For All The High Points Hit, Pokémon Black And White Miss A Lot

By Jefflarz March 17, 2011 3 Comments

 I am a 20 year old male and I am a Pokémon fan. The age of denying it has long since past, I just love these damn games. Out of all the time sinks gaming has provided me over the years, collecting and training these monsters has definitely aged the best. There's just something about the design of the Pokémon and simplicity of the underlying themes that strikes a chord for me. Oh, and don't even get me started on the metagame business. Man that stuff is just insane. So when Nintendo announces a new addition to the main franchise, be it a new installment, an upgraded edition of a current installment or even a remake, I just get as giddy as a school girl. When they announced Black and White I was a little uneasy about where things seemed to be headed, but it didn't take too long for the designs of the new Pokémon to grow on me. Naturally I preordered my copy of Pokémon White because we all know Zekrom parties way harder than that other dude. Sadly the release date coincided perfectly with when midterms were at their nastiest, but since I finally hit spring break I've been Moning it up at every time a good opportunity has arisen. At this point, for those curious, I've just hit the 8th gym and I must admit that this game is pretty great. The design of the overworld, the music and even the battle aesthetics have gotten an impressive overhaul making the the game feel fresh, for a Pokémon game that is. The 156 new critters to play with don't hurt either and the fact that none of the oldies even exist until after you've conquered the Elite 4 is really fantastic. 
 

Now let me back up for a moment here before I dig into my negative points that all of you came here expecting to read about. Not too long ago, beck in March of 2010, Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver were released. Just about everyone who played Pokémon as a child remembers Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal in an incredibly positive light. These installments covered not one, but two regions boasting an impressive Pokéde

x of 251 dudes to go out and find. Fans got exactly what they wanted and with these remakes, which were faithful to the originals, but improved greatly on them at the same time. The Safari Zone made its triumphant return, albeit in a different location, the Kanto region didn't keep its lifeless atmosphere, the Pokéwalker was pretty all right and of course all of those lovely features and Pokémon made it over from the current wonder kids, Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum. Sadly my time with Heart Gold was brief due to just plain not having time for video games at that point int time, but I played enough of it to get a taste for some really awesome features specifically in the UI department.  Menus in Pokémon games are always somewhat of a pain, but Heart Gold and Soul Silver did it real nice by taking full advantage of the touch screen by placing the entire menu down there all the time. You could press the X button at any time to have a cursor show up down there or just tap it at any time to access it. This made the time between battles really smooth, healing Pokémon, putting up repels, attaching items, saving, checking the dex and so on felt far more natural than ever before. There was even an ability to toggle an auto-run option on and off from the menu, which was fantastic. Heart Gold and Soul Silver also for the first time gave you the ability to let any of your Pokemon follow you around in the overworld simply by having it first in your party. On paper it sounds like a somewhat shallow and silly feature, but man was it nice to be able to see my giant 30 foot, 900 pound, steel snake following me around in broad daylight. It was just one of those features that all of us Pokémon fans had wanted for a long time. Sadly there was no way to actively toggle it off and it was always just the first Pokémon in your party, but baby steps are steps just the same. 
 
 

Time to fast forward back to our current friends, Black and White. In terms of UI, they are a huge step backwards after our last installments. The bottom screen is no longer an easy access menu instead it's this new C-Gear feature. C-Gear is meant to be a sort of hub for all of the connectivity between your DS and other folk's DS. It's not for battling though, it's more for just plain interaction between two people's game worlds. I believe it's somewhat similar to the underground found in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, but with less touch screen mini-game jazz. Since I do not live in Japan and I am no longer a 10 year old C-Gear has been nothing but a terrible hexagon riddled, battery draining, waste of space that freezes my game every so often when I accidentally turn it on. When it isn't on the bottom screen is essentially blank, which is real cool. So we are back to only being able to call up the menu when we hit X and while touch screen navigation is still possible, it feels a lot more sluggish. The bag also feels a lot less easy to navigate making those necessary chores somewhat of a pain.
In the Pokémon following you department, it's completely absent! Why? Don't look at me, I've got no damn clue on why they decided to leave a feature that many fans had really enjoyed and appreciated completely out. Personally I was expecting them to at least have the option to have someone follow you around with the ability to shut it off when you got bored of it, but no such luck.
And in other absolutely confusing news, they took out the ability to scale your Pokémon up to level 100 for online battles. Seriously Gamefreak?  
 
I've thought and I've thought, trying to think of some rationale behind these decisions. I suppose for the bottom screen Gamefreak was really proud of the C-Gear system and really wanted to have it in the spotlight, but that doesn't really excuse having that much wasted space while it's off. C-Gear could have fit in perfectly as a menu option on the bottom screen opening up that awful field of hexagons when someone wanted to make use of it. And the menu navigation itself, there's no excuse for how sluggish and disorganized it feels. We know you can do far better. How about the lack of Pokémon followers? I've heard some arguments that it was meant as an exclusive feature to Heart Gold and Soul Silver, but that's just some bullshit right there. The focus of the Pokémon series has always been on the Pokémon. Heart Gold and Soul Silver were the first time, aside from Yellow I suppose, where the true stars of the show were front and center. It's absurd to think that feature should be exclusive to a set of remakes. And the lack of level 100 battles... Seriously Gamefreak?

At this point you may be scratching your head, wondering why these somewhat petty complaints have me all riled up and are worth a blog post. Well first off they annoy me and I'm writing this, so I can do what I want. Second, and probably more legitimately, I am always very bothered when I see a franchise take steps backwards for no reason. I am not one of those changeophobes who flips whenever a franchise I like tries something new. When a franchise tries new things and fails, yes it's still a failure, but I give credit where credit is due and I know that trying new things is what leads to growth in the gaming world. It's when these changes lack common sense or are unreasonable seeming absences that franchises are taking steps backwards. This can be seen all over the place, especially in the UI department, which I've always found funny since UI is such an integral part to any player's experience with a game and you'd think developers would be a little more careful with it. When this happens in a Pokémon game, I find it particularly disappointing. Pokémon is a franchise that has thrived off of not changing its core formula at all and, while I love it, I welcome any experience altering advancements the series tries to make. Even when it's something as simple as the UI, I am happy to see that Gamefreak is at least dipping their toes in the pool of change for once. 
 
I'll be straight with you guys though, I effin' love Pokémon Black and White. After I hit the post button on this, I'm probably going to go right ahead and take on that 8th gym leader. None of these steps backwards have really prevented me from enjoying these games, though I don't know about the lack of level 100 online battles yet since I'm not in meta-game mode. This is just something I wanted to bring up as it is an important topic to think about as we're starting to edge our way into a new generation of consoles on the horizon.

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