Pokémon Dream Radar Review for Nintendo 3DS

Spin And Zap

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have been dishing out an ever-increasing number of side activities that link with the major Pokémon games they release. With the release of Black/White, they gave us a free Pokédex app on the 3DS, where we could see what we wished the Pokémon actually looked like in the game, as well as a Pokémon Dream World web game that allowed the player to obtain unique Pokémon in exchange for playing insipid minigames. Both of those programs were free of charge, but with Pokémon Black/White Version 2, Nintendo has decided it’s time for us to pay up.

The main side-game that Nintendo is selling is the Pokémon Dream Radar, available for just a few bucks from the Nintendo 3DS E-Shop. The game promises to use some of the “coolest” features of the 3DS, allowing gamers to play a shooting game in order to obtain new Pokémon that can be transferred into Pokémon Black/White 2. Unfortunately, the Dream Radar is barely a step up from the free flash games found on Nintendo’s web site, and fails to capture the imagination.

Upon starting up Pokémon Dream Radar, the player meets a Pokémon-style scientist who needs to gather Dream Orbs in order to study the place between dreams and reality where many Pokémon reside. What this means is that the game uses the 3DS camera so that the gameplay is overlaid onto the player’s surroundings. Pink and yellow clouds appear in whatever the player’s surroundings happen to be, and a reticule sits in the middle of the top screen. The player moves and tilts the 3DS in order to line the reticule up with a cloud and shoot it by pressing the A button.

Pink clouds always spit out dream orbs, which the player shoots to collect. Shooting them quickly enough yields more dream orbs, which must be shot even faster before they disappear. Yellow clouds have a chance to spit out a “Pokémon” (which looks like a large glowing orb) when shot. In order to capture the Pokémon, the player shoots it to slow it down, then has to keep pressing A rapidly while keeping the reticule centered on the moving Pokémon. A bar at the top of the screen needs to be filled with on-target button presses before a timer ticks down, and if that’s done, the player is rewarded with a new Pokémon or with the item the Pokémon was carrying.

That’s about it; the entire Pokémon Dream Radar game boils down to spinning around in place and shooting stuff with the A button. As the player racks up Dream Orbs, they can be spent to upgrade the number of clouds that can spawn at once and the gun’s ability to capture Pokémon. The clouds recharge at a rate of one per five minutes, so the player can go back to the game about once an hour (or more once the number of clouds is upgraded) if desired.

Once a large number of dream orbs are gathered together, the researcher will begin to offer various new options that can lead to the capture of a wider variety of Pokémon. Eventually, the player is led into a showdown with one of the members of the Kami trio of Legendary Pokémon: Thundurus, Tornadus, and Landorus. Supposedly these guys fight back, but I couldn’t tell the difference between capturing one of them and an ordinary Pokémon. Capturing members of the Kami trio allows them to be transferred into Pokémon Black/White 2, where conveniently they cannot be found. The Kami trio from the Dream Radar have been given unique animalistic “Formes” (I don’t know why Pokémon spells that word with an “e” in it) so they look particularly special, though personally I find the design of both Kami trio forms to be lacking.

The game’s basic presentation doesn’t help the experience. The interface is rather plain and gray, and the 3D feature of the 3DS isn’t used well. Even though the clouds are placed in “augmented reality,” there’s little depth to them, so it basically looks like a 2D game has been overlaid on top of one’s surroundings. When a Pokémon other than the Kami trio is captured, a still 2D picture of it is shown. Clearly, no bank was broken in creating the visuals for this game. The sound design isn’t particularly interesting, either. There’s a bit of music, but mostly it’s bleeps, bloops, and zaps.

Although the available Pokémon change as the player goes through the game, the gameplay remains the same, and is always extremely basic. Spin around, find clouds, zap orbs and Pokémon. That’s all she wrote. Whether you’ll want to plunk down a few bucks for Pokémon Dream Radar depends on how much you really want to obtain the Pokémon it offers—unless you just really enjoy spinning around and pressing the A button.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.4 Graphics
How nice does your living room look? The actual game’s graphics are fairly uninteresting. 2.7 Control
The controls work fine, they just aren’t very interesting. 2.4 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Bleep, bloop, zap. 2.0 Play Value
The game is nothing but zapping clouds and occasionally catching Pokémon. By zapping them. 2.4 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.