Pokemon Diamond Pearl

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on July 18, 2011

We like a mindless puzzle game as much as the next person; sometimes it's nice to just click on some colored squares and zone out for a while. But Pokemon Diamond Pearl is a little too mindless; there doesn't seem to be any real challenge or point to the game. We suppose that it might be all right for kids--the Pokemon theme suggests that that's whom it's meant for--but most adults and older children will likely grow bored with it pretty quickly.

Contrary to its name, the game doesn't have much to do with Pokemon, diamonds, or pearls. It is true that Pokemon characters are revealed in the background as you clear the board, but that's the extent of it. The object of the game is to clear the board of colored squares, which is done by clicking on groups of two or more like-colored squares. If you reach the end of a level and still have unmatched squares leftover, don't worry; points are deducted from your score, but you still get to advance to the next level. As you move through the game the squares get smaller and more numerous, making it more difficult to clear the board entirely. But since you can continue to advance whether or not the board is cleared, it doesn't make much difference. We kept playing and playing Pokemon Diamond Pearl, not sure what the point was or when it would end. We finally "won" the game after completing the fifteenth level; the game congratulated us and showed us our score, but it was fairly meaningless given the fact that there's no scoreboard. We wondered if maybe we had missed something, so we went looking for a Help file, but there wasn't one. Overall, Pokemon Diamond Pearl works just fine, but it's one of the least satisfying games we've played.

Pokemon Diamond Pearl installs three desktop icons without asking and leaves a folder behind upon removal.