The Evolution of Pokemon: 1996-2011

Pokemon appeared on the scene in the 90s and became a global phenomenon. There was a T.V series, a trading card game, a bunch of toys and teddies and about four hundred thousand movies (Who gives a film the subtitle "The First Movie"?!) I'm sure every 90s kid must remember the Pokemon card ban at schools, the illegal trading in the playground and the ultimate confiscation of your shiny Gyrados. Bad times... Anyways... Moving on. You could get just about anything with a Pokemon theme, but it all began with a game- well, two games actually: Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green on the original Gameboy.

Told you you could get a Pokemon
 version of just about anything...

Released in 1996 in Japan, the games were very successful and a third version, Pokemon Blue was released. In Japan, these three versions sold a total of 10.23million copies. Since the release of these three games, they have been sold across the world as well as the following versions: Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Fire Red, Leaf Green, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, SoulSilver, with Black and White due for release this March. There have also been a series of spin off games, but I will stick to the main series for the purposes of this post. Put simply... There are a tonne of Pokemon games and their popularity doesn't seem to be shrinking!

 There were originally 151 Pokemon and I often hear people say how they wish no more had been created because it just got silly or too complicated. There are 649 Pokemon now which means that for an avid player such as me there are almost limitless possibilities in terms of squad combinations and replayability. This is the big selling point- the fact that you can restart these games so many times and experience them in a different way depending on the Pokemon you choose and the way you raise them. BUT... every version so far has had the same storyline and driving plot: a simple country boy happens to obtain a Pokemon via someone's generosity and decided he/she wants to fight and win the 8 Gym badges required and challenge the Pokemon League. Along the way you always somehow become an inspiration to others and general legend. So if I've paid £25-35 every few years to play basically a newer-looking version of the same story, why I am ok with it? Am I even ok with it? I'm not really sure. 

Pokemon SoulSilver



Pokemon Silver



There has to be a reason that there have been two sets of remakes in this series. People obviously want to play these games again and again. This would be a brilliant business boost for any company, but the fact that Nintendo sells these games means it's just another day at the office- slap some better graphics on it and send it out the door, they'll lap it up!

Too cynical?... Ok..

While the basic story stays the same, certain elements are changed with each new offering. New features have included: a visible Exp. bar, improved sprites and animations, new stats, new moves, new types, new pokemon, new evolutions, new items, new environments, double and triple battles and obviously better graphics. It's a difficult thing to actually name what feels wrong about this series and its returning story, but if the basic premise of the game did change, would it even be the same game? As one of the GameFreak team said in an interview with Nintendo Magazine, you wouldn't remove dribbling and allow travelling in basketball in order to make it more fun, because that would suck.


The different sprites of the player. They look different, but they all share
 a love of hats- except number three. He's rocking an 80s headband thing...


There are plenty of opportunities to experience the Pokemon world from a different angle with a different gameplay mechanic and story; Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Pinball, Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Snap!, Pokemon Ranger. So with so many choices and such an in depth development of each of these branches, what could anyone have to possibly complain about? You know what you are buying if you purchase one of these games, so obviously people aren't rushing out to buy Black and White hoping for a totally new game that they don't recognise. By the look of things this time, however, that might be just what they get. This change seems to me to be the biggest so far, with 156 new Pokemon and no inclusion of the familiar ones until the Elite Four is beaten.

Easy now...

In the end it seems that the Pokemon games have evolved much like creatures in the natural world have- very subtle but crucial changes that creep towards the perfect construct. There always seems to be a way to improve them, but you never know it without hindsight and you never feel like it was missing in the first place, until it was there.

DannyDarko

Nostalgia: A good or bad thing?

A look at remakes, sequels and reinventions
By Jyggalag

Now I don’t know about some of you, but I certainly remember my first gaming experience. It was on the megadrive and it was one of those very popular and very common vehicle games where you took control of some type of flying vehicle and went through various top-to-bottom scrolling levels whilst shooting the crap out of everything that moved. You know the sort of games that you can get now on mobile phones. I’ve got one such game on my current phone, which might as well be a brick that needs charging every now and then. I think the only reason I still play the game on my phone is because I remember the similar games I used to play and enjoy when I was younger. Still, it’s weird to think how the once pinnacle of gaming technology is now replicated on small hand-held devices, which aren’t even supposed to be used as gaming platforms to begin with. But I digress.

It’s this nostalgia that I think is really important in modern gaming. I doubt I’m the only one, but whenever I play a game I’m always comparing it to something I’ve already played and how it reminds me of this and that. Developers are also well aware of this sense of nostalgia, which is probably why there has been an increase in game remakes over the years.

