Fossil Fighters, letting dinosaurs do what they do best

I wasn’t real big into dinosaurs when I was a kid. If you lined up a dinosaur, a giant robot, and a super ninja army guy and asked little Brian to pick one, it wouldn’t be the dinosaur. I know some kids got really huge into dinosaurs. They had their room themed in dinosaurs. All pretty boring if you ask me. But there are a few cases where dinosaurs have proved to be pretty kick ass, and Fossil Fighters on the DS is one of those cases.

I liked Jurassic Park, it is one of the best movies of modern times. I watched Beast Wars every morning before I went to class in college. I loved playing Primal Rage in the arcade. All of those instances of dinosaurs were pretty awesome and all have something in common - action - and in some, wonderful violent action. Lets face it, it’s awesome when giant things fight - robots, dinosaurs, parade balloons, trees…whatever. If they’re big and have a throw down it’s going to be one hell of a time.

Even though Fossil Fighters is billed as a dinosaur fighting game, that is not what got me to try it out. Instead, the packaging got me…and not even the box art or it sitting on a shelf. I came across a video of a reviewer receiving and opening a copy of Fossil Fighters. The game came encased in a plaster rock accompanied with a little hammer and brush. He had to crack open the plaster rock to reveal the game. Through this simple-yet-clever packaging, they entire point of the game was spelled out. You have to dig for dinosaurs. That alone, not very exciting, but when you consider the title is Fossil Fighters, I knew there was some more.

Fossil Fighters turned out to be another collect ‘em all type quest game where you search for different dinosaurs and then use them to fight. While the fighting in Fossil Fighters is pretty solid, the questing and collecting is fun and doesn’t drag you down. As the main character you’re trying to become a great Fossil Fighter. To accomplish this goal you must use your trusty pickax to dig up fossil rocks, then you have to crack those rocks open to extract the fossils. The fossils are then used to magically created dinosaurs - kind of like Jurassic Park.

The DS stylus interface works wonderfully well when trying to extract the fossils. You use it to hammer and drill. Working on the rocks is not that easy though. You have to be careful where you hammer and drill because you could ruin the fossil inside, and needless to say you want the best fossil you can get because it will make the dinosaur it transforms into even stronger. There’s a lot of digging and running around trying to find fossils. You’ll find a lot of duplicates but sometimes that works out well because if you get a poor score the first time you hammered and drilled, you can try again to get a better score.

The other side of the game is, of course, the fighting. Your dinosaurs all have different powers, different abilities, and different strengths and weaknesses. The nice part is you really don’t have to worry to much all the details of your monsters. They use their powers and abilities automatically in most cases. But where you do have to pay attention is how to combine your dinosaurs to create the most effective fighting team. You’re allowed three teams, each with three dinosaurs. You have to mix-and-match dinosaurs to create the type of offense/defense you want. When fighting your choices boil down to not much more than which move to use and which enemy to attack.

Despite the simplicity of the dinosaurs, the strategy needed to successfully compete in matches can be very involved and a lot of fun. Before too long you’ll have a good collection of dinosaurs so you spend some time setting up your teams depending on where in the world you are and what type of enemies you’ll come up against. You fight a lot out the in wild as there are other Fossil Fighters also looking for bones. You’ll have most of your matches competing for claiming rights to a fossil. There is an arena where you have “official” matches that let you level up, but those are pretty few and far between. If there’s one big point to complain about is that you can’t just go fight whenever you want to. You’d think you’d be able to go the arena, ring the gong, and have a random fight. Not so. This means you have no choice but to go on quests to fight. You really have to learn on-the-fly without many throw away matches.

Other than the fighting, the game is pretty straight forward. You can use the stylus to run around or the d-pad, which is great because I really can’t stand using the stylus for movement. I can safely say if I had to use the stylus for every action in the game I wouldn’t have continued playing it. You also have your standard random people to talk to and get information. There’s a town of sorts that has a store, a hotel, and all the other places you’d expect to find. There is a cash element to game where you can find or exchange extra fossils for money, then use that money to buy upgrades and rarities, but it takes a bit to gain a fat wallet.

Fossil Fighters is a wonderfully balanced game. There’s plenty of questing, plenty of collecting, and a good dose of fighting. The game makes you use the DS interface in a logical and comfortable way. At no point are you awkwardly have to click-tap or run-click your way around. You use the stylus when you expect and you can use buttons when you want. Not to mention the game does a great job at getting you into the game quickly. There isn’t a lot of exposition or back story to sit through. You’re here to find dinosaurs and make them fight, ’nuff said.

I’m really surprised that the game has kept my attention for as long as it has. I’ve tried other collect ‘em games before, like Pokemon, but none of them stuck like Fossil Fighters. If you’re looking for something spectacularly new, you probably won’t find it, but if you’re looking for a game that uses all your DS skills while offering some great think-fighting, then this game won’t disappoint. It might look boring like Animal Crossing or other “lets wander” game, but it’ll suck you in pretty quick because there’s an actual goal - that being fighting.

And if you do like dinosaurs in general, then this game is probably a no-brainer. But dinosaurs still aren’t cooler than giant robots or spaceships.