I won’t deny the fact that my friends and I love us some Pokémon. If you say you don’t then you’re a fucking liar. Anyway, one of my friends, who will be using the handle “Holiday,” recently purchased and played through the newest Pokémon title, Pokémon Platinum.

He wrote a review which goes into detail on the only discernible differences between Platinum, and its parent titles, Diamond and Pearl. Please be kind to him, today is his birthday!

Good day, citizens. I am Holiday, the resident Pokémon enthusiast.

I have played every Pokémon Gameboy game since Pokémon Red and Blue came out. I actually hadn’t touched a Pokémon game since about a year ago when I was playing Pokémon Diamond. After a long bout of addiction to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 ended in March, I heard Platinum came out and picked it up. I’ve been playing pretty consistently since then.

For those of you who don’t understand how Pokémon games work, I’ll give you the low down. Two new games have been released to coincide with whatever Nintendo’s newest hand-held is. For example, after the Gameboy Advance came out, Nintendo released Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. Nintendo then sits back and waits a year or two while millions upon millions of these games sell.

Then they turn to their R&D department and say, “The time for easy money has come! Pick a new color!” Once the new color is picked, R&D revamps the existing games with a few new features and then basically re-packages the same game with sexy new cover art. These “new games” then sell millions of copies as well. Pretty smart, huh?

So let’s get down to what makes Pokémon Platinum different from Diamond and Pearl (D&P).

The Pokémon
There aren’t really any all new critters in this game, but there are some new forms of pokémon like Shaymin and Rotom. In addition, you can also get Giratina (the Down-Syndrome-afflicted, yellow lobster looking thing on the box of Platinum†), before you fight the Elite Four. Other pokémon that weren’t available in D&P are now available. These include favorites like the legendary bird trio, an Eevee earlier in the game, and the three Regis, now starting at level 30.

The Characters
An incredibly amazing character called Looker has been added. He is a detective or possibly even a private eye! This chomdommer is hot on the trail of team Galactic and will stop at nothing to serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever in the game. He will pop out at random times with own his rock’n theme music and provide you with useless information you already knew.

The guy and the girl you can pick from have also gotten makeovers to deal with the colder climate. The girl is looking pretty classy, but it is clear Nintendo put a lot of time and effort into making the guy character look even lamer.

detektiv

The Graphics
New art was added for all of the pokémon. This also includes new animations when the pokémon are sent into battle. The scenery also has new features, most of which I didn’t notice until I read about them on Bulbapedia. Some changes include: lights atop buildings, new building designs, remodeled walkways/roads, trees casting shadows in the Eterna Forest, and the Elite Four’s rooms are now customized to match the type theme of their pokémon. The many subtleties give it a different look than D&P, but you probably won’t notice most of it unless you have recently played one of the predecessors.

The old person home called – one of their seniors wants their hat back

New Areas
The new areas are the most evidently difference in Platinum. There is a haunted hotel to the north of Eterna Forest and also a new zone called Distortion World. This zone only contains the pokémon Giratina, but challenges the player with mazes, inverted terrain, and old fashioned rock pushing.

The most enjoyable new area is the new Battle Frontier. In D&P the only post-Elite Four challenge was the Battle Tower. The Battle Frontier brings back the Battle Tower and adds 4 additional buildings. Each offers its own type of challenge that are geared towards more advanced players who like to work hard on training the strongest pokémon and building a well-rounded team.

Although Platinum isn’t ground breaking by any stretch of the imagination, I really enjoyed starting over with a new team of pokémon and fighting my way through to the Elite Four. I’m an obsessive perfectionist when it comes to raising my pokémon and I’ll most likely be working on a new team in the weeks ahead.

If you’d like to know more or have any questions about Pokémon Platinum, feel free to email me.

† I can’t emphasize how much I hate Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina. I don’t think they could have possibly created lamer legendaries unless they had Keanu Reeves finger paint them with nothing but ketchup and glitter. In addition, the calls they make are not those of legendary dragons! No sir, it is the sound of air escaping from a Drifloon’s vagina.