Pokémon Link (Nintendo DS) Review

First up, this game is aimed very much at a younger market, the whole feel of the title is of simplicity, bright colours and dialogue that makes you want to attack Pikachu with a large pair of tweezers. However, we have to commend Genius Sonority on the graphical direction. Unlike every other Pokémon game before it, here the animation styling is not traditional Japanese Animé, it is a sort of American hybrid style that works fantastically well. Think Power Puff Girls but less annoying.

The puzzle idea itself is rather ingenious, even if the plot isn’t. As secret agent Lucy Fleetfoot, you have to infiltrate the workings of the evil Phobos Battalion, and using your magical little Link device, you have to scan the stolen pokeballs back to safety. The catch is this; you have to line up the pokeballs into matching groups of four, only then is their ‘signal’ strong enough to ‘transmit’ them to safety. Basically, Connect 4 with small animals in balls. The ‘Link’ idea goes further than that though, when you line up four, there is a time-slot that follows where groups of two and three from all over the screen will also disappear to safety. It’s sort of like a chain reaction.

What we like best about this game is the way it is implemented on the DS. As we said earlier on, puzzle games are ideally suited to this console when done well, and few have been done better than this. To control the game you need nothing more than your trusty stylus and a very quick and perceptive mind. In order to move the pokeballs about on the screen you have to shift the entire row that pokeball lies on. You can move them up, down, left and right, if you move them off the bottom of the screen they drop back down from the top, which is a nice touch. Pokeballs continually fall until you have completed your mission, which can make for some VERY frantic gameplay. In a similar vein to Tetris, if you allow both screens to fill up with pokeballs so no more can fall down, the lose.

The gaming experience is terrifically satisfying, take note though, this is one tough cookie of a game. The secret to clearing the harder levels (and they do get very tough as the game moves on) is staying in the ‘Link chain’, as we mentioned earlier, sending off one row of pokeballs triggers a chain reaction where any alignments of two or three also leave the screen, this means that maintaining the ‘Link chain’ is imperative if you are to keep up with the lightening pace of this title. Seeing ‘balls flying off the screen all over the place as you frantically move around the screen with your stylus is wonderfully satisfying and totally reliant on your own skill and speed of thought.

The game is split up into two single player modes, adventure and endless. Adventure where all the action is at, as the hugely contrived and often tedious story unfolds before you as you move about a map battling bosses and collecting pokeballs. Sadly, this mode is disappointingly short, and is only really given justice in the unlockable (and fiendishly difficult) hard mode. Our main complaint would have to come in the form of the bosses, who posses some very irritating ‘powers’, such as continually increasing the number of pokeballs left to collect to fifty every time you reach thirty, thus maintaining a massive ‘Link chain’ is essential; otherwise you’ll be playing forever, we kid you not. Endless mode does exactly what it says on the tin, it never ends, sadly the enjoyment does end rather quickly.

The multiplayer section of the game offers some nice touches, but being the cynics we are we can’t really see it catching on. Firstly, the game only has options for two players, which is remarkably anti-sociable of it, secondly, it relies on wireless play with someone in the same room/your very local vicinity to work. Great for little kiddies who all own DS systems, but somewhat of an oversight on the developer’s part. You can beam demos and levels to your mates and ‘trade’ challenges, which is also a lovely idea. We can’t help but think that a lot more could have been made of the multiplayer functionality, like the whole game it seems rather lacking.