[REVIEW] Super Pokemon Rumble (3DS)

For years, I've always been incredibly wary of Pokemon spin-off games. It seemed that for a while, they were scraping the barrel with titles such as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (of which there were five, I think) and the irritating manic-circle-drawing-fest that was Pokemon Ranger, which actually managed to snare thirty quid of my hard-earned cash as it is the only way to get the legendary Pokemon Manaphy. And I shelled out for the sequel, too. I played those games through to the end with a frozen grimace on my face, desperate for my prize at the end of it all.

So how did I end up with Super Pokemon Rumble? Normally I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, unless there was a rare Pokemon associated with it, or some other massive benefit to myself. I played it briefly at GAMEFest where it raised a reaction of "meh", although I was horrifically hungover, so pretty much everything got that reaction bar the girls giving out free Mountain Dew. No, I popped into my (former) shop for a quick chat with the lads, and noticed that it'd been slashed in price from £34.99 to just £19.99, only a week or two after its release. For some reason, something just snapped, and I thought "What the hell."

To say that I was pleasantly surprised is a small understatement. I was, in all honesty, expecting to ten day exchange this game, but it's simple appeal has me hooked. There's some vague story that runs through it, but I shan't bore you with that. The idea goes something like this. It's sort of implied that you're some kid who collects wind-up pokemon toys - but you only ever seem to walk around as whichever toy is chosen to be first in your party. You proceed in a fairly linear fashion through levels where different types of wind-up Pokemon toys will come and attack you. You must hammer the A button until they are all dead. Sometimes you will be rewarded with a new wind up toy of the breed that you just demolished, sometimes not. The random nature of which toys can be collected means that levels get replayed, so you can collect 'em all.

But wait! Are you meant to catch them all? There doesn't seem to be any pokedex available in-game, apart from in the village. There's the Toy Shop, where it's implied that you can swap your Pokemon toys via Streetpass, although you don't seem to be able to choose anything, people just come and throw money at you. In the village there is also the release point, for when you have too many... But I've got HUNDREDS of the buggers, and I don't seem to be short of pocket space. And then, suddenly, I had my epiphany.

I had been reading FAR too much into the meaning of this game. The reason it seemed so simple on the outside was because frankly, it's simple on the inside as well. This is a good old fashioned frenzied button-bashing game, and it keeps it simple with a maximum of two buttons that can be assigned to your toy. The idea is to cause as much destruction as possible, then at the end of each little level you are rewarded with some wholly unexpected drum and bass. Oh yeah, probably forgot to mention the thrash metal introduction too. If you purchase this game, do yourself a favour and have your first game with the volume turned right up - the music is excellent!

So all in all, a rather pleasing little gem. It's completely mindless, and there's much of it I don't understand, but it's GREAT to just pick up and play in short bursts, lunch breaks, for example. Fortunately, I think my new colleagues already think I'm a bit nuts, so the sight of me giggling into my DS doesn't seem to faze them! :)

A joyfully violent romp, but they're only wind-up toys, so it's fine! 4/5

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.

[SNIPPETS] A round-up of February's activity.

Seems like real life's been keeping me busy for the past couple of weeks, not giving me an awful lot of time to get stuck into as many games as I'd like. In spite of that, here are a few snippets that kept me amused throughout the month:

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Would you let this tit anywhere near your car? I mean, seriously, look at him. Tim Westwood is, at 53 years of age, old enough to be my father. Whilst my own father (and many of your fathers, I suspect) is prone to bouts of daft behaviour, none have lasted as long as Westwood's delusion that he is some kind of "gangsta". I will not dispute the fact that the man has an unmatchable love for hiphop and rap music, nor the good work that he has done in bringing this to the people of the UK (for 25 years, no less!) but if he came anywhere near my car I'd go spare. Just as well then, that he doesn't feature whatsoever in Pimp My Ride DS, a game which was bought for me as a joke present by my lovely husband.

It is widely known in gaming circles that the Pimp My Ride game on the 360 is a massive pile of gash, and I expected no less from the DS version. Amusingly enough, however, I've found it strangely addictive, and keep popping it into my DS every now and again for a quick race. The massive downside to this game - can't be played for more than 20 minutes at a time, as it makes my eyeballs feel like they're about to bleed from the badly animated backgrounds. But hey ho! Not bad for £1.39!

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Oh dear, speaking of let-down games, I picked up a copy of Venetica on the 360 having read some crap reviews of how the graphics are appalling, but the game oddly charming. (For those wondering, yes, I AM some kind of masochist.) The story is cute, "orphan" girl's village is attacked by supernatural fellas, foster family reveals girl is Death's daughter, Death is in trouble, daughter must come to Daddy's aid. There were two major factors in me not giving this game a fair chance. The first was the fact that I had a migraine coming on, the second (which exacerbated the first point somewhat) is that this game is CLUNKY. The graphics, the controls, the menu system, all of it. At this point, I made a sad noise, gave up and went to bed. :(

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Other things that have kept me occupied this month:

Little Big Planet 2 multiplayer - Finally rediscovered the joy of 4-player 1-screen gaming. Even though I was the Sack Thing that died/got stuck/got left behind the most I found it exciting and not too frustrating. Not that I'd deliberately suicide myself at the difficult bits and wait to respawn at the next point when my chums had got there or anything...

Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money - After adding 8 levels to my character and summoning up the balls to finally go for it, I descended on the Sierra Madre. Yep, I'm still finding it pretty terrifying, but a new challenge as resources are limited for the first time in the game. Finding myself relying on my Unarmed skill, which I've never really used before.

Looking forward to the new Pokemon - By this time next week, it'll be in my sweaty little hands. Who will I choose as my starter pokemon? How will it compare with the other games? And how the hell will I get 300+ pokemon off my other carts onto this one? The fun and games, they begin again. *sigh*