Nintendo plays the yellow card
Pokemon Yellow
Game Boy £24.99 Nintendo
Is this a cynical cash-in or the definitive version of Pokemon on the Gameboy? Well, it's a bit of both actually. By adding a tablespoon full of Pikachu and a sprinkle of the cartoon series, Nintendo has cooked up enough new features for the back of the box though any owners of the previous cartridgeswill be left feeling decidedly off colour.
The reason? Pokemon Yellow is almost exactly the same game, albeit with a few cosmetic differences, the biggest of which is the omnipresence of Pokemon figurehead Pikachu.
The little yellow blighter is with you from the off, and demands constant care and attention.
If you can cope with a sulking Pokemon then the other changes will be more bearable. The game now follows the plot of the cartoon more closely, meaning regular appearances for camp baddies Jesse and James.
There is also a splash of colour with the battle scenes in particular looking a lot more vibrant. What else? Yellow allows you to print out your Pokemon collection via the rather nifty Game Boy Printer - a nice touch but one that has precisely no effect on the game.
Still, if you are one of the three or four Game Boy owners who doesn't own the older Red or Blue games then this is the one to go for, if only for the colour.
Window dressing aside, you can't keep a good game down and Pokemon Yellow is certainly that. The game remains a fantastically compulsive trip into Game Boy addiction, but unfortunately it's one that most of us will have already taken.
Not worth the long, long wait
Daikatana PC
£39.99 Ion Storm/Eidos
There's an old gag about a Russian man ordering a new TV. "We'll deliver it on April 8 2011."
"Morning or afternoon?"
"Afternoon. Why?"
"The plumber's coming in the morning."
People were starting to joke about Daikatana in the same way. In the course of three years, it's missed about a dozen different release dates (some of then promised as little as a week before) and suffered countless setbacks.
Of course, this happens to lots of games (albeit never to quite this extent). The reason for the added fuss this time is that Daikatana is the brainchild of John Romero, he of Wolfenstein, Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Quake fame.
Romero's specific contribution to those games is unclear; after seeing this, I think he made the tea because very little of this first-person shooter is worth the three-year wait.
It claims two "unique" selling points. The first is its use of teamplay (as seen in SWAT); as well as total control of the hero, Hiro, you have limited influence over two sidekicks, Mikiko and Super fly Johnson (will Superfly really be a trendy moniker in 500 years' time?), whom you can instruct to stay, come, back off, attack or pick up an object.
You also, unfortunately, have to keep them alive for the duration of the game, and sharing out the game's limited resources between three adds unwanted complexity to an already demanding experience.
The second innovation is time travel (as seen in Day Of the Tentacle). On a quest to recover an ancient mystical sword, Hiro and friends travel through four different time periods, each subdivided into six levels. In a pleasing touch, each era features not just its own enemies but also its own unique weapons. However, since gameplay is so linear, the time aspect is superficial.
The most refreshing thing about Daikatana is its unfolding story; rather than just endless levels of increasingly hard combat, cut scenes and in-game developments add a sense of progress. You can also convert experience points into increased speed, power, attack speed, vitality or height of jump.
It's hard to believe that the graphics needed three years' development. In spite of the game's cheekily high specifications (optimum configuration: Pentium III 500MHz+, 32MB Open GL-compliant video card), the characters are blocky and blotchy, movement is jerky, and the colours, particularly on the opening level, tend to blend into a murky mess.
This often makes it hard to see where enemies are coming from until they're right on top of you.Which leads us neatly on to the general difficulty level. Take the first level: 80+ bad guys, several nasty gun turrets, about seven health packs. And two saves allowed. (Save points. In a PC game. Now there's time travel for you.) And that's on the easy setting.
Normally, game reviewers aim to complete as much of a game as they can, in order to give it the most comprehensive review possible.
And here I must hold up my hands: I have failed. Mainly because, after several dozen attempts, I simply could not finish the first level. Limited saves, tough enemies, problematic aiming, little health... stuff that for a game of soldiers. (AB)
The cutting edge of combat
Vagrant Story
Sony PlayStation £29.99 Square
This is the kind of combat I like best: push a button and your opponent freezes.
Now you can take your time selecting exactly where to hit him or it, with the help of a read-out that tells you how much damage will be inflicted. And if the enemy strikes back, you can take a potion to restore your health.
Which is not to imply that fighting is a minor part of Vagrant Story, which is released on June 23.
It's an adventure role-playing game (RPG), much of which takes place in a series of underground rooms. Whenever you enter a room, have a sword handy, even if it's only to slash nasty bats.
Getting from room to room often involves solving little puzzles, which often involve moving boxes around. Luckily this is all very engaging, because the plot seems to have been inspired by a Japanese comic book about medieval myth and magic.
Briefly, you play Ashley Riot, a member of the Valendia Knights of Peace's Riskbreaker squad. There are also Knights of the Crimson Blade, led by Romeo Guildenstern, who are fighting the Mullenkamp Cult, led by Sydney Losstarot. What it all means is a mystery - I'd be interested to read the novella. But as long as you follow the arrows and keep killing things, none of it seems to matter.
And it must be said that Vagrant Story is a luscious piece of work with beautifully integrated cut scenes. Almost every wall is a graphical masterpiece, and the 3D camera lets you explore each miniature scene: it's amazing that a PlayStation game can look this good. The sound effects are superb, too. The only thing that's missing is the spoken word: the characters talk in comic-book medieval English in comic-book bubbles.
If you want another epic like Final Fantasy, this isn't it. Nonetheless, it's a minor masterpiece. (JS)
