gaming simplified

Pokemon is one of Nintendo’s oldest franchises, debuting back in 1996 on the good old reliable Game Boy. Since then, a Pokemon game (or several) have appeared on every Nintendo platform, except the Virtual Boy, and has remained a stable and steady money printing source for Nintendo as well as providing hours and hours of entertainment for its fans.

Oddly enough, for no particular reason, I’ve never played a Pokemon game until recently with Pokemon SoulSilver. My understanding is that the core Pokemon games have not changed all that much from their Pokemon Red/Blue debut in 1996. Pokemon SoulSilver reflected this, as I felt that it played like it was still a Game Boy game with hacked on touch screen controls. I do have to admit though, the Pokewalker was a neat alternative to leveling up your pokemon.

After my poor experience with Pokemon SoulSilver, I was ready to call it quits with the Pokemon franchise. That is until Pokemon White/Black was nearing release. The games were getting positive previews, with an emphasis on updated game play mechanics, so I decided to give Pokemon another try (it didn’t help that my friend Jeffrey was encouraging me to pick up the game).

The basics of Pokemon White/Black haven’t changed a bit. You play as a new adventurer setting out to grow up by becoming a pokemon training grand champion. Along the way you encounter other pokemon trainers, wild pokemon, and a requisite bad group which is, in this case, a semi pokemon rights activist group. This sounds all well and good, but the story surrounding the pokemon rights doesn’t really go anywhere and only serves a purpose to give the player more opponents to fight against. And besides, you don’t play a Pokemon game for the story, you play it to collect and level up all the available pokemon. In this respect, Pokemon White/Black (and any of the core Pokemon games) does its job just fine.

Much of Pokemon White/Black doesn’t feel as outdated as Pokemon SoulSilver did – many issues I had with how the game played was addressed. The biggest problem in this new game is the UI. Despite being on a touch screen enabled device, I found that the UI was too menu heavy. In many cases, the player has to traverse several submenu items to do simple tasks such as pokemon management or item use. You do get used to the UI eventually, but this is something that will hopefully be fixed in the Nintendo 3DS games.

Speaking of the Nintendo 3DS, why Nintendo didn’t release Pokemon White/Black for their brand new system? Instead, Nintendo released two Nintendo DSi color bundles. I believe they would have sold way more Nintendo 3DS consoles if they had a brand new Nintendo 3DS exclusive Pokemon game at launch, but that’s just me – I’m sure Nintendo knows what they’re doing.

On a side note, Pokemon White/Black plays and looks better on a Nintendo DSi than on a Nintendo 3DS. It loads faster, has faster save times, and the lower resolution LCD (not to mention larger) of the Nintendo DSi makes the game look better and crisper. The game itself even assumes the player is playing on a Nintendo DSi and refers to the system as such in the menu and tutorial systems. Finally, the game has a battery meter on the touch screen which is tuned to measure the remaining battery on the Nintendo DSi. When played on a Nintendo 3DS, the remaining battery isn’t measured correctly and incorrectly informs the player that they’re running out of battery.

With all that said, Pokemon White/Black is an enjoyable game. It does have issues with UI and a lack of a driven story, but my issues are just minor considering the target audience ultimately wants to just collect and trade pokemon. The core mechanics of the game play are tried and true, having remained unchanged for the most part since 1996. I guess Nintendo figures why change something if it isn’t broken, right? If you want to give Pokemon a try, picking up Pokemon White/Black would be your best choice. But if you can wait, the Nintendo 3DS versions are just around the corner…