Pokémon isn't kids' stuff. When you look past the cards, the cartoon and the Pikachu lunchboxes there's a core game that's one of the most complex and customisable around. Bar the cosmetics, it's also largely unchanged since the series' 1996 beginnings on the original Game Boy, and Pokémon Platinum is just an update of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, the games that marked the series' debut on DS almost two years ago. Chances are if you've been sucked into the phenomenon you've already played something very similar to this. So does it still work?
Course it does. It doesn't do to think of Pokémon Platinum as a 'sequel' though. This is a series that does versions - appropriately enough, it's always evolution rather than revolution. Other games with this depth usually have mile-high barriers to entry, but the quality that's always been unique to Pokémon is how accessible it is, despite its depth. The basics are simple: you are a Pokémon trainer, and carry up to six Pokémon that are used to battle other Pokémon, which are either found in the wild or controlled by other trainers. The monsters' characteristics and moves are based on a number of elements such as fire, water and grass that work much like scissors-paper-stone: fire beats grass, which beats water, which beats fire.
Those three elements really are the basics. However, there are 17 base elements, and many Pokémon are more than one 'type'. A Dragonite, for example, is both a dragon-type and a flying-type Pokémon, meaning it has access to moves from both elements, but equally is vulnerable to attacks that are effective against either.
Each monster has four moves that, as part of their levelling-up or through specific items, can be chopped and changed - and moves themselves have their own elemental properties. Simple, eh? This is how Pokémon gets you. Everything about Pokémon's battle system is designed to be instantly comprehensible, before being layered to produce seriously unpredictable results.
It's intoxicating stuff. The first time you come up against the terrifying stone snake-thing Onyx and drop him in one turn with a move called 'Water Gun' brands itself indelibly in your mind ("It's Super Effective!") and the remainder of the game is spent trying to do this exact same thing again and again - to wild Pokémon, to other trainers' Pokémon, and online against the world's Pokémon. It's perhaps the most accomplished battle system in any RPG, thanks to the combination of that infinite loop of move and counter-move and its personable menagerie of mice, dragons, bats, penguins and *cough* fridges.
That last one is worth dwelling on. It's a new form of a Pokémon called Rotom known as Frost Rotom: it's basically a fridge with eyes drawn on it. By any measure that's pretty abysmal character design, and it's indicative of one of Platinum's few problems - a problem it shares with pretty much every Pokémon game since the original. Game Freak have never quite managed to emulate the tight design of the original 151 beasties (there are 493 in Platinum) and even though there are some great new additions to the virtual bestiary there are more than a few that should have been left on the drawing board.
This is also true, to a lesser extent, of Sinnoh, the region of the Pokéworld in which Platinum is set. It's a big place, with plenty of caves, lakes, towns and forests to get lost in trying to find those elusive rare Pokémon, but at the same time it's just the tiniest bit bland. The towns have slightly different layouts and a few bits unique to each one (a casino with a basic slot game, for example, or a hall to enter beauty pageants), but they still feel like palette-swaps for the most part, and only the excellent script and a few set-pieces keep the story cracking along.
That's not to say the world's totally without charm - the soundtrack is superb, particularly when you're riding your bike and investigating the big bad Team Galactic headquarters, and most of the sprites are brilliantly drawn - but the echoes of Earthbound in its design are just that: faint reproductions.
The sense of a living, breathing world is left for the Pokémon, and luckily enough they can handle it. Almost everything you do has an impact on your charges, whether it's dressing them up, feeding them Poffins (Poké-muffins), or just taking one out for a stroll in a park. The battling is only the core of Pokémon because it's a proof-of-concept for how you've spent your time in Sinnoh, and how effectively you've trained up that Chimchar you were given as a baby 15 hours ago. And Platinum's trump card is nothing to do with Sinnoh anyway.
After completing the main quest, which will take upwards of 20 hours, the Battle Frontier returns from the GBA entries - a special zone on an island away from the mainland that reduces the game to its basics: you rent a team of Pokémon rather than using your own, and fight progressively tougher trainers. There are five variations on the types of battle (two-on-two, healing between rounds and so on) but in short you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each Pokémon inside out, as well as how to craft a balanced team. It's pared down brilliance.
As if that isn't enough, the online play is the finest there's ever been in a Pokémon game. The standard battles, trades and (relatively decent) minigames are all present and correct, but you can now enter the Battle Frontier with a friend for two-on-two fights. It's the little touches, though, that make Platinum's online magical: alerting you by email when someone has traded a Pokémon you've offered on the Global Trading System; keeping track of the place in the real world where each of your Pokémon has come from; storing your friends' records and then reporting on them through one of the game's many TV sets days later.
If you've never played a Pokémon game before, Platinum is the series' high point. Is it worth trading up if you have Diamond or Pearl? The correct answer is no, but the gut answer is yes. Even though this is 'only' a refinement of those games it's a brilliant one, from simple things like the rearranged gyms to the limitless challenge of the Battle Frontier,2 and you'll easily play through it all again without a grumble. In the simplest terms: as a game, Pokémon Platinum is huge; as an obsession, it's endless.
There's a little too much fluff here (Poffins?!) but this is one of the finest strategy games ever made, wrapped up in a shiny new package and with limitless playtime.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
