Dino Master

$19.99, Nintendo DS

Teaches: science, dinosaur facts

CTR Rating: 62%

CTR Review

This poorly designed puzzle role-playing game for the Nintendo DS lets you search for fossils, and then battle up to three other players using the DS wireless features. The game play is frustratingly complex and the educational value is very limited. The first challenge is to retrieve the fossils. You do this by choosing a continent, which brings you to the first level of game play, regardless of how many levels you had advanced last time you had played. This means that you must constantly replay the same levels over and over again in order to gain more powerful dinosaurs. In order to find fossils, you use the stylus to drag a line around the perimeter of a region, before time runs out. This will seal off the portion of map, killing any enemies and revealing any hidden fossils. When you seal off 70 percent of the level, you move on to the next, regardless of whether or not you have recovered any fossils. The controls are very awkward to figure out. When you run out of your three lives, you are taken back to the main menu. From there, you can rebuild your fossils into one of 100 dinosaurs. They are added to your "Dino Book,� that lists their name, time period, approximate size, and a relatively accurate drawing of what they looked like. You can then pit your dinosaurs in combat with the dinosaurs of other trainers by selecting where on the opposing dinosaur you want to attack and where you want your dinosaur to defend itself. The battle then plays out with minimal animation, making it a tedious experience. Despite this game's unique concept and comprehensive roster of dinosaurs, the clunky, frustrating fossil-gathering system makes this a game that will quickly become extinct.