Dinosaur King

Sega's Dinosaur King is little more than a Pokemon rip-off. You've got your cute anime characters, your opposing rival forces bent on power and magical tools that can conjure up creatures from another realm. There are a couple of exceptions. Instead of Pokemon, for example, you summon dinosaurs, but not even thunder lizards can save this boring video game.

In the game, you control a young kid who carries around a gun-shaped device known as the Dinoshot. All this kid has to do is find a nearby fossil of a passed-away dino, create a card in the process and slide it into the Dinoshot. Then he points the device, shoots and blam, instant dinosaur. If that's not weird enough, you also contend with Team Roc...er, we mean the Alpha Gang, who has a Dinoshot of its own.

That's the main problem with Dinosaur King. What could've been a great adventure with terrific battle sequences is instead reduced to middling kiddie fare. The battle system is made up of nothing more than exploratory sequences and rock/paper/scissor segments. Instead of walking up and thrashing a dinosaur with everything you've got, you need to use hand gestures to show it who's boss. Sega even threw in a system that tells you what the enemy's going to throw so you can beat it every time.

Battles get tiresome after the first 20 minutes, to the point that even the youngest of players will wonder where the challenge is. There is a neat card-trading ability with other players through the Wi-Fi Connection, if you feel like mixing up your battle party and dinosaur selections, but the end results remain the same. Furthermore, there's no online play, so you must endure this pain by yourself.

With presentation, Sega stays loyal to the anime show. Characters look all right, and the 3-D battle sequences are better than one might expect from a game such as this. The music and sound effects, however, are average. Kids won't mind, but everyone else will slide the volume to the lowest level possible.

With a more ambitious battle system and less ripped-off Pokemon stuff, Dinosaur King would've earned its throne. Unfortunately, it's more like a Dinosaur court jester. Off with its head.