Pokemon Black and White: The Sequel Pokemon Needed

Let me start this off with a story:

I have been buying Pokemon games since the Red and Blue versions came out in 1998. As such, I am a part of that special generation that dragged their unsuspecting parents to the Pokemon movies (just the first two, though). Since I bought my first Pokemon game, Blue Version, I have since bought and/or acquired: Yellow, Silver, crystal, Pearl, and Platinum. Apparently, I have a pattern where I'm fooled into buying a new Pokemon game and then I just HAVE to get the third one for each set.

Now, by the time Pearl Version came out, Pokemon had taken something of a dive in its former popularity. I don't know if this is true with most peoples' experience, but after a while, people got tired of hearing that there were more and more Pokemon. Basically, it felt like we were buying the same game with more and more Pokemon, not all of which were particularly likable.

So after defending my purchase, I bought Pearl Version. I was all about Giratina; I thought it was easily one of the coolest legendary Pokemon to come out of the series. So then they said they were going to release Pokemon Platinum, where Giratina was the game's mascot. So I stated that my new purpose in life was to buy Platinum. After being mocked about me being "addicted" to Pokemon, I again defended myself. I said, "Well, this is the last Pokemon game I am going to buy."

Nope.

I too was filled with the skepticism of my friends, but when I heard that Black and White were in development and that they were going to have new features, it popped on my radar. Then I read about the new features and saw that very few of the new features were not the same things that would get changed from game to game all the damn time.

I am generally a man of my word, so I needed something really new to happen in Pokemon Black or White. What sold it to me was that there were only new Pokemon for the first part of the game. ONLY new Pokemon. Know what that means?

In caves, I would run into NO GEODUDES AND NO ZUBATS. That was my prompt to get signed the heck up for Generation V of Pokemon (Jeez, five!?)

Where an I going with all of this? Well, as I assert in the title, I feel like this is exactly what a Pokemon sequel should be. Adding animations to the normally-still sprites was a great touch for presentation, as was adding a map that doesn't look like crap. And while certain Pokemon may not seem particularly well-designed (http://www.hejibits.com/comics/gray-matter/ is pretty accurate), I found a bunch I really like. Adding Triple Battles was pretty fun, too, though it can get a little frustrating when some moves don't reach other Pokemon.

If you are on the fence about buying Pokemon Black or White, I'd suggest edging over to the side of buying the game. It's not going to change your mind if you're a loyalist to the first generation of Pokemon, but I had a blast discovering the new Pokemon and exploring a new game world. Pokemon was growing a little gray around the edges, even for a loyalist like me, but this one felt fresh enough that I didn't at all regret my purchase.

God of War as Played By Someone Several Years Too Late to the Party (Part Two)

So God of War one had me convinced that I was playing one of the Great New Franchises before I had even made it halfway through the game. But I had yet to face the terror that is Pandora's Temple.

The temple itself was impressive, and held my interest as I completed challenge after challenge. I could remember thinking, "I wonder if this is the only temple in the game, because this doesn't seen like it would be that big of a place. Oh ho ho, foolish me. I made it through that first elevator waiting for Pandora's Box, and then... new enemy type. 'Damn,' thought I,' this place isn't going to end for a good long while, it it?'

It was about here that I figured just how much I had underestimated God of War. I figured that the rest of the game would be along the lines of: Pandora's Temple, then maybe some other obstacle, then fighting Ares. And I suppose I was correct, but not in the sheer scope of what was about to happen. Pandora's Temple was eight kinds of epic, the obstacle on the way to Ares was crazy (There's a reason that saying "The Blades of Hades" can make some gamers cringe), and then I got to Ares. Ares too does everything that had been done with video game boss fights and added more, and I greatly appreciated that they took, "This is my TRUE FORM" (death-metal spider legs) and moved that to the beginning of the fight.

That left God of War II to follow some pretty impressive video-gamery. That's why, when it started off with Kratos being stupidly-overpowered, I was giddy. It was time to kill hapless soldiers once more. Then he loses his powers (as is the sad case with sequels) and has to regain them. So how do you out-do having the god of war as your final adversary? How about having Zeus, King of Gods and famous father-killer, take the reins as your villain?

God of War II was everything that it should have been. Sequels are tricky, and being able to generalize about what they ought to be is foolish in the varied world of video games. But God of War II needed to be bigger, badder, and possibly more epic than God of War. Somehow, it pulled it off, and the GoW dev team really needs a pat on the back for that, if nothing else.

Now then, as I said in my last post, mine was a Nintendo household, and my exposure to Sony systems was rare. It's amazing what holding a completely new controller can do to you when it comes to quick-time events, which the fights with Ares and Zeus were made of. This may seem like an odd complaint, seeing how the game is littered with them, even with non-boss characters. But imagine that the shapes that you are so used to on controllers were suddenly replaced by a banana, a phone, a squiggly line, and an X (since that seems to be the only common denominator between controllers). I got away with some of the other boss fights because I had time to glance down at the controller, look back up and press it. Not so much with Ares and Zeus. Imagine that a banana icon jumped on the screen and that meant you had .5 seconds to press the banana button. "Which one was ba--" is about as far as you could think before Zeus would plant a sword in your skull.

That was me. For an hour.