Pokemania.

My Pokemans. Let me show you them.

I’ve never played a Pokémon game before, nor have I had an interest in playing one. Still, being one of Nintendo’s strongest-selling franchises, it’s hard not to wonder what it is I’ve been missing. Can millions of Japanese schoolchildren really be wrong? The answer, of course, is no.

If the recent press is to be believed, Pokémon Diamond / Pokémon Pearl has what it takes to be my very first Pokémon title. With snazzed-up retro-styled graphics, new critters, wireless battles, and simple rock-paper-scissors gameplay in an RPG decidedly not for the hardcore, I think at worst this will be a short-term curiosity being satisfied by an exemplary title in the series. If it turns out to be anything more than that, all the better value for my money.

Do I have time to play another game? The answer, of course, is no. But even as I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to catch ’em all, I do at least want to catch a couple.

Nyko Charge Station

Yesterday while at Fry’s to pick up Super Paper Mario, I also snagged the Nyko Charge Station. I’ve had my eye on this for a while, but I had never actually seen it in a store until yesterday. Or, to be more specific, I had never actually looked at Wii accessories since launch until yesterday. Here are my observations.

• The rechargeable batteries have small contacts that are exposed through the back of the Wii remote to interface with the charging station. For this reason, it is necessary to use the included rubberized battery cover, which exposes the contacts via a hole.
• The rubberized grip on the battery door feels comfortable.
• There is a small groove through which the the wrist strap can be dangled while charging.
• The charger is very particular about the placement of the Wii remotes when charging, but there are helpful feedback LEDs at the bottom which show that the controller is charging (blue), fully charged (green), or not docked properly in the cradle (no light). It may take a little finesse to put the Wii remote in the cradle “just right,” but I haven’t found it to be annoying. The controller stays put once it’s in position.
• The battery charge is *REALLY* fast (under four hours if I’m not mistaken). However, the batteries may have been partially charged from the factory.
• The construction is solid, and it looks nice standing on your entertainment center.

At $29.99, the Nyko Charge Station is a good value. It gives you an attractive place to store your controllers when not in use, and it eliminates the need to buy huge packs of AA batteries to ensure uninterrupted gaming.

A Few Days with Lunar Knights

While there probably won’t be anything on Nintendo’s other console to catch my attention for another week, the Nintendo DS has no lack of entertaining new software these days. Though it was released many weeks ago, I recently decided to pick up Lunar Knights to pass the time on a recent business trip, and I’ve been very satisfied thus far.

Lunar Knights is the sequel to Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hands, the GameBoy Advance title that holds the distinction of being the only game that required direct sunlight to play. The name of the game was and still is vampire hunting, and vampires must be cleansed using direct sunlight to prevent reincarnation. Luckily this time Kojima Productions decided to ditch the solar sensor for the DS outing (though you can still use a Boktai cartridge to enhance your Lunar Knights experience), and this new story revolves around not only a sun-driven protagonist but also a mysterious vampire hunter who draws his power from the moon.

Like its predecessor, Lunar Knights employs an isometric perspective, so it is far more common to move along diagonals than along the basic directions of the control pad. The control setup can be altered to remap up on the control pad to “up and right” or “up and left,” but this proved to be too confusing for me most of the time. The only real difficulty with the default controls is that I inadvertently run when trying to move in diagonals (which wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t consume precious energy) and then have trouble running at diagonals when I want to do so. I’m also not keen on using the R shoulder button to lock on to targets since that quickly leads to hand cramps, but it’s something I’ll eventually master.

The most enjoyable part of the Lunar Knights experience so far has been the variety of gameplay. Though the main characters Lucian and Aaron have the same controls, their methods of fighting are fundamentally different. Lucian is limited to melee attacks which need not consume energy, while Aaron must use a terennial (a sprite-like elemental follower) at all times for his ranged attacks, consuming energy at all times. For this reason, while it may be tempting to fire on all enemies from afar with Aaron’s collection of solar guns, his energy will be rapidly depleted in this case, making him useless for offense. Lucian, on the other hand, can continue to slice away with his sword with or without a terennial, but the trade off is that he must place himself in harm’s way to do battle effectively. A typical stage will see the characters fighting through a dungeon to the vampire boss, who will be encased in a casket upon defeat. The game then remarkably switches to a touch-screen-only shooting affair where the casket is flown into outer space to be purified by a concentrated solar beam from a satellite in orbit around the planet. These shooting stages are a welcome break from dungeon-crawling and can provide a good bit of challenge to boot.

With crisp graphics, upbeat music, challenging dungeons, and varied gameplay, Lunar Knights will easily satisfy fans of dungeon-crawling adventures with RPG-style elements.

Hotel Dusk: The Plot Thickens

A couple of weeks ago while traveling on business, I had the opportunity to finally finish Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Generally I would write my impressions on a game before finishing it (simply because it takes me so long to finish even the easiest of games), but I wanted to be particularly sure that this game was worthy of all the praise I prepared myself to lavish onto it.

First off, Hotel Dusk only barely qualifies as a game; in fact, it is billed as an “interactive mystery novel.” Of the interaction with the game, the bulk of it (and I’m talking over 90% here) takes place in dialogue scenes between opposing characters. In a game where the characters are anything but fully fleshed out with individual personalities and idiosyncrasies, this would be a fatal mistake. Thankfully the writing in this game is truly second to none, and every character has a distinct voice despite the lack of voice acting. Scrolling through screens of text never gets boring because of the quality of the dialogue interchange, and the animated hand-drawn characters are lively and expressionate. I often found myself watching the characters’ facial expressions as text scrolled by on the screen so I could see how they really felt.

Second, the gaming elements are fairly simplistic. When not speaking to characters (or to oneself), it is most common to walk around the hotel searching for things or to interact with objects to solve simple puzzles. Like Trace Memory, these puzzles make good use of the features of the DS and often require some creative solutions. With just talking, moving around, and puzzle solving, it’s not often you’ll find yourself faced with a game over screen. However, there are a few areas of the game that can be a bit taxing if you haven’t paid close attention to the dialogue and your character’s actions up to those points. On the other hand, the game is good at steering you where you are supposed to go, and you generally get a hint as to what you did wrong just before the game over screen so that you don’t end up repeating your mistakes. The only times I really felt stuck in the game where when it wasn’t clear what to do next and I had somehow managed to not walk close enough to a “trigger point” to keep the story moving. These instances were rare.

Having qualified the game thusly, this slow-burning detective noir tale is a joy to experience from beginning to end. Aside from having well-developed characters and an intriguing plot, everything about the game screams having been designed for the Nintendo DS — from holding the system in “book pose” to scribbling handwritten notes in your memo pad with the stylus. And though very linear in nature, it will still take a number of hours to unravel the secrets of the hotel and your missing ex-partner. The end of the story is packed with unexpected twists and turns, but it never for a moment wanders into unbelievable territory.

Upon finishing the game, there were a few plotlines that weren’t tied off as neatly as I would have hoped, and the save system allows you to loop back through the game from the beginning having recorded a prior completion. I get the feeling that if I go through again that the ending might be a little more satisfying, but that will take a lot of patience now that I know everything that needs to be said and done. I think.

If you are a fan of detective stories with high quality dialogue and character development (and don’t mind slow pacing with few gaming-type elements), Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a strong buy. It will keep you busy for many hours and will probably be fun for a repeat play through as well.

The official website for Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is here.