Dinosaur King DS

Rowan Brown's review of Dinosaur King. Subscribe to this column via RSS or Newsletter.

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Column:
Teen Gamer

Format:
DS

Genre:
Fighting

Written on:
01/11/2008

I took one look at the Dinosaur King game and knew it would be perfect for my cartoon-mad kid brother, so I let him play it and write this report himself, it kept him quiet for ages, which is a very good thing! Over to you little brother.

I've watched Dinosaur King on TV before so I had an idea of what to expect from the game, and knew some of the characters and the background story of the baddy, Dr Z and his Alpha gang. I played as Rex, because he's my favourite character, but you can play as Max as well.

Your base is the D-lab, and the clever people in the D-team there have invented a very special device called the Dino Shot. This is a bit like a gun, which can 'hatch' dinosaurs from cards by shooting at the cards, as well as customizing the dinos by changing their moves. It's also the tool that you use to contact the D-lab and teleport to the nearest D-site.

The baddies have taken your friend Zoe's Dino Shot, so the main mission is to go after them with your dinosaurs before they take over the world. The baddies have dinosaurs too, and you move through the worlds having dinosaur duels. Each dinosaur has a different critical move, and you choose from rock, paper or scissors in that classic battle that everyone knows. Luckily the D-lab crew or your enemy give clues to let you know what they are going to play so that you can choose your move and this makes the battles quite easy to win, really. When you win a battle against a more powerful dinosaur then your dinosaur gets stronger. I had a great battle when my dino won and went from level 11 to level 17!

There are lots of features that I like in this game. Firstly I like the radars and the digging. You use radars to find where to dig, then you dig for fossils and after that, clean them up at the D-site to restore dinosaurs. Each land has different dinosaurs in it which makes it interesting. There are loads of dinosaurs to collect, thankfully there is an in-game encyclopedia because I would never be able to remember them all!

Each continent also has different characteristics (for example Asia has different soil so you need a more powerful drill there than in Europe), and you unlock the different parts of the world as you go through the game. There is a shop in each part of the world where you can buy things like medicines, large dino drinks, and other things to give your dino more health points.

I like the battles too, and the special attacks that you can learn in the game. You have health points as well, and things that you find around the world like leaves and sprouts give you more health points. These are the sorts of things that make it feel very much the same as a Pokemon game.

I thought that the graphics were good, the dinosaurs looked quite realistic. The sound was ok, and it was certainly easy to learn the controls. I liked the feature in the settings that enabled you to change the speed of the text, so that if you're a faster reader it can go fast but if you're slower at reading it will go at your pace.

If you like Pokemon: Diamond/Pearl DS or dinosaurs then I'm sure you would like this game.

Written by Rowan Brown

Rowan Brown writes the Teen Gamer column. "I write about my favourite games from a younger person's perspective. It's often surprising how different this ends up to other more grown up reviews."

Rowan Brown's recent reviews:

• Naruto Shippuden Ninja Council 4
• Naughty Bear
• Green Day: Rock Band
• Super Mario Galaxy 2

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