Pokémon White is the first new Pokémon game I’m playing which wasn’t for a new system as well. Well, sort of. Yellow, Platinum and Soulsilver could fit the bill as well depending on your definition of “new”. They were all directly building on specific previous games, though, while White is just building on the massive continuity of Pokémon in general. The DS’s remarkable popularity, especially in Japan, brought the novelty of a second base Pokémon iteration towards the end of its life. By the time it came out in the UK, the 3DS was only three weeks away.
Without the usual step-up in technology and with no new exciting colour or 3D to add, Game Freak compensated in a few different ways. One is transferring that sense of technological progress to the game world itself, in the Unova region the biggest buildings and most bustling cities. This is a place where things happen, and there the player character can be shown tiny as needed to convey the full scale. A lot of it still exists in facade only, but it’s an impressive facade. It’s backed up with regular bits of exploration that feel closer to the wild challenge of the original games than most since, even if those bits are rather more optional.
That brings us to the second change, which is in taking the chance for somewhat of a reset. Appropriately it was actually my first Pokémon game (although I dropped it just as I was starting to get in deep, out of fear of it taking over my life and because competing priorities did just that). Pokémon White explains the basics in a way not seen since the first couple of games, complete with a three-in-one first dungeon dependent on your starting Pokémon that carefully teaches the basics of which Pokémon types trump which, and makes sure you have two complementary ones. Adding to this a new (and vaguely Pokémon anime) set up with two companions rather than a rival helps it to seem fresh now I’m playing it with more familiarity too.
That’s an early indicator of where else they fit in changes, which is basically more plot, and more ambitious with it. This is a mixed success. When you first meet someone who talks passionately (and not unreasonably) about liberating Pokémon it’s striking but it is very clearly a non-starter. Not even so much because the series is so committed to the gameplay of collecting and battling Pokémon that there can be no way out, but because the speech is accompanied by such impeccable fantasy RPG bad guy music.
Elsewhere, the same taste for stylistic flair works better. I love the boss battle twist where when gym leaders go down to their final pokémon a new arrangement of the original battle music kicks in. The 3D animations of new badges arriving into your case are a lovely flourish to give some more weight to success. The world’s new things are not ultimately revolutionary, but whizzing around neon rails to different bits of a gym is still a lot of fun. At one point close to that I quickly went from a Pokémon musical into a heartfelt dad-daughter conversation about individuality and selfishness, mediated by a gym leader who noted that “I’m also a model, by the way”. Some possibilities remain forever off limits, but it’s a game that does a lot with confidence to explore what it still can.
Top of the charts for week ending 5 March 2011:
WCRobinson
Kind of surreal that we will probably see remakes of these in the next couple years. The question is whether they remake the first games or the sequels, or both.
I also remember that despite releasing so close to the 3DS, they essentially simulated certain hardware functions like StreetPass with unique DS online features that basically did the same thing. Looking back, they would have been incredible launch games!
iain.mew
Yeah, that really would have helped the 3DS, I guess the timing wasn’t quite right (and it didn’t work out too badly in the end). What they do with the remakes is a really interesting question, I would have guessed both but maybe that’s just being too optimistic.