REVIEW: Pokemon Black (DS) - Part One



Oshawott. My starter Pokemon. Cute!



Firstly, a disclaimer. I am only seven hours into Pokemon Black. For some games, this might provide a full spectrum of everything the game has to offer (Bulletstorm being one of the most recent offenders, so I've heard) but just to put things into perspective, my Pokemon Pearl cartridge has clocked up around 350 hours, my Platinum about 100, my Diamond never really got past 20, but I did play it through twice to harvest the Legendaries and my SoulSilver clocked up around 40 hours but in my defence, I had started my chemistry degree by this point and that 40 hours might possibly have been better spent reading the last book in my second year course, Mechanism and Synthesis. Vital stuff. Still on my to-do list. One of my dear friends managed to put over a THOUSAND hours into one cart, with a few other Poke-freaks not far behind. (You know who you are!)

However, it's not all academic doom and gloom. Anyone who claims that Pokemon is a kids game is a) sorely mistaken, b) unable to grasp the complex statistics that underlie the gameplay, c) a chav, or d) all of the above. Yes, kids, Pokemon is at heart a MATHS game. Even at the most basic level of understanding, more powerful pokemon (with the bigger numbers) have a tendancy to be stronger than weaker pokemon (with the smaller numbers) before factoring in the multipliers for effectiveness. If I were so inclined to have children, I would INSIST that they play Pokemon. Me and Dad would be the harshest gym leaders they'd ever encountered. And by god they'd LEARN.

All of this makes me sound a little psychotic, so let's get to the nitty gritty. 150ish new pokemon, and this time, none of the old ones seem to be available in the first half of the game! This is a good thing, as everything is NEW and EXCITING. The starter Pokemon consist of a fire pig, a water otter and some kind of grass snake, who looks sort of like a smug weasel at the same time. So far, all my friends seem to have chosen Tepig, the fire pig. I'm not sure what this says about my friends, or the fact that I chose Oshawott, the water otter. Gameplay seems fairly quick to get into, the story is laid out quickly and easily, and it's then up to you to get into that long grass and seeking out Pokemon. After the first gym, multiplayer is opened up, although I haven't experiemented much with that yet.

So far, a worthy sequel. This review is entitled Part One for a reason - I'll get back to you in a hundred hours or so!

Scoring: 5/5 - Not even Fallout is this addictive. I may actually require medication at some point. If you're talking to me, and I've got my face buried in my DS, please don't think I'm being rude. I need help. Please help me.