|
tonymccarthy's Pokemon Red (GB)
|
| [October 19, 2009 02:17:03 PM]
|
Hi all! Tony here again writing yet another entry about a game I have played. This one I am doing a little different though. Instead of choosing a game that I have just recently started playing, or something more modern to the times, I went with a classic, the first game I ever played on a video game console. I'm referring to, of course, Pokemon red version. It's a classic, most kids from the 90's and 00's generation can confirm, it is not only a must have video game, but an absolute essential for every kid growing up. I'm not going to do two reviews on this game like I did the first two, instead I will just try to cover all of the material in just one entry.
Gameplay
Now the game pokemon is a role playing game where you are a character in charge of like pocket monsters, hence the name pokemon, and you level up your monsters continuously throughout the game to make them stronger, so you can progress through the story. Eventually in the story you travel to an area where you must challenge five strong opponents, all who have acquired five ridiculously strong pokemon you must beat in order to continue and win the game. While playing the game, players get very involved in the story right away. From the beginning of the game you have the option to fast forward through parts of the story, when people are talking to you and what not, but you can’t skip these all together. Most of the time I just found myself reading everything, just so I could follow along with the story. The story progresses really well and it keeps the player highly entertained, motivated, and enthusiastic.
Now the characters of the game are very interesting and very well thought out. The main character is Ash, who is a small town boy who grew up just hearing about pokemon and is now interested, and finally old enough, to go out on his own adventure with pokemon. Each of the eight boss battles referred to as gym leaders in the game, have different personalities too. The game consists of pokemon of fifteen different elements such as fire, water, grass, electricity, rock, ground, flying, ghost and so on, all which have strengths and weaknesses just like the game of rock paper scissors. . Each of the gym leaders, and the other battles inside the gym, are restricted to just one of these types. So for instance the first gym is a rock type, the second is of water types, etc. The character for the gym leader in the first gym, the rock type, has a very hard, rough and tough attitude, just like we would imagine a rock type to be. The gym leader for the fire gym has a very short temper and is always angry at something. The psychic’s gym has all sorts of mind tricks, and she can even read ash’s mind! The characters are extremely well thought out in the game, leaving the player very interactive with the other characters, and leaving me very impressed with this aspect of the game.
The story, as I discussed before, is very easy to follow and adds a lot to the progression of the game, and leaves desire for a player to continue playing until the end, and sometimes a little afterwards. You start in your hometown where a professor lives who has 3 really rare pokemon, which without cheats you can only get once in the game, and only one of the 3 of them. You have this as your main pokemon throughout the story, and it is usually the strongest. Now you have a rival who is also from your town who chose a pokemon from the professor as well. Both of you are trying to be the strongest trainer in the land, and so you keep bumping into each other as the story progresses, as you keep crossing similar paths to each other. Little side stories are also included in the game, and all in all you are left wrapped around this imaginary world you want to conquer so badly, leaving the player physically unable to set the game boy down.
Design
Now I want to change it up a bit. I had my fun describing all of the awesome aspects that the creators of the game included to make the game play exhilarating. Now I think I want to talk about how great the design of the overall game was. Just as before I want to talk about some topics that I have personally learned about in my gaming class at North Carolina State University, and I will probably leave out a bunch of topics. First I want to talk about the innovative elements of the game. Being that this game is from the early 90’s, 1996 I believe is when it was released to the United States, the graphics are a lot different (worse to be straight forward) from what we are used to today. This set aside I still play occasionally and I barely even notice the graphics because I am so wrapped up in the developmental aspects of everything else. One thing pokemon does that not a lot of other games have done before is the use of the link cable. Players were required to use the link cable to get all 150 pokemon available to complete one of the side missions at the end of the game; otherwise it was impossible to do. This did leave me a little frustrated when I was younger and couldn’t afford another game boy another game, and a link cable, but now I love that aspect of the game. All of the new innovated design elements other than that was absolutely genius for the time of the release of this game.
The game does require players to acquire different varieties (elements) of pokemon, and train them (leveling up) vigorously before the story is able to be completed. This keeps the player from getting bored with how easy it is, but they don’t make it too difficult to where you are frustrated that you can’t get anything done and you just train and train and train. Now you do a lot of interacting with all of the characters in the game. Every single one of the characters, and even stray pokemon, you see in the game you can walk up to and talk to, and some are important to the final outcome of the game. This keeps a very high level of social interaction when playing in single mode. Back to the link cables, another thing pokemon red innovated was the use of link cables to challenge another player. This would be almost identical to challenging someone in the game world, but you were playing against another player with a limitless amount of choices for actions. This was so exciting to me, and always left me trying to be the best out of my friends, leaving me training for hours on end, trying to level up those pokemon. This game definitely show emergent complexity in that the story is forever changing based on the decisions you make, and it is pretty difficult to get the same outcome in the story every time you play the game. I was very happy with the reward structure of the game as well, being that I still occasionally play today, some ten plus years later. Many magazines, gaming sites, and review companies rate this game one of the best of all time, and probably the best role playing game of all time. Stats have shown that it is one of the most desired by children, and the best selling role playing game of all time! I completely agree with all of that and will close by saying pokemon, any version but especially the red and blue versions, are an extremely well thought out, well planned, well designed game that you will absolutely love, and if you are unfamiliar with these games please do yourself a favor and go try one of them out. You will get addicted very quickly!!
add a comment 
|
|
|
 |
tonymccarthy's Pokemon Red (GB)
|
|
Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 19 October, 2009
|
|