Like film remakes, these have not always gone down well. One only has to look at the piss-poor attempt to remake Space Invaders to see how badly remakes can be done. Some of these remakes however have been received well, Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes being two prime examples. The games were praised by critics and they introduced many new fans to both series’. But for some traditionalists (like myself) something about them wasn’t quite right. Now don’t get me wrong, it was nice playing the first game again with visual improvement. In the Twin Snakes Snake actually had eyes instead of lines and in Anniversary I could happily oggle at Lara’s perfectly rounded assets because I no longer had to question if it was weird to perve on a woman with triangular tits. But still, something about them both didn’t sit quite well with me. I think it was because, to me, the first Metal Gear Solid and the first Tomb Raider were such perfect games. I wasted away hours of my life sat at the tv screen playing them over and over again. And then these remakes came along, as if stating that the first games weren’t good enough and they needed improvement. Perhaps I thought it was insulting. That something I felt was perfect others were saying needed changing and making better. In truth though I think my xenophobia attributed to my disliking on Anniversary. After all, it wasn’t a British company that was now at Lara’s helm, but an American one.

One of the first games I purchased for my PS3 was Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I am an absolute Metal Gear fanboy and this game was a must-have for me. During the fourth chapter of MGS4 you (as Old Snake) return to Shadow Moses Island (the setting of the first game) now on the verge of sinking because of global warming and the base that you used to spend hours trying to infiltrate stealthily is now derelict and abandoned. For me, this was far more exciting than playing The Twin Snakes ever was. In the remake I’m just playing the game again and any nostalgic feelings I may have are virtually unnoticeable. But with MGS4, I was revisiting the old game, rather than simply replaying it. The character was older, I was older and things had changed. During this chapter there are chances to show “flashbacks” if the player presses a certain button at a certain time. When viewing these flashbacks and traversing through the abandoned Shadow Moses facility I didn’t remember my more recent play through of The Twin Snakes. Instead I remember being nine years old (yes I was that young, but that’s a WHOLE other issue) and playing the original game for the first time. This is true video game nostalgia and I think more developers would be wise to follow in Kojima’s footsteps and incorporate similar themes in their games.

Another game I want to discuss is Final Fantasy XIII. Now this game has been praised by numerous critics receiving awards of 9/10, 39/40 and 10/10 by Official Playstation Magazine (UK), Famitsu and GamesRadar respectively. However many fans of the old games criticized the game quite heavily and I myself will admit to being sceptical about it. All I heard from other fans was that it no longer felt like a Final Fantasy game and that there had been too many changes. I was told the game felt linear, the AI of the new battle system took away player freedom and there weren’t even any blue text boxes! Not only that, the trailer for the game had proven quite controversial amongst fans. I didn’t like it. For me, the music of Final Fantasy was always a mix of opera, melodies and various heavy rock and experimental metal tracks. Instead we were presented with a western song sung by a western pop star whose voice often drowned out what the characters were saying in the trailer. It just didn’t feel right to me. It wasn’t Final Fantasy. A close friend of mine however loved the trailer and thought that the Leona Lewis song was just right. And he has been a Final Fantasy fan just as long as I have. Combining all this, I was put off from buying the game and avoided FFXIII with earnest. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered it was truly a good game and that despite the changes, it was still Final Fantasy at the core and it has so far proven to be just as much of an emotional rollercoaster as the previous games. My love and nostalgic feelings for what (I thought) made a true Final Fantasy game caused me to miss out.

Our nostalgic feelings for the good games of old may be the only reason that those games are considered good. If we went back to an old game and started playing it again now, would it still be as good? Now, whenever I go back to an old game I still find it fun. I recently cracked out my copy of Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo Gamecube. The last time I played this game I was fifteen and had an unhealthy obsession with anime and JRPGs. I’m now more inclined to western, “grown-up” RPGs such as The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age but I still found myself enjoying ToS. The humour was immature, the storyline not all that original and even though there was character development it was far from brilliant, with almost all of them fitting the JRPG stereotype. But I still loved it and I can safely say that Tales of Symphonia is still my favourite game. However, despite the gaming industry only just finding its feet, Tales of Symphonia is still a fairly recent game and if we’re talking nostalgia for the old classics we’ll have to go back further.

We haven’t had an official “Golden Age” of gaming yet. There seems to have been one for almost everything else. Detective Fiction, Hollywood, Comics, Cartoons and even Porn! To me the “Golden Age” of gaming is before my time. Arcade games like Pacman, Space Invaders and Grand Prix were what “set the standard”. Everyone knows what Pacman and Space Invaders are and I can guarantee (go out and ask if you don’t believe me) almost everyone will describe them as “classics”. Some might say the same of Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario, but seen as how those game franchises are still going strong I’m not going to talk about them. Plus those two games bring up the whole issue of “selling-out” which isn’t what I’m discussing here.

