to defend oneself is to have your robot fight theirs. If your robot wins, the thug slinks away. Doesn't occur to anyone in these games to take the direct approach? I mean, if someone attacks you and you've got a fire-breathing dragon in your pocket, wouldn't you use it against the attacker? But I'm rambling.

More dangerous than a cell phone!

I want to just go on record as saying that I have never played Puzzlequest while driving. Though I've been tempted once or twice. While I was in the middle of the quest, it was unbelievable the pull that game had as I kept trying to finish the various quests in order to make my character strong enough to defeat the big villain. But now that I've finished the game, it doesn't seem to have the same pull for me. Sure, there are still a few side quests left to do, but the reward for completing the quests is no longer necessary. Who knows, maybe I'll start a new game just to see what happens when I do things differently.

But in the meantime, I've got another game to keep me occupied, Custom Robo Arena. It's a game where you have bipedal robots fight each other with a wide array of customizable attachments. True, these robots are only a few inches high and they fight in holographic arenas, but hey, it's still fighting robots - in 3D. Leaping and blasting are this game's main draw. It's got a story, but really, it's all about the fighting robots. Check it out.