THE HUB

OMG!!!

FEATURED MEMBER

DoctorIrish

DoctorIrish

The Doctor is in.

QUICK POLL

Grand Theft Auto IV: does it live up to the hype?

ASK THE PROS

THE GAMEPROS

FREE NEWSLETTERS

Sign up now to receive weekly or daily updates on your favorite games, stories, and more!



GameCube | RPG | Pokemon Colosseum

Boxart for Pokemon Colosseum
Pokemon Colosseum 36 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.5
  • SOUND: 3.0
  • CONTROL: 4.0
  • FUN FACTOR 3.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 2.5
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.5

Review: Pok?mon Colosseum

Review by STARDINGO | 04/21/2004 | 12:18:33 PM PST

The tournament mode is strong, but the best Pok?mon experience is still on the GBA.

All good Pok?mon boys and girls harbor a secret hope that someday, maybe, there will be a real, wonderful Pok?mon role-playing game on a console and not just on a handheld system. Pok?mon Colosseum doesn?t herald the arrival of that magical day?but at least things are heading in the right direction.

Clash of the Plusles
Pok?mon Colosseum is essentially a battle-intensive extension of Pok?mon Ruby and Sapphire. The crux of the game is a titular tournament mode in which you pit your Pok?mon against each other in a series of battles against the CPU or human opponents?two to four of them if you connect GBAs with Pok?mon Ruby or Sapphire carts to the GameCube. It?s a strong mode with plenty of options for varying the battle types and lots of special goodies to unlock when you battle with your Level 100 (!) Pok?mon.

The ?RPG? element, however, isn?t as compelling as the tournament part. In Story mode, there are some characters to talk to and chests to find, but no ?overworld? with free-roaming monsters to capture. Instead, you nab Shadow Pok?mon from other trainers and then use them in battle to ?unlock their hearts? so they can be used in the Colosseum mode. The feeling of companionship is a little stunted as the Pok?mon you catch all start at Level 30 or above; but what you?ll miss most is the sense of exploration and nonlinearity as you?re basically railroaded through a long series of battles with other trainers.

Grass Type
The presentation isn?t entirely polished. The Pok?mon graphics are insanely cute, but the battle animation ?cheats? a bit by never showing two attacking Pok?mon in the same frame together. Battles are slow with no option to skip attack animations or speed up messages; eventually, the fighting begins to drag. The music seems a bit too low-tech and synthetic, and the Pok?mon don?t make the sounds you?re probably accustomed to.

Colosseum will appeal mostly to really super hardcore Pok?mon addicts who completed their GBA collection and spent time leveling them up, and are still looking for something to do with them. Most fair-weather Pok?mon fans will find the Story mode not interesting enough and the Colosseum mode a little too hardcore. Maybe someday there will be a Pok?mon RPG on par with Ruby, Sapphire, and all the handheld sagas that have come before. For now, however, the real Pok?mon banner is still carried by the Game Boy Advance.