Full Review

4 January 2008 - Pokémon rears its head once again, this time on the Nintendo Wii in the guise of Pokémon Battel Revolution, but should you bother? We get training to find out.

The game takes place on an island called Pokétopia with the objective being to become the Pokétopia Master by winning battles in 10 different Colosseums around the island.

To do so, players can use Pokémon from either a pre-selected Battle Pass or, for Pokémon fans, from their Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl games on the Nintendo DS.

If that wasn't enough, gamers will also be able to connect to the Internet and swap Battle Passes (basically a card with 6 Pokémon on it) with other players online after they've played against them.

Load it up and its Pokémon fighting action from the start with you having to compete against other trainers. Win a series of fights and you're crowned victor of that Colosseum opening up more Colosseums and allowing you to challenge more people.

With no searching or exploring to be done, the game soon becomes repetitive as fight after fight you are pitching the same Pokémon against the computer.

Worse still although the game offers two player battles, via either one or two Wii Remotes you have to earn a second Battle Passes either by completing a certain amount of the game, or by downloading via DS games, or going online. It's frustrating, because one of the key elements of this game is surely the chance to beat your mates.

If you do opt to go online then you get the chance to either connect and battle any random person looking for a fight or from a selected list of friends that you've collected (just like the Pokémon).

The online connectivity is suppose to offer you a chance to break the monotony, but also to get a chance to get more Pokémon.

Sounds great, yet in testing this game we haven't really been able to try it. We've either connected into a game and then found that the opponent has left (probably seeing we're playing with the basic set of Pokémon), or had connection issues that meant after 3 minutes of waiting we get an error message and asked to come back later.

As for the DS Nintendo link up, it works well with four players able to gather together and battle while using Pokémon from their Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl video games. While all players must use the DS as their controller in this mode.

VERDICT
Pokémon Battle isn't a game that will appeal if you haven't already got every other Pokémon title. With only Battle's (yes we know it's in the title) and a handful of Pokémon available it will soon get very boring if you can't add from previous versions.

We welcome the internet connectivity, but considering we had so much trouble connecting to use the new service we can't say that this is the games saving grace.

Disappointing unless you are a die hard Pokémon Trainer.