Pokemon Diamond and Pearl: Hands-on

So yes dear listeners, Nick Fox woke up at 7am to rush down to the local in mall video game store to get a copy of both pokemon diamond and Pearl...

For those of you living under geodudes, pokemon diamond and Pearl were released simultaniously this morning at 8am here on Long Island, and I was among the first to pick them up.

Me and my girlfriend went into to city, I got Pokemon Pearl, while she got Pokemon Diamond. We played for about 3 hours total today on the train, here is the thoughts:

First off, the graphics aren't has unhashed as I previously thought. Instead of mostly top down view, its now mostly 3/4 view, which is ok. Things like buildings and stuff look kind of three dimentional, and things are kind of pretty looking. But I can't compare the graphics to anything found in the FF3 release (those begining cut scenes.... made me speechless)

So graphics aside, here are some gameplay issues:
1) The game relies A LOT on the touchpad. Nothing fun like minigames (yet, I have hopes after reading the game booklet), but mostly touching through menus to get your pokemon to attack, or to throw a pokeball, etc.
This is ok, since you can get through all of the menus with the d-pad, but silly things like extra description menus of pokeballs and potions can get unnessesary after a few hours.
2) The pokemon - I know it's only 3 hours in... but can I get some less cute pokemon? The starting 3 pokemon are, as everyone suspects, a grass type, a fire type, and a water type. The grass type pokemon is a turtle, the water type is a penguin, and the fire type is a.... chimpanzee? of course I went with the chimpanzee, whose name happens to be CHIMCHAR! all cute as hell, including the pokemon you fight in the wild, which include both beavers and electric cat like things. Pidgey rip-off's also included.
3) WTF happened to prof oak? The loveable old man who gets you into pokemon in the first place is totally AWOL, which leaves the stage open for some other grey haired scientest. Instead of being warmly introduced into pokemon, you pretty much steal some to keep from being killed by the pidgey rip-offs, and due to the amazing impression you make on the stolen pokemon, you can't give them back. Guess this new scientest will have to recruit you and your friend into helping him know every pokemon in the world. Sounds like the begining of a pokemon collecting adventure!

The game is good so far, and color-wise, looks amazing on the DS lite. Owning a DS fat, i felt bad for myself, but my girlfriend let me look at the cool pokemon on hers. By cool, I mean colorful, not uncute. I'm still waiting for those.

so go pick up Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. I am not getting paid to say that. New pokemon, as well as old favorites like geodude and abra are around to teleport away and totally ruin your night. Uploading for firered, leafgreen, and other advance pokemon games make filling your pokedex even less nerve-wracking!

thats all for now... episode 8 will happen this weekend, we hope.

by the way, in my pokemon pearl file, i made my name tuza, and my friend is Sodoom. and of course, sodoom took the fucking strong element over my pokemon, the queer.

so long for now!
~Nick Fox and Sodoom