If your cuckoo for Pokemon, odds are you'll pick up Pokemon Battle Revolution regardless of critical opinion. And fair enough, it's a great, reverently faithful, Pokemon stadium brawler where, turn by turn, you have your animated puffball take a magical/electrical/gluey-bubble swipe at another puffball, see what damage it does, then wait your turn as the fluffy little smackdown is returned. Yeehaw! Great fun.

Gamers other than Pokemaniacs, be warned. That's about all there is too it. And it isn't pretty about it, either, with graphics barely on par with last-generation systems, grating audio (music and commentary both), and interactively about as glamorous as ordering stuff off a Chinese food menu just to see if it's cooked.

Oh sure, you can upload all your Pokemon as acquired from Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Peal on Nintendo DS -- wirelessly and everything! -- and have them do battle, but that doesn't make the actual battles any more lively. Just more. Which, again, if you're a Pokefreak, is wow-this-is-GREAT!

And while Pokemon Battle Revolution does sport the world's first ever Wii-online head to head play, it’s a minimalistic mode with little to differentiate itself from the single-purpose play of the single player experience; just blind match ups with unknown people and their unknown Pokemon. Heaven help you if you stumble across some nutball that has every Pokemon available, each leveled to the max. The game's supercilious enough about your assumed adoration, like you need some remote Pokefreak slaughtering your clearly inferior yet hard earned stats, reminding you that you could be even more nuttier, more obsessed, if you really want to compete in what is otherwise a hopelessly bland game.

TIP: Completing all 10 Colosseums in Pokemon Battle Revolution will earn you a Level 10 Pikachu.

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