Looking back at Pacman and Space Invaders with a modern viewpoint, what was so special about them really? A gluttonous, fat, yellow ball that spent its entire life (which varied depending on monetary issues) gobbling up pixilated dots and “ghosts”. And Space Invaders was nothing but “pew pew” shooting of weird-shaped, extra-terrestrial invaders. But you can still find them in arcades to this day, and they still bring in players. Also original arcade machines for these games sell for thousands over the internet. I still can have hours of fun playing Space Invaders and Pac Man and so do many others. But is it because the games are genuinely good or is it because these games are “classics” and there’s this collective nostalgia associated with them? Do we convince ourselves that they’re good because of their status as “classics”? You see it all the time with films and books. The Catcher in the Rye is considered a classic (despite controversy, which in truth it’s not even bad) and I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve read or heard it described as brilliant. Yet I found it incredibly boring.

What I’m trying to say is that perhaps nostalgia isn’t always a good thing. In sequels for example I believe it works well (as in MGS4) and fuels enjoyment of the player experience. But it can also ruin a player’s experience and leave their opinion rather skewed. Try to think of it as a big cake. It’s nice to have a little piece, but too much is bad for you.

But of course, the cake is a lie...

Jyggalag

Would you kindly?

Hopefully if you've played this game you won't need telling what it is... of course it is Bioshock. Released in 2007 on 360 and PC, but joyfully appeared on PS3 the following year (joyfully because how would I have played it otherwise?) Just to jog your memory: you play as Jack (apparently) although I don't remember ever being informed that your name is Jack. After being in a plane crash, you swim to the surface and discover Rapture. Rapture deserves a new paragraph because it is amazing.

 

Make sure you pack your Speedos



Andrew Ryan... bit of a sexist?

  Rapture is an underwater world and a gamers dream come true. Created by Andrew Ryan, this underwater city has 'NO GODS OR KINGS. ONLY MAN' which is interesting because the inhabitants of Rapture are more than human, they have been genetically altered through the use of plasmids. Andrew Ryan created this world on the basis that the inhabitants could shape their own future and 'with the sweat of your own brow' you can live the way you want and shape your own future. The idea of leaving the laws and morals of the real world and creating your very own is a very seductive, but dangerous one. Bioshock shows this perfectly with a city in ruin, leaking all over the place and falling in on itself. The only inhabitants left are all absolutely crazy and deformed from abusing the power of plasmids. They dedicate their lives to their search for the drug they need, which is ADAM. Only Little Sisters have this so obviously that's who the splicers are looking for- trouble is there's a Big Daddy in the way most of the time. That's where you step in: you have to fight off the wierdo masked splicers and the drill-armed, grate-faced, size-58-shoed Big Daddies. All this for a chance to have your morals tested by a creepy little girl.



Why wouldn't you want to
save this cute little face?



Basically the story revolves around the Little Sisters and the way you interact with them. You have to bust up a Big Daddy if you want to get to them, but once you do you can choose to harvest them for their ADAM or save them by removing the slug inside them. There are greater rewards for harvesting them, but you get a warm fuzzy feeling if you save them. Anyone that knows my gaming habits will know that I love a good choice and that I obviously saved them (being the devout and pious being that I am) but the choice does hang there throughout the game and the extra rewards for harvesting them are just enough to make a budding sociopath see reason in slaughtering a child for more drugs. Seriously though, I love me some moral dilemmas and this game delivers there. The game has different endings depending on whether you're more Gary Glitter or Ghandi and I can say with no shame (well, minimal shame) that I shed a single tear when I got my ending.

With one of the best settings I've encountered in a videogame, I would say that Bioshock sits up there with my favourites. The mix of first-class gameplay, a stylish and consitent in-depth setting and a brilliant, shocking and genuinely affecting storyline makes this a perfect choice if you want to play something complete and contained. There is a downside to all this glorious underwater heaven- apparently the sequel is turd... I'll have to test the waters (see what I did there?) Now would you kindly comment and click the "Follow" button?

DannyDarko



Heavy Rain: SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING (only slight... live dangerously)

I know it's been a while since it was released, but I just finished playing Heavy Rain. The number of questions this game raises in terms of ethics, immersion, genre and appropriate content is insane.

