What do you get when you cross a platypunk with a cannibox? How about a buffalogre with a chainine? A tyrantosaurus with a malevolamp? With any luck, you could get a crabid (a crab foaming at the mouth), a capsichum (pepper buddies on a skewer) or maybe even a wrecktor (a priest who, uh, wrecks things with magic).
Welcome to the world of “Dragon Quest,” a roleplaying game franchise known, perhaps above all, for its trademark fauna, offspring of a Mother Nature more concerned with puns than nature. Recognizing the popularity of its bestiary, “Dragon Quest V” way back in 1992 came up with the idea of letting you capture these monsters to fight for your own side, and one thing led to another. “Pokemon” in 1996 made a whole game out of this stolen concept, and in 1998 “Dragon Quest” struck back with its first “Monsters” game, featuring everything “Pokemon” had plus one key ingredient: husbandry.
| ‘Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2’ |
| » System: DS |
| » Price: $34.99 |
| » Rating: 3 out of 5 stars |
Whereas Nintendo’s pocket monsters naturally evolved into more powerful forms after gaining battle experience, the “Monsters” games require you to play menagerie matchmaker, incorporating a clever conceit of positive and negative “signs” to keep boys and girls from asking dangerous questions about boys and girls. This sets up an extremely addictive cycle of recruiting enemy monsters, naming them (unreasonably fun every time), and pairing them up to see what crazy creatures come out the other side to fill in the in-game family trees.
In short, with “Monsters,” “Dragon’s Quest” had on its hands perhaps the most coveted thing in all of gaming: a “Pokemon” killer. Then, in 2006, tragedy struck with “Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker,” named for the only villain diabolical enough to be behind such sabotage. Winner of that year’s Crash Bandicoot Award for Ugly, Unnecessary 3-D Models, “Joker” transformed Akira Toriyama’s clean, charming, 2-D monster designs — visual portmanteaus in line with the creatures’ names — into abominable heaps of colliding pixels. A fun, bad-looking game beats a pretty, boring game any day, but it’s seriously distracting that you can hardly make out what kind of creature you’re approaching if it’s more than a couple paces away.
With “Joker 2,” we have … the same thing — 3-D graphics because they’re possible, not because they serve the game, considerations of aesthetics, or basic human sense. In short, if you’re reaching for your umpteenth “Pokemon,” swat your hand away and give this deeper system a try. Or, better yet, pray the series returns to 2-D, where it belongs. And where it could kill “Pokemon” yet.
