Although Koei has made its name with the slash-'em-up Dynasty Warriors series, the Japanese developer is trying its hand at the monster-collecting role-playing game genre staked out by Pokemon. Monster Racers, the newly announced original Nintendo DS game, is a hybrid RPG racer that lets you put your collected critters to work for you in races. Gamespot had the chance to get their hands on a very early, work-in-progress version of the game at Koei's recent press event.
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."