Let's start with ethics: this game actually made me think before I killed someone!!! I remember playing GTA2 at the age of 10 and delighting in a kill frenzy involving a flamethrower and some pedestrians. I used to park vehicles in a row so they would blow up in a chain! I must have (virtually) killed more people than Stalin in my time, but I have never given it a second thought until I played Heavy Rain. When the game presented me with a scenario that potentially endagered my partner- detective partner... behave yourself- I couldn't decide what to do and ended up being unable to move. This was incredible because I didn't care for either guy, it was just the thought of taking a random human life that stopped me. How many times has that happened in your videogaming life?

Immersion is unlike any other game. I will admit that the opening of the game doesn't really help with immersion because it feels so wierd, but perhaps that is necessary to estabish controls before the good stuff begins and immersion is essential. I literally panicked like mad when I had to try to save my son... after I had made a difficult choice my head fell into my hands and I second guessed myself. When I found out who the killer was I was so angry and upset. Basically immersion like no other!

Genre is a strange one in this game. Is it an action/adventure? Is it a really long QTE (Quick Time Event)? Is it a detective game? Is it even a game? It could be described as more film than game, but then again don't be fooled into dropping the joypad and sitting back- that got me punched in the face by a drug dealer. It's not going to satisfy people who just have a pure and simple bloodlust, but then again its not going to be like anything that you've played before, so the only way to know is by playing. There's a demo on the PSN store for free (but it doesn't do it justice).





The final point I want to mention is the content issue. There was a bit of media fuss over the nudity and violence in the game, because it's quite real. Yes the lady gets naked and yes you see her chesticles, but if any one of you reading this seriously got anything from seeing that then please leave a comment so I can berate you accordingly. The way that nudity was used in the game was quite mature, I thought. Madison needs to be established as an attractive, but troubled woman and by stripping away the layers (excuse the pun) and showing her at her most vulnerable in her first scene, we get past that and can get to know her better- or so David Cage argues anyway. I didn't get that from the shower scene, I just felt uncomfortable, pervy and curious about the morals of the designer who created Madison's nipples. Fun fact: although we never got to see it all, Ethan Mars was fully developed and intact... probably for the best that we didn't see it.



Overall, an amazing game. I stayed up all night playing it and finished it in one sitting 9pm-8am. It is the only time I've ever stayed up all night without realising it and the only time I don't regret doing it. Everyone should play this game- if you don't own a PS3, find someone who does and play it!

DannyDarko

Best Selling Games of 2010

So, here it is. The top ten best selling games of last year across all platforms according to IGN.com

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops
2. Madden NFL '11
3. Halo: Reach
4. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
5. Red Dead Redemption
6. Wii Fit Plus
7. Just Dance 2
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
9. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
10. NBA 2K11

Not sure how I feel about this as a whole. We all knew that Black Ops was going to be up there at number one, but the big shock to me was the fact that Wii games and sports games sell so well. This is the year when Heavy Rain, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Enslaved,  and tonnes of other great games were released.

 I don't feel as though the games in this top ten are very interesting: three shooters, two sports games, two simulators, a platformer, an action/adventure and an sandbox RPG. Red Dead Redemption is a great experimental game that tried something new and gave something totally original. Modern Warfare 2 was the peak of shooters for me, but the rest of the games on this list seem so boring. Maybe it's because I haven't enjoyed a Halo game since number 2 or maybe it's because I haven't been able to look at a Mario game since Super Mario World on my original Gameboy. Maybe it's because I don't particularly like sports games.

The big thing that I'm worrying about is that I think the list of best selling games of the year reflects the rom-com-esque appeal of a bland, all encompassing game that throws as many 'new features' and as few actual changes as possible. I'm not even sure I feel this way, but seeing Mario, CoD, Masterchief and Ezio in the top ten makes me afraid... very afraid. Look what Mario did... Black Ops was the biggest entertainment launch in history, BUT Super Mario Bros. Wii still outsold it slowly and utterly, like a moustachioed, italian python swallowing a cocky, bombastic deer (CoD)...

Ok so I trailed off a bit at the end, but I don't care..

DannyDarko

New to blogging!

As the title of the post suggests, I am new to blogging. I don't know what a blog should say or whether people read them, but I'm gonna write this one anyway. I wanted to share my enthusiasm and opinions on certain videogames that I have played/read about over the last few years, not just in a reviewing sense, but discussing their political, social and cultural messages/importance too. Maybe I'll open that up to other genres (such as the titillating Henry IV that I'm currently making my way through.)

Anyway, just a slight introduction there. Any suggestions would be welcome, but first it's my search for the first reader... which will probably be someone I know.

DannyDarko