Koei is prepping a Pokemon-style Nintendo DS game called Monster Racers. It looks and plays very much like Nintendo's property, but instead of monster battles your creatures engage in 2D races. Everything else, from wandering around an overworld to catching and training monsters, appears lifted straight from Pokemon. Players choose to be a boy or girl, and then they're off to build a reputation as a monster racer.
It’s too bad there’s so little variety, because this could’ve been a great game. The story, while hardly unique, has plenty of humor and enough interesting characters to keep you hooked. There are some tough battles, but they usually seem to come down to luck rather than skill, so overcoming them doesn’t feel all that satisfying. Monster Racers is nice for short bursts of gratuitous entertainment, but not much more.
Jeremy writes in his review: "The racing itself is done in a 2-D platformer style. You run to the right as fast as you can, nabbing temporary invincibility, building up turbos, grabbing coins, and avoiding obstacles. The controls in this area are good, and it was all actually fun enough to keep me at least a little entertained the whole time I was playing."
Diehard GameFAN writes: "It is beyond easy to take one look at Monster Racers, decry it as nothing more than a cheap Pokemon clone with a gimmick, and move on. However, a lot of games have done something interesting and occasionally quite good with the Pokemon formula, but weren’t actual Pokemon games themselves. Last year’s Fossil Fighters is a great example. There was a game that could have been nothing but a clone, but it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable game with a cute story, fun mini-games, and satisfying strategic battle system."
