Betcha you thought we were dead huh? Well you're dead wrong. In case you haven't realized yet, we deliver rain or shine, like the postal service, or if you're THAT kind of person, anonymous.
Well I've gone and done it. I figured I wouldn't buy the new Pokemon game because I thought it looked dumb and stupid and smelly and all other words synonymous with "Boring" (as thought of by a fifth grader.) But it's literally like saying "No" to Chuck Norris, the situation just gets awkward, then you are obliged by law to say "Yes".
If you weren't aware how buying Pokemon games worked:
It goes a little something like that.
Well believe me, I tried as hard as I could to NOT buy it, but gosh darn it, it happened. So here I am in a room that is almost at freezing temperature, trying to relay how felt about the game.
So you know how Pokemon works?
Start Game >Catch Pokemon >Beat Gym Leaders >CATACLYSM!! > Beat Elite Four
Simple, but Black and White both took steps in the other direction and totally changed up the paradigm.
Start Game > Catch Pokemon > Beat Gym Leaders > Beat Elite Four > CATACLYSM!!!! > Do it again loser, lulz.
Whoopdie Doo. Alright, sarcasm aside, the game DOES change up the process from the previous generations and made people go "What?" for a few seconds before they adjusted and did as they were told. The game really doesn't stray much further than the usual "Gotta catch 'em all" premise. The thing that WAS a real shock to me when I started up the game was the exclusion of all Pokemon from previous generations. I was actually impressed by this because it seemed like Gamefreak was trying to phase out of the whole "The Game was designed for the kiddies" thing. I was kind of shocked, then I immediately resumed the game trying to figure out how to revamp my team, now that I couldn't get my level 80 Porygon-Z onto the cartridge and blow everything up.
And that's the marvelous point of it! It's designed to make newcomers feel welcome, as well as making the die-hard fans of the series rethink their teams and relive the thrill that we all once experienced with Red, Blue, and Yellow. It is, in essence, the modern-day Red, Blue, and Yellow.
So after covering the additions that really changed it up a bit, let's review some minor changes that really did help with the annoying aspects that we all just mashed the A button to.
First, you can register more than one key item. (OH GOD YES IT FEELS LIKE CANDY.) This was my biggest gripe with the entire series. You could only ever have one key item selected at a time, and it was usually...
A) The Bicycle
B) The Super Rod
or C) The Itemfinder
You can have up to TWENTY different items in your Y button menu. Even better about this is that you can even select different pockets for items, Pokemon in your party, or the Pokedex. This is a really good idea that should have been implemented in Generation III, where I was CONSTANTLY changing around items to fit my needs. You can even line them all up with a "Auto-Organize" button. How cute.
Another thing that changed was the introduction of "Phenomena", which occur randomly on the map, and can help you find rare Pokemon and items. Other than that, there really isn't anything else groundbreaking about the additions, but they're still all very interesting.
Gameplaywise, nothing's changed really. Battling is made much more interesting with the addition of moving sprites that jump and jiggle in response to attacks and the like. Even more fun to watch is how your Pokemon act when affected by status conditions and such. One tiny drawback is the addition of the "You're Screwed MUSIC". In the old games it was the "You're Screwed Sound" which was that annoying beeping noise that wouldn't stop until your Pokemon recovered from the brink of death. This music was funny at first, but after a few battles where I was getting stressed, it started to have an effect on my playing. The beeping is STILL there, only this time, it's beeping in time with the music track, and it synchronizes nicely, but OH MY GOD IT IS SO ANNOYING
Well, it's forgivable.
Now for the part that will hopefully catch your eye as you skim my verbose babble. T3H POKEYMANZ. The game comes packed with the suckers, and Gamefreak did a good job with most of them, but some of them are just, just... worse than Mr. Mime. The starters are awesome (I picked Snivy) and they evolve into beasts of untold awesome. There's the grass type starter that got you kicked out of friend circles if you picked it, the fire type which EVERYONE liked, and the water type for people who didn't really want to bother with much. There's the Pokemon you encounter at the start that are total crap, and then there are the Pokemon that you see and go "WTF? Imma catch that" (read: Scraggy). It's pretty obvious that Gamefreak was running out of ideas when it came to some of them though. "Patrat", "Woobat", and Klink Klang, and Klinklang. There are quite few epic Pokemon like Beheeyem, Chandelure, Scrafty, and Volcarona, so I guess it evens out. I was rofl-ing throught the entire game because of the sheer stupidity of some NPC's, but in all honesty, it was a better generation for new pokemon than Gen II (Scizor and Porygon2 are the only good ones, don't even bother arguing)
It all is tied together with a plot that doesn't really change.
And why would you mess with a winning strategy like this?
I wouldn't do it.
But I bet you would.
You sicken me.
So in the end, it's a Pokemon game, but it's probably the best one yet. I said it, I know a lot of people dig the old games, but this game is the only one that I can actually keep playing without getting bored. It gives as much as you put into it, and I don't think you could find another Pokemon game that could do that.
