Nintendo’s casual revolution didn’t just start with Wii Sports. Over in the slightly less fraught handheld gaming arena, the Nintendo DS had launched the best part of two years earlier with its own unique new way of doing things. And while the DS game Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training had not yet topped the charts, it had been a consistent presence at their top end for a long while. With the DS’s dual screen arrangement and touch screen control possibilities, Nintendo had initially launched it with a particularly strong version of its typical ‘third pillar’ narrative, saying that it was an alternative to the ongoing Game Boy line and not its replacement. By 2007, boosted by the much slicker DS Lite redesign, it was apparent that it was too successful for that line to hold and that this was the future. Not everything was changing, though, and it was almost inevitable that the first DS game to reach #1 would be a Pokemon game.
Pokémon Ranger is not a Pokémon game in quite the same way as Red, Yellow, Gold or Ruby, though. It was a stopgap until the next one of those, though the uneven delays to their European releases meant that we got them only three months apart rather than the six months elsewhere. Pokémon Ranger simplifies many aspects of the normal structure to bring through some new ideas centred on the touch screen. Early on you meet someone in-game who directly references Nintendo’s ‘Touch! Generations’ brand used for its casual titles, even if Pokémon Ranger is not one of those itself.
You are a Ranger rather than a Trainer, in a world where pokémon are a bit freer to do as they please, though will assist to solve much the same kind of emergency situations as in the other games. Rather than assembling your own pokémon team as you go to take with you around its world, you get just one permanent plusle or minun as companion and temporarily gain other pokémon until you finish a mission or make use of their abilities. Need a tree knocked down across a gap? Find a pokémon that can do it for you and they’ll do it then go away. You get abilities and task requirements alike shown to you as icons when you get close to the pokémon/tree/whatever, so there isn’t a lot of thinking involved in that process, but as game busywork goes it’s not too bad.
The main new thing, however, is the method of capturing pokémon. No more selecting a pokéball to throw and then hoping for the best. Instead, you have to draw circles around pokémon while they sporadically resist. Reach the required number of loops and they’re yours. Mess it up and you have to start over again. There are a lot of assists on offer from the other pokémon you collect, and your equipment and abilities level up as you go along, but you are still drawing circles. It’s novel, it gives a pleasing feeling of direct physical interaction, and it has its own techniques to figure out, but it’s no Wii Sports. Many missions and hours into the game, it still felt unsatisfyingly random whether any given attempt would succeed.
Outside of that, a lot of the charm of other Pokémon worlds is present and correct even in this smaller one. People are generally friendly and even more reliably full of personality. You can meet a bunch of familiar pokémon (and hear their familiar lo-fi squeaks) in a new context. The joy of exploration of the other games is noticeably missing, though. The linear moments of being led from spot to spot which take you through transitions in other games make up a much larger proportion of this one, and issues with them become more glaring.
There is a bit where you are meant to find a way of turning on a basement light to help someone find something. You do so. They still can’t find it. There is no word of what you have to do next. It is, in fact, to go wandering until you reach the arbitrary spot where the next action shows up for you. Even if it wasn’t for such failures, though, the constraints are enough to keep Pokémon Ranger feeling a lot like an appetiser and not much like a revolution.
Top of the charts for week ending 21 April 2007:
1 Comment
1 Pingback