Pokémon Dream Radar Review: Time Killer

December 27, 2012 Patrick Hickey Jr. Video Game Reviews, Video Games 0

If it feels like you’ve played “Pokémon: Dream Radar” before, it’s because you have. A spin-off of “Face Raiders,” one of the games that game with the 3DS at launch, Dream Radar is at times a nifty little mini-game that helps you add three legendary Pokémon to your team in Pokémon Black and White 2.
Aside from that, there’s little fun to be had.

The lather, rinse, repeat gameplay will get stale quickly. Shooting orbs and catching Pokémon is interesting in the beginning, but even after weapon upgrades, nothing changes. Ultimately, it proves to be a nuisance.

Shooting orbs gets you experience needed to power-up your weapons, which makes it easier to catch Pokémon. The process of catching your favorite critters feels robbed out of a “Ghostbusters” cartoon. By tapping the shoot button, you essentially lock on to the enemy and cut down its power. Once its energy is gone, the tug of war is over and that Pokémon joins your team. It’s a fun and hectic experience, but the process never changes. While the Pokémon are fast and require energy on your part to catch, you never see them. Instead, they are just “glowing balls.” This is probably the biggest problem with the game, aside from the fact that the first 15 minutes expose every ounce of playability the app has.

With the ability to trade Pokémon and the Poke-transfer tool, Dream Radar is essentially useless for anyone who’s already earned their stripes in the series and caught the rare Pokémon featured in the game, Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus. With an older version of the game in your 3DS, legendary Pokémon from Diamond and Platinum, such as Giratina, Diagla, Palkia, Lugia and Ho-Oh also become available, but this seems to be little reason to force yourself into misery for hours.

If you have a few minutes to kill that have to be spent on the 3DS, there are so many better options than Dream Radar. If Pokémon is your preferred poison, the plethora of titles available on the DS and even the mediocre Pokémon Rumble Blast 3D will prove to satisfy your needs better than this repetitive chore of an App.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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