Triview: Pokemon Black

Close, but just falling short of the mark: 4/5

Pokemon.  A franchise you either politely and determinedly ignore, like a yelling homeless man on the London Underground, or one which you follow with an insane glint in your eye and a fire in your heart that may well turn you into that yelling homeless man on the London Underground. I fall into the latter category, I fear. An avid Pokemon fan since the age of eight when I stole my brother's version of Blue and used his Venusaur to destroy a Persian, I am hooked and lost to the world.

The franchise has continued, rightly or wrongly, for fifteen years, spinning off shows and toys and comic books, plus a whole host of other gimmicks, interesting for five minutes and hanging around for just as long. Yes, at one point I really did want a Pokemon themed N64. But we won't talk about that. After all, Pokemon is a collector's game; now with 650 little critters to collect, I'd say you'd have to be dangerously obsessed to keep on going. So of course, I (being too poor and wretched to buy it myself) had someone get me Pokemon Black for my very next birthday. I don't have White, but Pokemon Black is almost certainly indistinguishable from Pokemon White. Your choice is mostly dependent on your arbitrary colour preferences - I've always been more drawn to the ones with a slightly more blue-ish hue; Blue, Crystal, Sapphire, Leafgreen, Diamond. Black and White defy this though, one being the absence of colour and the other being encompassing of all colours. Nintendo are contrary, that way.

That's all they're willing to differ on, though. Pokemon is the same game alright; same trekking through different landscapes, same fighting trainers, same turn based battles and levelling-up. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way; Pokemon Snap being the exception, most other spin-off games where lacking in story, interest or actual challenge, due to being either for children or just ill-conceived, like Colosseum, which involved stealing from other trainers (heroic theft, you understand) and riding around on a motorcycle. If you were just thinking to yourself "that sounds so much cooler!" then you'd be wrong. It could have been, but it wasn't.

Despite it sticking rigidly to its routes, Black has to offer some interesting additions. There's been a perspective shift that allows you to walk up and down and around winding paths - although still no diagonal movement, for reasons we can only guess. Despite the (frankly rubbish) graphics, this makes for a lot of nice visuals a Pokemon fan wouldn't really be expecting. It gives it an extra dimension, even if you are not actually playing in 3D. The Pokemon gyms are entertaining too, with themes like amusement parks and giant honey combs providing the usual interesting puzzles before the final boss fight. There are also changes in weather, night and day, even seasons. All this adds to the overall atmosphere of the game and gives it a much more classic RPG feel, rather than a "go this way and do that thing, then do it again in another place" formula, which is what I come to associate with Pokemon. Whilst there is comfort in familiarity, there is also boredom.

What of the story, then? Well, to be honest, it's the same old tripe. You're a trainer who's nice to Pokemon and stuff, you have some friends and good parents, but there are bad people. Bad, bad people who want to exploit the poor little creatures that you keep lovingly stashed away in tiny balls kept on your belt until you need them to beat the crap out of each other. You must defeat these evil people, not with swords or guns, but with Pokemon battles. When they lose, they don't punch you in the face or anything. They just scurry away, crying with shattered egos. You must also become the Pokemon champion. Why? Because it's your dream, apparently. I'm starting to think "Your Pokemon Journey" is a bit like the education system. You toil away at it uselessly until your head explodes because everyone tells you that you must, only to find at the end of it all you've no useful qualifications for what you actually want to do.

I like the Pokemon formula and I think it's a shame that there isn't another direction in which to take it. When I was ten, it occurred to me that, since I'd beaten Giovanni, I'd make a kick-ass Team Rocket leader. Only the option was never made available to me. I could also have been a professor, very easily, or a gym leader, or a breeder. You can play at being these things in your head, pertaining to be an expert at this or a master at that until all your real life friends leave you in favour of normal company, but you can't do it in the game, where it counts. Instead, you have to be patronised by every Tom, Dick and Harry telling you brightly that "Some Pokemon evolve when you trade them!" like you haven't done it a million times before.

You'll be pleased to know that the names of the Pokemon are as amusingly uninventive as ever. I don't know what the original Japanese names for these critters were, but if they are any worse than their English equivalents then they are truly something to behold. Honestly, a creature that's a cross between a lily and a puppy doesn't have to actually be called Lillipup. That kind of thing doesn't strike me so much as pragmatism as just bollock laziness. Oh, and does anyone remember that Pokemon called Zubat? Yeah, you know the one you can't ignore because it pops up every five seconds in every cave. Well, how about a new version of that? Called... Woobat. Yeah, that sounds good. When I read that, I thought: "Well, really! Whatever next. Will the evolved form be called Xolbat, after 'Golbat'?" I was joking, but one day my Woobat did evolve. It was called.... Swoobat. Hmm. At least I won't forget its new name.

The bottom line is, Black feels old. It can be inventive, but in all the least important ways. It's a shame, because it was just starting to feel like an adventure again, an adventure that could actually feel like a real adventure for a cynical adult at the grand old age of twenty-one. Game Freak keep adding little bits, complicated little parts to "improve" the original game. As a result, it becomes bulky, stale, over-complicated and badly mixed, like a cake made from all the leftovers in your fridge that expire at midnight. A reworking of a simple idea into another, different, simple idea would be so much better. After all, the idea of Pokemon was not to walk around talking to people and searching endlessly for piddling little items that may come in handy later. The idea was the Pokemon themselves and there are 101 things you can do with fictional critters. Those same 150 original critters.

Ever like to cosplay as Pokemon?