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Dinosaurs Combat of Giants DS

Format:
DS

Genre:
Fighting

Buy/Support:
Support Rowan, click to buy via us...

When I first saw Dinasaurs Combat of Giants I thought it would be good, I'd seen adverts on the television and they made the game look really exciting. I've recently played Dinosaur King and enjoyed that, but this game, despite the link of the dinosaur theme, turned out to be very different.

The game opens with a short video of dinosaurs fighting, which gave me an idea of what to expect in the game. There are some different ways to play - adventure mode, multiplayer, and a quick match. When I first played I went straight into an adventure.

The first step of the adventure is to choose your dinosaur profile, using the touch screen. The dinosaurs are grouped into families, with different skill sets. You can name the dinos, and customise their colours. As you go through the game and earn gold eggs, you can go back to the grotto and trade these for further evolutions (ie customisations) to make to your dinosaur. These changes make your dinosaur stronger, and you can modify the colour of different parts of your dinosaur.

The golden eggs are earned by fighting other dinosaurs. The opponents have 'halos' of different colours and this gives you an idea of how easy it will be to defeat them.

In a battle you first of all choose an attack, and then you have to use the touch screen to draw as fast as you can over a black line. This gives you a certain amount of boost to win the battle and then earn the eggs. Because you are doing this against the clock, it is quite exciting and I'm always really pleased when my dinosaur wins a battle. There are lots of different attacks to unlock, so I find that keeps my interest up.

Your dinosaur also needs water and food which you can find around the land, these items are marked with a white halo, and you simply tap the screen to interact with them.

Movement around the land is fairly easy, again using the touch screen to pull your dinosaur along. I found the controls quite easy to learn, and my dinosaurs always went in the direction I wanted them to go!

Occasionally a strange object appears; this is a mystery challenge battle, and makes a change from fighting dinosaurs I suppose. I thought it was quite funny to be battling against a phone box, or a tractor!

The sound is quite realistic, although battles are very noisy, but you can play with the volume down and it doesn't affect how you battle, so that's good.

Apart from the dinosaur battles, you can search for fossils. These give you new dinosaurs to choose at the profile choice screen. Each dinosaur can go through all the different levels, so the game can last quite a long time, although there isn't really a story so it could get a bit tedious to just keep fighting all the time. I think the fights are really fun, though, so I don't get bored!

I had a quick look at the multiplayer and quick match modes, and they are both based on a single battle. You don't need to have a game cartridge each to play the multiplayer game which I think is a big advantage, as often your friends don't have the same games as you.

If you want a dinosaur game then I think that this one is much better then Dinosaur King, because you have far more control in the battles, and more choices to make, as well as the fact that you actually play as a dinosaur, which is more fun. As well as that, the multiplayer mode is better because you don't need to have a cartridge each. I think this game would hold a lot of appeal for children who like dinosaurs and cartoons.

Written by Rowan Brown

You can support Rowan by buying Dinosaurs Combat of Giants



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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."

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