Pokémon Black & White

The long anticipated Pokémon games have arrived. Before I get into details however, I'd like to note that this is the Bibliotheque's first review, so this may not be up to standards and slightly amateurish compared to the other reviews to come (hopefully).

Firstly, my opinion of the game. It's great, and although we lost an ability to walk with our Pokemon, we gain so much more. From enhanced graphics to non-static fighting scenes, we're all set to have our minds blown away. I particularily like Castelia City for it's resemblance to New York and being so different from the other cities. On one hand you've got all these small cities that fans are familiar with (excluding the main giant cities, but even something like Goldenrod can't compare to Castelia) and we've got Castelia city, a huge city where I actually got lost the first couple of times walking around. It's pretty much like the huge buildings on the box of Monopoly. Its resemblance to New York is noticable too from the piers and the streets, and I think the park is supposed to represent Central Park. If you get the Liberty pass from the Wi-Fi event, people who have been to New York will notice that it's design is a smaller sized version of the island where the Statue of Liberty resides. You've got no statue, but you do have the lighthouse where you can meet Victini.

Battling is less static as mentioned before. Pokémon move around, camera angles change after a period of time and attacking, and status conditions are shown with more than a title somewhere near it's name. I've seen Victini go to sleep, and it's funny how it does a jig while it's eyes are closed taking z's. However, the moves aren't as up to date. Most of these move animations are taken directly from generation 4 with slight updates. Nothing too stunning there, sometimes I wonder why.

Triple and Rotation battles have been added too. I haven't gotten into a triple battle yet, but I find rotational battles to be very strategic. However, these battles rarely happen, so other than versing friends, I don't see why they couldn't have put more of these battles in.

Storyline was never important to Pokémon. The original Red/Blue never had a true storyline, so it's not really an important aspect of the game. In Black and White, we're introduced to Team Plasma, a group of Pokémon activists that want to liberate Pokémon from the control of humans. Wow, that's a huge step from Team Rocket. I haven't gotten far enough yet to judge the storyline, but from the looks of it, it's pretty intense.

Music, as many other reviewers have said before me, isn't anything special. There are some good tracks, and I especially love the rival battle music and when the gym leader is down to his/her last pokémon. These tracks don't last long because, well, you've beaten them, and they're not tracks that happen often. People who say music was never important, I say nay. Why else would they include the GB player in Heartgold and Soulsilver? The developpers know the original music rocked (no pun intended). I will point out though that this shouldn't influence on the game too heavily.

What I don't understand is why people are bashing on the looks of Pokémon and bashing at the fact that the formula is still the same? The designs I could slightly understand, as a few do look downright wierd (Scraggy and Crafty to be an example), but the gameplay formula I truly never got. Why doesn't anyone criticize the Mario and Zelda formula? You're still the same Mario jumping on enemies and eating mushrooms, and you're still the same yet different Link (who somehow always looks the same) that's rescuing Zelda. No one's bashing on that, so why bash on this formula? The developpers don't change this because it works very well, and if you're not looking for that kind of game, theres always spin-offs or even a different game. I find critics too harsh on the Pokémon games as they keep asking for the series to "evolve". It doesn't need to, it works fine and we can put an everstone on it. The console games on the other hand...

Bit by bit (again, no pun intended) the games are gradually growing more advanced since the days of Red/Blue. Heck, as I'm typing this the 3DS will come soon, and I'm going to be interested as to see what GameFreak will think up next for the 3DS generation. I'm not really sold into the 3D gimmick, but I guess that's going to be a review for another day. Enjoy playing Black and White, and if you don't have the games I strongly recommend that you consider buying them.

05:20, March 11, 2011 (UTC)