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.