CRITICAL ANALYSIS/1

So, here's the deal: Pokemon Black and White are bad games. Well, no, let me rephrase: They're bad Pokemon games. It seems to be a pattern with every other set of pokemon games, Ruby and Sapphire were stupid and now these ones are too. Now, complain I'm late to da pawty. Do it. I dare you, sucka. I'm not. So, let me just prattle off a list of reasons why Black and White are dumb.

THE POKEMON:

Yeah, I know, everyone and their mother has complained about how now there's an Ice-cream pokemon. And yes, there is an ice-cream pokemon and that is dumb, but the typical response by NERDS to this is "Yeah, well, have you seen Voltorb? That's just a Pokeball with eyes!" and then they begin jacking off to lolicon of Misty. Yeah, well, I'm not denying that the earlier games had a lack of creativity as well, we can all agree that Voltorb or Muk or Wigglytuff were bad ideas, but atleast

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TOBLE: The first Pokemon of the new games!

they looked GOOD. See, Voltorb has a pretty cool minimalist design. Two colours, eyes. Compare to say, "Oshawott", which is covered in shit and doesn't look sleek or cool or cute or bad-ass or whatever they were going for, it makes it look like a Midget Gimp in a panda themed costume.

There's a reason why Bulbasaur and Mewtwo and Gyarados and Pikachu are icons of the modern day, and that's because they're easy to read. The sprite limitations of the earlier games HELPED the designs of the pokemon, because for us to be able to identify a Charizard right off the bat it HAD to be easy to read, rather than a jumbled mess of shit. See, the worst designed Pokemon (and probably one of the most oft forgotten) is Kangaskhan, or Nidoqueen, because their designs are the most jumbled and messy.

Pokemon have become very gimmicky as well: This one is a Trash pokemon! ...cool, what else? I dunno, that's all we thought of. There are no other quirks to "Trubbish", nor is there anything interesting about Sigilyph except that it's a hyroglyphic come to life. It's dumb.

Another problem is that all Pokemon seem to be clones of Pokemon that already existed, besides looking dumber. The aforementioned Trubbish is a rehash of Grimer, and is meant to evoke a message (POLLUTION) except said message was ALREADY put in place by Grimer, no need to say the same thing twice.

Finally, we have the names. The names in Pokemon have never been great but atleast then they weren't all terrible. People often make fun of how dumb a name "Seel" is but I never see anyone complaining about "Joltik" or "Throh". You know, differently spelled words, said words making up the entire gimmick of said Pokemon. I for the longest time have had no idea why "Gyarados" is named so, but one look at (again, I'm ragging on this one) Trubbish you can tell exactly the etymology of it.

WHAT'S NEW?

So, another deal with Pokemon Black and White is that aside from the monstrosities they call the new Pokemon, nothing else has really been added to improve the game.

"Excuse me?"

What?

"You're clearly forgetting about TRIPLE BATTLES!"

Oh am I? Maybe I wouldn't have if you had more than two over the course of the fucking game. And maybe if they weren't a shitty idea to begin with. I can just imagine Game Freak sitting there, racking their brains over what gameplay elements they want to add, and they go for Double battles plus another.

Another feature is "The Dream World". The problem here is that "the dream world" requires an internet connection to use, something not every DS owner has. And you have to go really out of your way to use it as well, and is completely optional, albiet useful. I'll concede though, it is atleast SOMETHING.

So, what else? Being completely honest, I have no bloody idea. Nothing new was added aside from something that barely crops up and something completely optional. How dumb.

THE STORY

The story has been one of the most praised aspects of Pokemon White and Black, but I'm not really quite sure why. Game Freak basically just copied what webcomics have been saying for years - "In the real world, this would be abusive" and rolled with that as the story. It's not explored very much, they just bring it up.

This is all bought to us by the newest Team Rocket ripoff, Team Plasma. What do they have to do with plasma? No fucking idea, so that name is basically useless. Anyway, so they're run by this hippie called N, who as I mentioned earlier, beliefs Pokemon battles are abusive.

So, what is the audience thinking at this point - "Woah, these guys actually have a point! Why am i fighting them, I like what they say!" So then Game Freak sees this and they realise that people can actually sympathise with the villains, so they have them do cartoonishly evil things like just kick pokemon for no reason. This is why the story fails, because Nintendo doesn't believe that it's audience can see things in shades other than Black and White, which is why they're not making a "Pokemon Grey". These themes aren't explored in any way, because a villian HAS to be evil.

Now, to be fair, this character "N", we find out, isn't entirely evil. But this is made up for because *spoilers, high-light to see* it turns out he's being puppeteered by the most absurdly evil character basically ever, who kidnaps children and wants to take over the world. Surprised we never saw him rape a Pichu. One step forward, two steps back.

USE OF SPECTACLE

The earlier Pokemon games never really had a great story. GO HERE. FIGHT BADDIES. GO HERE. FIGHT GOODIES. Simple. But occasionally something cool would happen: such as a boat sailing away or, hell, even the intro to Pokemon gold. Even trading was something really cool because it provided a unique animation. The rarity of these moments made them even better, and made more of a lasting impacts.

In Black and White, shit like this gets pulled all the time. There's even an entire city devoted to weird camera angles. This makes all the dramatic stuff that happens later in the story less exciting, rather than a change of pace, it's something we come to expect, and this makes these moments stick out less.

See, whilst the quality of these cinematics are great, their quantity lessens the impact. Now you could argue they have all this amazing technology, why not make the most of it? Well, they should make use of it: even in a recent Pokemon DS game, HeartGold, usage of it once as opposed to all the time makes an instance when they DO use it stick out all the more.

Finally, this is a minor gripe, but having these spectacles take place in gameplay can get really annoying, because the sudden shifts really disorient the player, making it harder to walk around in.

So what went right

The music's good, and the gameplay is pretty balanced. The spectacles, whilst overused, are really cool. I like the twist(ish) ending. So yeah.

IN CONCLUSION

Pokemon Black and White are stupid games, but hopefully this can be improved by the obligatory third version.

Wait, what?

"Pokemon Black and White 2!"

Oh, fuck off.