 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Namco Bandai |
| Publisher: | Namco Bandai | |
| Genre: | RPG | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Ah, Digimon, the ugly, unwanted cousin to Nintendo’s enduringly popular Pokemon series. It always seemed like a cheap quickie cash-in to me – my first impression on seeing the anime was that it was an inferior U.S. ripoff of the cloying Japanese hit original. I kept expecting one of the characters to say “Digi-DigAAAA”, ala Pikachu. Amazingly, that appears not to be the case – this is a “homegrown” cheap knockoff. One can only assume the copyright and intellectual properties laws are far less strict over Nihon way…
That aside, let’s pretend we were dense enough not to notice. So, gee, isn’t it weird how the premise of the two games are so similar? In fact, they’re nearly identical! Imagine the odds of that happening…strange world, isn’t it? In either franchise and the games derived therefrom, you the gamer get to take on the role of Trainer/Tamer, to raise Digimon/Pokemon for battle. The moral implications of this in and of itself are somewhat disturbing… can you say “Michael Vick?” But instead of winding up in the news and/or behind bars, you the Digimon Tamer can go for the gold without incident! Hooray for virtual reality!
As usual for this sort of thing, DW:D starts off with a little training and practice so you can get ‘the feel of battle.’ After completing a few battles, you find yourself tossed into a tournament against the “Dawn’s Light” team, wherein you first discover the rivalry between the two teams. Once the tournament is complete, a “mysterious being” (ooh, are you intrigued yet? Who could it be? Who cares?) appears and causes all the Digimon to devolve (see? DEVO was right!) into “digi-eggs”. Since your character had conveniently gone home (“to rest from your battle at the tournament”, as if you’d actually done anything other than raise these creatures to fight for you) you weren’t on the island when this occurred. Whew, what a lucky break! So this little deus ex machina (or if you prefer, cheap and contrived plot device) explains how your particular Digimon survived becoming a digi-omelette. Mmm, breakfast, anyone?
Another fun and socially responsible aspect of the game is how you get to play mad scientist. Here you spend your time collecting data on enemy Digimon during battles. Once you’ve collected all necessary specs on the Digimon in question, you get to clone one in your “digi-lab.” As weird and questionable as that sounds already (any “stem cell research” advocates out there?), it gets into even more reprehensible moral ground once you collect data on several Digimon. Why, you ask? Because then you get to splice them together in an attempt to create a “super Digimon”. Hey, you can take all the valuable skills you learn here and go off to work at Kraft, or some other “frankenfood” company – let’s hear it for GMOs, hormones, pesticides, and all the aspects of the genetic experiment we’ve all become to food corporation CEOs! Bring on that high-fructose corn syrup and modified corn starch, I just love contracting heretofore unheard of diseases! Seriously, do the makers of games and series franchises like this even consider the implications of what they’re presenting to the public and asking kids to take part in? Oh, right – I forgot: it’s OK, because it’s virtual! My bad…
Posted: 2007-11-11 11:54:21 PST