I'm adult enough to admit it - at 24 I'm far too old to be obsessing over Pokémon. If I held a discussion with a person who had no idea what Pokémon or videogames were, they would surely institutionalize me instantly after hearing stories of collecting digital monsters with silly names such as Pikachu, Buneary and Glameow. "This man has surely gone mad with his talk of electric rodents!" Yet the addiction I thought had been smashed by a string of uninspired DS and Gamecube titles has been given new life with Nintendo's first completely original Pokémon RPG in over four years: Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. Cosmetic and content rehashing aside, Game Freak have gone out of their way to forever change the way you engage with the Pokémon world! Beauty pageant style contests, the multi-use Pokétch digital watch, the Underground, Internet battles and a worldwide Pokémon trading message board - one that doesn't require Friend Codes - are just a handful of the exciting new features found in these games. As long as the essentially unchanged core RPG gameplay can still hold your interest, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl will leave you like a freshly caught Magikarp, splashing around, helpless in the hands of its new master.

This new adventure opens in the region of Sinnoh with your created character and his or her best friend going in search of the legendary Red Gyarados in their nearby lake. As they approach the lake they find an abandoned suitcase and while examining it are attacked by a wild Starly (the new look Pidgy). Defenseless, the two open the suitcase to find three Pokéballs, each one containing a starter Pokémon - the water penguin Piplup, the grass turtle Turtwig and the fire chimp Chimchar. Using these new Pokémon they are able to defeat the Starly and get away safely. Returning the borrowed Pokémon to Professor Rowan, you are asked to fill up his Pokédex in exchange for the Pokémon used - not the most exciting beginning, but at this point you are finally free to begin your own adventure.

Just as every other game in the main Pokémon series, you lead your digital avatar through the world, capturing, raising and fighting Pokémon to fill up your Pokédex while thwarting the plans of an evil Pokémon-exploiting organization - in Diamond and Pearl's case it's Team Galactic. There are still eight Gyms to earn badges from, an Elite Four to defeat, slot machines to play, a haunted tower to climb, fishing poles and bikes to use and more. No matter what color or version of Pokémon you have played before, you will instantly recognize all of these elements. The game is even still catered towards the ultimate starting team that started back in Red and Blue, as a team consisting of the three starter Pokémon, an Abra, a Gyarados and a random electric rodent knows no equal. All of that familiarity will leave many a Pokémon veteran feeling the burn of initial disappointment, as a sequel should not give off the impression as the old game with a few name changes and different map layouts.

For some that might be enough to hit the snooze alarm and give up on Diamond and Pearl. Hopefully you won't though, because with time these two games begin to define themselves as individual titles. You'll probably first see this inside of the touch screen, which is put to amazing use by housing the Pokétch, a digital watch that would make Inspector Gadget's daughter Penny green with envy at its multiple uses. With a simple push of the red button on the watch, you can switch between a real-time clock, two different world maps, a Dowsing Machine that can sense hidden items and a move tester, among many other applications on the fly. Not only are these applications useful in their own right, but by taking out the need to access the menu each time you want to use one, the Pokétch saves a lot of time. Now if only they could have included a way to access items like the bike and fishing pole without having to trudge through menus.

Another new feature to the Pokémon canon is the Super Contests held in Hearthome City. These are essentially beauty contests where you enter in your Pokémon in one of five different categories, with victories paying out ribbons and rare accessories. Each Super Contest is made up of three competitions - visual, dance and acting. The visual portion has you dressing up your Pokémon based on a random theme using collected accessories within sixty seconds. The dance portion has you mimicking dance moves using the touch screen, much like the musical mini-game in Chocobo Tales. The acting portion has you performing your battle moves in front of three judges, trying to earn the most affection. But taking first place in these contests is not as easy as just entering; you'll need to raise your Pokémon's conditions - smart, beauty, tough, cool and cute - by cooking stat-boosters known as Poffins. These Poffins are made using a Cooking Mama style touch screen mini-game, as you stir the mixture to keep it from burning.

The new features don't stop there. Next up we have the Underground, a spelunking mini-game. After you receive the Explorer's Kit in Eternia City, you can dig a hole and drop into the Underground anywhere on Sinnoh. Once there, you can dig into the cave walls using the touch screen to spelunk for spheres, Evolution stones, items for trading and equipping, as well as Pokémon fossils! Are you wondering what spheres do? Well, once you have acquired and used the Digger Drill to create a cave you can use as a secret base, you trade those spheres to Goods Vendors and Trap Vendors to decorate and protect your base's flag from outsiders - but not other NPCs in the game. These outsiders consist of any other Pokémon players nearby who dig into the Underground, as the game automatically opens your game to local multiplayer.

