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Pokemon Black (DS)
by LauraHannan
==Pokemon Black==
The latest instalment in the Pokemon series; how does it fare?
===The Story===
This is probably the most complex of the handheld Pokemon games in terms of story, but in spite of this it's still pretty formulaic. You're still a child kicked out of the house at an absurdly young age to run ... from town to town catching Pokemon, beating gym leaders and unravelling some secret (but completely unsubtle and cliché) cabal of bad guys, wondering why there isn't a police force in PokemonLand. That said, the latest Team Rocket expy, Team Plasma, have a very interesting twist to them that instantly elevates Black above the rest of the Pokemon franchise. They're animal rights activists.
It's a nice touch, as if Game Freak heard all the jokes about how horrific the PokeVerse is when you think about it (I wonder how my 151 pokemon that have been locked in a tiny ball inside a computer since 1998 in Pokemon Yellow are doing...) and made a little shout-out to all the older Pokefans out there. Unfortunately, they don't take it far enough; in the end, the player is assured that the activists were all just evil tricksters with an ulterior motive, and catching Pokemon and forcing them to fight for your amusement is good, honest. It's understandable, since every Pokemon game is essentially aimed at a new generation of youngsters who Nintendo don't want to put off with complex moral ambiguity, but sometimes I wish they'd make a game that rewards older fans for their loyalty to the series. This could have been it, but it missed the mark.
===The Gameplay===
There are now different types of battling to shake gameplay up, with double battles being available for wild Pokemon and triple battles and 'rotation battles' for trainers. These make travelling up long towers and roads much less of a repetitive slog and add a little bit more scope for strategy.
There are some nice little innovations to the time mechanism; the game now changes seasons as well as night and day, with certain Pokemon only appearing in certain seasons, and others changing their appearance depending on the season. Other little things have been changed to make gameplay flow a lot quicker, like slightly faster battles, and combining the PokeMart and Pokemon Centres into one building.
Mini-games are still available, the Contests of previous games being replaced with 'Musicals', which are much the same, and the Battle Subway fulfilling the role of the Battle Frontiers/Towers of previous games.
===The New Pokemon===
I've gotten the distinct feeling in recent years that the Pokemon production team are running out of ideas and have taken to sitting in the street making Pokemon out of anything they see. So how does Black fare? Well...there's an ice-cream Pokemon...and a pigeon Pokemon...and a garbage Pokemon...
And I feel silly for some reason.
===The Graphics===
Pokemon Black's graphics are really cool. Each gym has a unique and awesome design (there's a gym with rollercoasters in it!), and outside buildings look 3 dimensional even without 3D enabled, ranging from little villages to towering skyscrapers. In battle pokemon have even more animations, making the whole experience look a lot better.
===The Music===
Par the course for a Pokemon game: lots of catchy little jingles for every town, battle situation and so on. There are some really stand out pieces, such as Ghestis' battle theme, which I would happily put in my Top 5 most awesome boss battle themes of all time.
===Conclusion===
In summary, this is a solid game in the Pokemon franchise and a must have for any long term Pokeman, while as always being completely accessible to newbies. The music is great, the graphics are great, and the story is an improvement on the standard formula even if it doesn't go far enough. Much recommended!
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Harvest Fishing (DS)
by eternal-rapture
I am a big fan of the Harvest Moon series, but when I first saw Harvest Fishing I was slightly perplexed - fishing is usually included in the regular Harvest Moon games as a mini-game, but a game totally dedicated to it? Regardless, I decided to give it a try.
PLOT: Your sister has fallen asleep and wont wake up. To help her, ... you have to find the River King, the biggest fish in the river, because for some unexplained reason finding the fish will get your little sister out of her coma. Yeah.
Ok, so the plot is a little weird and doesnt really make much sense. Surely if your sister FALLS INTO A COMA, the first thing you should do is call an ambulance, not go out on a fishing spree. And the best bit is that other characters in the game totally think it's cool that your sister is in a coma and are willing to help you with your fishing. Not one even mentions the possibility of getting medical help, which seems more than a bit thoughtless. But I guess Harvest Moon games have never been the most realistic - I mean, in real life, girls wont usually agree to marry you because you visited them every day bearing gifts of fish soup and iron ore :/ So I'll let the kooky plot slide for now.
Gameplay itself is fairly simple, you use the touchscreen to actually reel in the fish, and the game tutorial does a good job of running through all the basics with you the first time you play. The object of the game is to travel around various different 'fishing spots' - ponds, lakes, rivers, etc - and catch fish. Catching fish gives you points based on the size of the fish and its rarity, and you can use these points to buy better fishing rods or lure. By visiting different fishing spots at different times of the day, you can run into other characters who may be able to help you in exchange for catching them a certain number of fish, or competing against them in a fishing competition, and this does add variety and interest, but to be honest I don't think this game is for a lot of people as gameplay is very repetitive and can get boring, but I myself quite like this kind of game genre (I am a huge fan of Harvest Moon, Cooking Mama, Project Rub, etc) so I found this game really addictive and a good way to keep my hands busy while watching tv without being too distracting.
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Pokemon Black (DS)
by Shufflefish
As part of the "Pokemon Generation", I was very excited to buy this game and rushed to pre-order it as soon as I could from Amazon. Naturally I was still very excited when it arrived and rushed to play it.
Unfortunately, my nostalgic enthusiasm was short lived. Having grown up playing the games, I was expecting the ... same kind of feeling I'd had for the rest of the games. I bought Soul Silver and Diamond recently, but had not played Pokemon for about 6 years before that, so was naively expecting something very different from this game. I was obviously disappointed to finally realize that the game franchise had lost its "magical" feel, and was releasing rehash after rehash of the same story line with different character names.
It follows the same formula of all the other games:
- Defeat the 8 gym leaders
- Catch as many Pokemon as you can
- Defeat the Elite Four
- Defeat generic, evil, Pokemon catching team
However, I will admit I did like the graphical update that the game received. It did look much better than the previous games with it's slightly more 3D graphics and they were much more detailed than the very early editions of the game.
As a long time player, I can't say I hate this game. I do think this was a brilliant game, the first 5 times I played it, but after a while it becomes a repetitive chore and the childhood magic is lost. The story line is good, and it is a very fun game to play - if it is your first time playing. I couldn't help but feel that I'd been ripped off in buying a game that I might as well say I already own twice over already.
Summary of my review: buy only if you aren't worried about playing a game more than once.
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