Game Overview
Pokémon has been on every Nintendo handheld so far, mostly thanks to the continued success of the franchise. Pokémania may have died down but the games are still going strong! The main point of Pokémon, in case you’ve been under a rock or on Mars for the past 10 or so years, is to travel around beating gyms to acquire badges and then challenge the Pokémon League. Along the way, you encounter fellow trainers as well as wild Pokémon. Using your Pokémon, you weaken these and then capture them in a Pokéball where they stay and fight alongside you.

The basic Pokémon formula has been kept the same. You start in a quaint little town where you aspire to become a Pokémon master. Your friendly neighbourhood Professor gives you your ‘Starter Pokémon’ (A choice of a Grass, Fire or Water type, as usual) and you set out on a small task which then evolves into an epic journey spanning an entire continent. You use your monster to catch other monsters and build a team of six well-trained beasties that will fight for you against other trainers. You level up your creatures, and face more and more challenges which become progressively more difficult until you finally reach the Pokémon League.

Now, most Pokémon games finish here (Or shortly after this, as in Red and Blue you could go and catch Mewtwo afterwards) but Diamond and Pearl have a lot more to do after this. There’s Pokémon contests, repeatable battling and of course, a feature fans have been crying out for since Pokémon Crystal on the Game Boy Color, Online battling. This is delivered by the effective and stable Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, with Microphone communication included to make battles that little bit more personal.

Of course, each Pokémon game since Gold and Silver has had a story arc and we won’t reveal this versions to you, but it does feature yet another criminal gang (Team Galactic) and various legendary Pokémon which you may want to catch to make your line-up of creatures super-powered.

Our Conclusions
Pokémon Diamond (and Pearl) uses all of the Nintendo DS’s features superbly, and doesn’t try to be too clever or innovative. While past games on the troubled handheld have made attempts to be innovative and failed, this game doesn’t bother with that because it doesn’t need to. It’s Pokémon, a multi-million selling franchise that has lived through several generations of gaming hardware.

Overall Score: 8.5/10

Massive thanks to Harry "Tr33zon" Smith and all the gang at Nintendo.