Morning folks. Now, bear with me a second here as I need to ask you chaps a question (it’s got nothing to do with Maths or Physics, so don’t worry). If I were to knock up this review using copied and pasted segments from my other reviews to hold it together, you’d feel it was a bit of a cheat, right? Randomly sliding phrases like ‘about as fun as slamming your head repeatedly in the fridge door’ and ‘skittering about like a crab on acid’ might be slightly amusing, but once you’d realised that you’d seen them before part of the charm would wear off. Heck, it probably did as soon as you read them. As a games reviewer, finding new or unique ways to tackle various reviews is part of the job.

This makes it all the more ironic that I find myself reviewing Pokémon Diamond and Pearl this morning, as if there was ever one series that has built itself on microscopic improvements, this would be it. Now don’t get me wrong here; the Pokémon games I have played (about 8 of them throughout the years) have all be entertaining, well-produced and jam packed full of the kind of grin-inducing Nintendo charm we’ve all come to look upon with puppy eyes since we were little. Trouble is, as soon as you fire whichever game you bought up (you’ll need both for the complete experience kids, so start saving the pocket money) you will instantly get pangs of familiarity if you’ve even had a passing acquaintance with any of the previous Pokémon games.

For the sake of keeping the wheels greased or to give a little info to those new to the series, I’ll expand a little on what each game will see you doing. You start the adventure by selecting your name and sex, and pretty much right away you’re dumped into the classic top-down view and prompted to start your adventure. To cut to the long and short of the matter, your character goes on a walk with his best chum into some woods, whereupon they discover a discarded suitcase containing three Poke balls. Suddenly they’re attacked by some wild Pokémon and are forced to pick one each, and so the bigger adventure is initiated. Your chosen Poke ball occupant is gifted to you, and you are asked to wander around the land of Sinnoh completing a Pokedex (an index of the various species) for a slightly nutty professor by catching as many wild Pokémon as you can and then battling them against other trainers and wild species to add to their abilities and strengthen them. All the while, the main storyline of the game proceeds along as you get to new towns and areas, with progression to otherwise unreachable locations being granted as a reward for beating one of eight gym leaders in a battle. It’s kind of like Final Fantasy meeting Zelda in a pub and going home with a bunch of strange animals.

As I said before, this is not only vaguely familiar to Pokémon games of the past; it’s practically identical in every way. I mean, come on – how about a story about a wild Pokémon crash-landing in your house or something? An adventure across whichever world you’re in to return it to its parents? Heck, I don’t know, but anything different would make a welcome change. With all the creative bods at Game Freak and Nintendo beavering away for hours a day a little innovation isn’t too much to ask, surely? It’s not that what’s there is bad or in any way offensive to the senses; the problem is that it just feels recycled.

The story itself should keep you going for 30 or so hours (more if you’re obsessive about collecting and levelling your beasties as much as possible to ease your progress), and will see you coming across a wide range of familiar and brand new creatures to safely file away in your Pokémon deposit account. People with a soft spot for Snorlax (let’s face it, that means everyone), Geodude (perhaps not so many) or Zubat (erm, anybody?) will no doubt be pleased to come across them as they travel around, and some of the original species now have a different evolution stage added in. On top of this, there’s a plethora of whacky new creatures to come across which range from the annoyingly frequent beaver Bidoof and pigeon Starly to the frankly brilliant Chimchar and hilarious Hippopotas. Catching them all will take you a good while and, as mentioned before, you will need the corresponding version to your own to complete your Pokedex.

This is made a little easier and a whole lot more fun this time around with the addition of a number of online Wi-Fi modes for you to partake in with the community. You can select to battle other people worldwide, play a selection of mini games or post up a potential trade offer for people to consider, and although the system is currently a bit hit-and-miss due to some rather optimistic auctions (one Zubat for one Palkia? No tah!), but the general swing of things cuts out the frustration of being unable to advance your collection if none of your friends are into the series. Also chucked into the mix is the surprisingly efficient chat option first used in Metroid Prime: Hunters, which allows the more sociable of breeders to natter on about all things in the world of Sinnoh from the comfort of their own loo or living room chair.

Other new additions to gameplay are less obvious. The touch screen, which you’d perhaps have expected to prompt the biggest change in the handheld series to date, actually ends up just being used as a shortcut for navigating around the standard menus. Walking around Sinnoh still requires use of the D-Pad, and apart from the odd mini game you can practically keep the stylus stored away should you wish. The dual screens are divided between the classic viewpoint for navigation on the top and the Pokeatch (Pokémon Watch) on the bottom, which in effect is basically a glorified PDA and offers a clock, a pedometer, a calculator and a notepad which you can cycle through to your heart’s content. Handy, perhaps, but hardly anything worth shouting from the rooftops about.

Which leads us to the quandary of assigning a score. In terms of offline content, Diamond and Pearl are depressingly familiar to previous titles in the series, and it’s something that, whilst the majority could happily ignore given how enjoyable proceedings still remain, I can’t. I tried, I promise, but having to go through an identikit storyline for the seventh of eighth time did drag and did affect my enjoyment. People level that other Nintendo series such as Zelda or Mario rely to a degree on repeated elements throughout their various iterations and to a degree that is correct, but in both their cases at least there’s new items, levels and a storyline to give a slightly fresh edge. With Diamond and Pearl you’ll be doing the same things amidst the same structure as you did with previous titles, and when you realise that progression at most points is exactly the same as in previous titles (getting the first Gym badge to be able to use Rock Smash outside of combat for example) it almost gives you the impression that Game Freak are running out of ideas, or just being lazy. That’s something that, for me on a personal level, no amount of new species or colourful, well-drawn graphics can cover up.

On the other paw, the online mode has bought a new angle and opened up the possibilities of trading and human-against-human battling – i.e. the hook of the game after the storyline has been done and dusted – to everyone, even if they have no chums who own either title. Being able to chat to people on your friends list about your hugely powerful Psyduck or Misdreavus also adds that little extra to the package, and it all means you are far more likely to keep plugging away with your capturing and levelling to form a great team to go into battle with. On top of it all, it’s hard to fault the games for their presentation either. They look bright and chunky, and with the added sound capabilities of the DS there’s now some catchy hum-along tunes bumbling happily along in the background. It’s kind of like having new, extra thick delicious gravy on the exact same piece of steak you’ve been eating for the past few weeks.

Hence, I score Pokemon Diamond and Pearl with a proviso. If you’re a mega Pokémon fan and don’t mind more of the same, or perhaps you are new to the series and are looking for a decent DS game, you could quite feasibly add a point to the eight sitting at the bottom of the page here. As a starting point or entry to the series, Diamond and Pearl will serve you very well. It’s not that the games do anything wrong as such; the main issue they have is that beneath the smattering of new species, online features, upgraded graphics and fleshed-out sound, they are almost exactly identical to previous versions in terms of structure and story. Even as someone who enjoys travelling around capturing all sorts of different Pokémon it has begun to wear a little thin on me, and as such I have to say that if you’re not completely obsessed or have played a couple of the games before and become a little perturbed at the lack of perceivable differences, Diamond and Pearl will only serve to deepen those concerns. Now, more than at any other time, the main handheld series is in need of a pretty big shake-up. Fingers crossed, eh?