Who doesn't love a good team-up? Batman and Robin! Artoo and Threepio! Peanut butter and chocolate! Some duos simply belong together. Unfortunately, the latest collaboration between Nintendo and Chunsoft brings together Pokémon and the Mystery Dungeon series for a team-up that's less steak and horseradish than Siegfried and Roy: They're together, and you kinda wish they weren't. But there's nothing you can do about it.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Darkness is actually the second time that these particular brands have collided, so you'd think that it might go a little more smoothly than their last cooperative outing. Alas, that's not the case -- everything that bogged down Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team a few years ago remains an issue this time around. It's slow, lacking in challenge, and misses the point of both of the franchises from which it's derived. This leads one to suspect that perhaps the problem isn't so much the game as the simple combination of two role-playing brands whose fundamental concepts are intrinsic opposites. Where Pokémon is about obsessive collection, slow but steady progress, and long-term commitment, the Mystery Dungeon games are about ephemeral achievements, easy-come-easy-go failures, and learning to accept that eventually you'll be sent back to the start with nothing to your name but whatever you've left in storage. How do you reconcile a creation that brings together gamers who use extensive spreadsheets to determine how to breed the best possible stat tweaks for their hundreds of monsters and a subgenre where surviving two hours without being sent back to zero is considered an accomplishment? If Explorers is any indication, you shouldn't bother trying.