This brings us to the final main feature of Diamond and Pearl, and the one I know many of you have been waiting for: online battling and trading! By visiting the WiFi Club, located in the basement of every Pokémon Center, you can interact directly with any other players you have Friend Codes for. Trading has essentially remained the same, but battling receives a few tweaks. Battles, either Single or Double, can be instigated in either Level-50 or Level-100 modes (where each player's Pokémon's levels are temporarily bumped up or down) or Free mode (where no levels are changed). Both of these modes give access to voice chatting through the DS' microphone, allowing you to work out trades or talk smack to anyone across the world! Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, there is nothing in place to keep you from exploiting the voice chat feature to make long distance phone calls.

But the WiFi features don't stop there as Nintendo has - thankfully - included the ability to interact indirectly with complete strangers. In Jubilife City, you can access the Global Trade Station, allowing you to post and request trades message board style. After achieving League Champion status, you will gain access to the Battle Tower WiFi room. Here you can download and battle against other players' Hall of Fame teams or you can upload your own for the world to attempt to defeat. Neither of these options allow you to interact with other users directly, but they do open the game up in a way that Friend Codes attempt to hinder. Hopefully other developers and/or Nintendo will allow this type of WiFi option to exist in future titles.

All of these new features, especially the Pokétch and Super Contests, go a long way to increasing the ambience that Pokémon Diamond & Pearl exudes, pulling players even deeper into the world of monster catching, collecting and battling. The Pokétch seems like such a realistic piece of equipment that a Pokemon trainer would have and use, something that would have been partially lost if the more useless features of it were left out. The Super Contests have been a staple of the anime series for a while now, though not necessarily under that name, bridging the gap between static and interactive. And just caring for and raising your captured critters has never been more involved and engaging, bringing them closer to the pets they are shown in the anime as and less like the digital warriors the videogames have made them out to be.

All and all, the new and old gameplay components blend together wonderfully in Diamond and Pearl. There is still something terribly addictive about raising and collecting Pokémon, even though the formula has seen little change since it was first introduced, a fact that provides little enticement for gamers on the fence, or well over it. Though fans of the series will have little problem overlooking that, should we? Game Freak has finally been given a portable system with some power, yet they did very little to alter the game's formula. How about changing the battle perspective to one that is less limiting, or reinventing the way Pokémon are raised and grown, or maybe even just changing the flow of the game? I think we've gone through enough variations of the "walk around, get challenged, stop bad guy group, repeat" dance over the years. It is time to throw a Mankey wrench into series.

Talking of throwing around Mankey wrenches, the presentation in Diamond and Pearl is nothing short of underwhelming. Game Freak made it a point to keep the presentation as close to the Game Boy Advance games as possible, using the same overhead perspective with the same little sprite characters in the same little sprite world and the same basic MIDI tunes. The only way you know you aren't play a GBA game is that buildings, landforms and most other objects that stick out of the ground have been rendered using meager 3D graphics. The overall package may still be above average, but it leaves a lot to be desired. That's nothing compared to the nearly untouched battle segments though; about the only change you will notice is that the attack effects have been spruced up. Pokémon are still represented by static 2D images that don't move, with the same lame clicks and whistles Game Freak has been trying to pass off as animal sounds for years. I realize that asking Game Freak to render 400+ Pokémon in animated 3D probably isn't possible on the DS, but to regurgitate the same portraits in place for the past few years smacks of laziness.

Do you even need to ask about lasting appeal when it comes to a Pokémon game? Well, if you must then you should know that the single player quest will take you an ungodly amount of hours to even approach seeing 100% of everything that Diamond and Pearl has to offer. There is a hefty helping of multiplayer options - both local and WiFi - to explore, experience and conquer. And that is all the information most of you will need for you to know that you'll be playing this game well into the next year. Lasting appeal? This game has lasting appeal to spare!

As much as I love Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, it alarms me to see how little the core game has evolved over the years. There will come a day when this formula will fail Game Freak and Nintendo, but for now they still have a winner on their hands, thanks to all of the new complimentary features and the inclusion of true, handheld online play. For now I hold my glass high in salute to the handheld world's supreme ruler - may your shortcomings never overcome your successes.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).