Tuesday, March 23, 2010

gotta catch em all.........again

So everyone that knows me knows I am a huge nerd and nothing points that out better than the fact that I'm 24 and I own the new Pokemon Soul Silver. To be completely honest though, now that I've put near 40 hours of time into the game I don't much care how bad it looks, this game is great. Now to be honest it has not changed a whole lot from Platinum or the other 4th generation games. The things however that stick out the most to me is I like this one and when I owned Pearl I never played it. Now I don't know if this is due to the fact that I started my Pokemon journey on Red and Blue on the old blunt force object Game Boy. I also then continued on to play Gold when Gold and Silver came out. Regardless of why this is I will just stick to what I know.

The games story has barely changed from any of the past games. You still get a pokemon early on in the game through your basic element choices - fire, water, leaf. Yes...leaf. From here on out the game pushes you through some minor trainer areas then unleashes you into the world. This time around you have 2 main area maps to explore, the Johto and Kanto regions. That means there are 16 badges to collect unlike the other games only contained 8. I have now completed my 16 badge playthrough and have determined that the game has had a big overhaul since its Game Boy Color days. The gym leader animations have all been updated and some of their appearances have been altered as well. Speaking of appearances, the pokemon have all had animations added to them as well. They still overall look about the same but it holds some nostalgia factor for me.

The game-play has had some new features added including double battles involving you using your top 2 pokemon in your list versus 2 trainers using 1 each. It is a neat adjustment and adds some neat new gameplay features. The catch-em-all part of pokemon is what brings a lot of people back everytime and it does not disappoint with nearly 500 different pokemon to collect and that doesn't include the shiny pokemon rare and unique throughout all games. The main difference for me this time around but I realize that it was in Pearl and the rest of the other 4th generations is the Wi-Fi trade which makes it much easier to deposit and ask for pokemon from people around the world. This feature alone breathes new life into Soul Silver and Heart Gold.

Overall I give it 9.2 out of 10. It hasn't changed that much throughout the years but it was never broken to begin with. It has solid turn-based RPG battles, an addictive collect and catalog of nearly 500 creatures some unique to each of the games, fun and addictive mini-game in the Pokeathlon, and to top it off a little Pokewalker device to add little away from the handheld games. All in all a great addition to the Pokemon franchise and a great re-imagining of the classic Silver and Gold game. If you haven't played in years or you are a new fan I would recommend these games.

Overall - 9.2 out of 10

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