What I'm playing

Every Monday I'll write up something about what I'm currently playing, and with the release of Pokemon yesterday, Pokemon Black/White and the series as a whole is the subject.

Blitzle, he's pretty cool.

So far, I have nothing bad to say about the game. It really encapsulates the feel of the first generation again, but with some new ideas. The way they designed which Pokemon show up and where in the overall progress of your adventure is back to Red/Blue levels of brilliance. I'd still say the second generation is my favorite, with HeartGold being among, if not the best, Pokemon game; but the first games had a way better difficulty curve and a steady stream of interesting and new Pokemon to discover at any point in the game. 

Perhaps I notice this Pokemon progression more having just played Pearl, which by far had the worst choice in Pokemon, and was designed in such a way that there was no incentive to catching more monsters. Incentives in gaming is another thing that interests me greatly, and I'll probably write about it tomorrow, but back to the Pokemon topic. The aim of the Pokemon franchise, according to their slogan, is to "Catch 'em all," and part of the appeal to this is the fact that the Pokemon themselves are interesting and unique. The 4th generation did horribly in promoting the slogan, as the beginning of the game was filled with

I don't think this thing is an electric type.

nothing but 1st gen pokes and the new ones they did add were boring. It was like this throughout the entire game, in fact. The severe lack of new Pokemon really killed the fun, as I usually only use new pokemans when playing a new pokeman game. But when you have no new Pokemon to add, what's the point? Two facts about how horrible Pearl/Diamond are: there are THREE new fire types, the starter of course, an evolution to Magmar, and a legendary. That means, if you don't pick the fire starter, you pretty much won't have a fire
Pokemon for the rest of the game. The other fact is the electric type gym leader has four Pokemon: Raichu, Ambipom, Octillery, and Luxray. 2 of these aren't electric types, and 2 of these aren't new pokemon. Now, when you have a game that requires you to beat your opponent based on attack-types over strategy, you can't have a gym leader use Pokemon that aren't the types advertised. I feel like a stupid little nerd kid for complaining about Pokemon design, but it is one of the biggest games around and design choices like these are deplorable and almost arbitrary. Well anyhow, I should get back to wrting about Black/White, and stop complaining.

Lookit this guy! He totally wears clothes!?

These new games manage to capture the feeling of playing Pokemon when you're a kid, all the new things to discover, new pokemon to catch, and new mechanics to utilize really makes a new experience without really changing the same old great stuff. The way I've played Pokemon after the 1st generation was to catch only the Pokes I needed. If I found a cool water type, but already had a water type, I wouldn't catch it. This is counter-intuitive to what Pokemon is about, and they got it right the first time, and have finally gotten it right again this time. I found myself catching everything I could find. I've got around 10 pokemon already and I only have two badges. This is how the game should be played, with constantly changing teams you create while going on a big adventure. I only got 6 Pokemon in Pearl and made it to the end with those 6, two of which weren't new. This game really captures that feeling of exploration and adventure that is crucial to the franchise, while still keeping to the basics.

One thing that annoys me is the fact that there are (at least) two separate Pokemon teams, one for remakes and one for the main games, that seemingly never interact with each other. It seems the remake team has better design ideas for the most part, yet they are being wasted on simple remake games. I liked the following Pokemon, the PokeWalker, and the touch screen controls. These are all things that were added as a part of HeartGold and were not implemented into Black/White. Now, maybe since the games were being made parallel to one another, the ideas didn't have time to cross over. But the thing with iterative design is building upon ideas instead of starting new each time. If the next game doesn't have the new stuff that was exclusive to a remake, than I must say GameFreak really needs to switch the teams around.

This one sort of looks like a walking anus, and that's pretty cool.

Well it looks like this post turned into a rant of hate towards Pearl/Diamond, which is too bad as I am really liking the new game. I gotta construct these beforehand instead of just spewing out words that don't work together. But in summary, the new game has somehow captured the feeling that no other Pokemon game has since the very first ones, and that makes it superb. Also their tile system is in 3D and it looks absurdly good.