Pokemon Battle Revolution [Wii]

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There's an old, painful adage that Pokemon console games are never good. Despite its impressive graphics and a handful of worthwhile online features, Pokemon Battle Revolution is the worst of those meager console efforts to date... and that's really saying something.

Like the Nintendo 64 Pokemon Stadium games released in 2000, Pokemon Battle Revolution is a game of pure Pokemon battles. No story, no overworld, no catching them all - just an endless string of Pokemon battles. What's the appeal of this, you ask? Why, getting to see your Pokemon battle... in 3D!

While the game pretends to be a standalone game, Pokemon Battle Revolution primarily exists as a companion to Nintendo DS juggernauts Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Veteran Pokemon trainers will want to transfer their Pokemon from their DS games over before starting out, otherwise they'll find themselves hampered by the games extremely limited "rental" Pokemon.

The single player is anything but revolutionary. After fiddling around with rental passes, Pokemon levels and some other game-balancing contrivances, you'll be ready to battle. Unfortunately, for a game whose sole focus is battles, you'd expect them to be a bit more exciting than than this. While the battles' pacing has improved significantly from the previous console efforts, there's still nothing more to them than selecting attacks and watching overlong animations play out over and over again - while adequate on a handheld, this formula struggles to hold your attention on the big screen without real gameplay to keep you interested after the graphics' charm wears thin. The game tries vainly to mix things up by throwing a variety of different battle rules to keep you guessing, but these rules are more often annoying than interesting. Top it all off with laughable AI and there's really nothing here to recommend.