Pokémon: Black and White Game Review

Review of the Pokémon: Black and White Game

Let’s Review Pokémon: Black and White; by the way, I played the white version. Why the white version? Well, the only difference between the two are the types of monsters the player has to catch in each version and of course, an excuse to bother your parents or significant other to get you both versions to get a 100% completion! With that said, let’s talk a little about the Pokémon game franchise.

BACKGROUND:
The Original Pokémon: Red and Blue Series, was originally out for the Game Boy (that’s the black and white Game Boy, no color) in 1996. All of this is revolving around a main character, named by the player, and his dream of being some sort of master of these critters. This old game kicks off with the main character leaving his home town on a journey to collect badges to prove his worth, thus bringing him closer to being a Pokémon master. Okay, so long story short the main goal is to catch all 150 critters, beat all eight gym leaders and elite four. By the way good luck doing that because Nintendo made it impossible to catch all 150 of the monsters with a single cartridge; that could be because they made two different versions, blue and red, putting half the monsters in one and half in the other, so unless you had a friend with the other version or two Game Boys, you couldn’t possibly finish the game. BUT! Times are a changing, let us see what’s new in the newly released versions Black and White. So about 15 Pokémon games later, they come out with black and white. Things have certainly changed and by changed I mean kind of not changed at all, and by not changed at all; I mean wow it’s really involved with itself. You start off as a kid, either boy or girl, leaving home to catch all the critters in the game and beat this seasons bad guy ,team plasma ,collect all eight gym badges, beat the elite four, then move on to the champion of all the lands. That was a mouthful!! It may sound like every other game, but this one is a lot more elaborate. You even meet the antagonist very early and discuss all his beliefs. Compared to red and blue, this game seems never-ending because to accomplish all the aforementioned tasks, you’re looking at over 100 hours of game play!!

WHATS NEW:
Boatloads of stuff has been added! I would say about over a 100 new monsters to catch, racking up the Pokémon total well over 600. They have anew Gimmick mechanic to this version called the Dream World, where you can connect to a website made by Nintendo to unlock additional content and/or specific monsters with abilities you wouldn’t normally find without it. The running mechanic has been improved such that when holding the B button, you can run faster than the other versions which seems like a small thing, but if you have played the other versions or even the originals this is a very welcomed addition! New Moves and abilities have been added to these little monsters repertoire, so if you were hoping to depend on old tactics from previous generations you might as well throw out every strategy you’ve learned until the midgame because you won’t be encountering much from that playbook. The Market where you would purchase your healing items, pokéballs and other assorted items has moved into the Pokécenter and is now the one stop shop for all your healing needs. Graphics have improved but I wouldn’t necessarily give them a gold star for this because all games nowadays have nice graphics, but I will give them the gold star for what they did with the graphics by making the world your exploring, a feel genuinely big so when you enter a city you actually feel like you could get lost. Triple battles have been introduced into the world now which I personally feel is a bit much; But hey its different and at least they are trying to squeeze out every bit of different they can muster for this new iteration of the franchise!

FIRST IMPRESSION:
I’ve played these games before and maybe it’s just me but this game never grabbed me like the previous release soul silver and heart gold. I was very put off to this game till the mid part of it. For one thing the new monsters you can catch ehh they’re not the prettiest things. I mean some of these sprites are just not to my personal taste and all I could think about is importing all the older characters to use, not the over powered, but just the ones I preferred because I felt the Pokémon made before this one just overall look better. But after a while I found a few that looked better than others, but personal preference, blah whatever! Also, this game is super involved in its own story. I mean having a story is fine but having too much story is not for me. I couldn’t even take one step out of tone without having my ear talked off and mashing the A button for what feels like five minutes. Constantly swapping out weaker monsters for stronger ones and banishing the weaker monsters to the cold abyss known as the pc to never be looked at again, leaves me in wanting to see a release of a version of this game where the main character has a surprise ending of being evil capturing monsters and removing them from their habitats just to have a complete collection just for the sake of having one. Speaking of the bad guys, the way the bad characters act are so comical, I could only imagine them as people with curly mustaches twisting them while laughing, like snidely whiplash. The whole team plasma as a whole, yes I get that your ironic in how you promote this whole freedom to Pokémon, but then later it shows as being cruel to them. I think eventually the player gets it and I would have preferred better developed bad guys, just saying!

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Would I recommend this game? If you’re are a parent and want to keep the kids down for the next month or so then sure! As you’re at it, I recommend buying both versions! Even if you’ve played a Pokémon game before, I suggest you rent it first or borrow a friend’s because this game took me a while to get accustomed to; the game has a very strong middle and end. This could be because the previous games seemed so similar to each other, so your expectation seems the same, but you will be shocked! It throws tons and tons of content at you. They even go to extreme lengths to change the battle system, so you can be able to learn new strategies and find all the new type combination of monsters to build your perfect team of monster! By the way, there’s a Pokémon that looks like an ice-cream cone, it’s too adorable!! :)

Written by D.R.
Edited by C.P.