[In line with the game, this is a modified repeat of the entry for Pokémon Diamond. New material appears in a different colour.]
It’s not just the DS’s touchscreen which changed the game; its clamshell form brings an additional bit of tactile magic. Open it up and a world inside comes alive. By the time the UK got Pokémon Platinum, two years after Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, it was clear that Pokémon was not going to go that route, as ready as it might have been for it. These games baked the conservatism of Pokémon Ruby in further still, to an extent which challenged my approach. I was able to play Pokémon Diamond for ten hours without it really giving up much of what made it distinctive. The things it would be judged on by long-time Pokémon players are the small details and tweaks which take a lot longer than that to show up. For Pokémon Platinum, a combined and renewed issue of mostly the same game, even more so.
It was quite an impressive sign of Pokémon’s pre-eminence that even without being a new game, it could still reach the top of the individual formats chart, but I do get the reasoning of its buyers. For many, it would have been the perfect time for a second play through the game with some interesting new material as an extra diversion. I’ve doubled up similarly through buying Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal since then. With the more recent rise and rise of the remake and remaster, Pokémon covering all angles there looks quite ahead of its time.
The graphical updates remain less significant than the previous generation’s. There is just enough of a 3D element to its top-down view for the first gym to involve searching for people hidden behind trees who you can only see from a certain angle, but outside of such contrivances it doesn’t change much. The DS’s touchscreen is used for menus to free up screen estate for battles, but they otherwise play out much the same as ever.
Pokémon Platinum also remains a slower and more methodical game than ever, putting more linear plotline encounters in the way of the usual progression of badges. That’s not all bad, and not just for players weighing games by the hour. It feels like a step back from Ruby’s assumptions that it would only be played by Pokémon veterans, and gives a friendlier path in without wasting much time bogged down in details. The maps of each town with lines and Pokémon centres and shops marked as red and blue dots are a brilliantly helpful minimalist touch. The automated diary which appears when you haven’t played for days, reminding you what you last got up to, is an even more welcome bit of thoughtfulness. Though picking up someone else’s fifty-hour old game on the cartridge I bought, I did find that it wasn’t sufficient to understand where to go next for one final badge, even if I could enjoy their over-leveled Pokémon and glimpses of some different bits of the map.
The standard pokémon formula still works four and a half-th timeround. The set of Pokémon type weaknesses and strengths is just complex enough to give a pleasing puzzle element to each battle; the randomness hits a sporting sweetspot. It expands nicely on the previous generation’s underused duo battles, giving you companions for several travel sections which have every battle fought that way. Assembling a team with complementary strengths and weaknesses is an endlessly engaging strategic proposition, and desperately running through your tail-end pokémon makes for wonderful moments of improvised tension.
Even when the battles are more routine, the scope and invention of the world remains impressive. Taking in that world is a big part of the appeal, and so just providing some new details to watch out for can bring a bit of new life. I again encountered nothing as spectacular as some of Ruby’s best moments, but just encountering a cast of vividly sketched characters is a joy. The formula can only look more formulaic than ever, but what a formula.
Top of the charts for week ending 23 May 2009:
Top of the charts for week ending 30 May 2009:
