I hope this doesn't turn into a rant but I'm afraid it might. To avoid this as long as possible, I'll start with the things in this game that are done right. Pokemon are in 3d. It is a thrill to see all 493 pokemon in 3d doing their thing. The online battle system is also very straightforward and very fluid. The actual battle system is still the same as it has always been. The backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous, especially for Wii graphics. Last but not least, using and connecting your DS to your Wii is easy as pie and it works phenomenally.
Now what is wrong with the game? A LOT! Let's start with the pokemon themselves. When you see the surroundings of the battlefield, it gets you thinking that you are in for a visual treat... until your pokemon releases from its pokeball. Then you see 3d pokemon, which is good, but when compared to the backgrounds it looks like a 12 year old animated them.
They looks very flat and featureless, almost as if they were told to withhold as much detail as possible. Next are the attack animations. As has always been a problem with the 3d pokemon games, some of the attacks are lame to watch. You use tackle and your pokemon jumps in the direction of you opponent's pokemon and suddenly the opponent's pokemon is hit by, well, nothing and is pushed backward with a painful expression on its face. No contact occurring whatsoever. Some people might say, they did it so the game would seem less violent, but in my argument, the tv show is directed towards children more so than the games and they show contact. Also some of the moves' animations are just plain boring. Visually they are actually gorgeous but when I hear an attack called shockwave, I expect quite a severe looking attack and that is not what you get.
Now I will give credit where credit is due, some of the attacks (such as water pulse seen above) look good and make sense to the nature of the attack. Another thing that bothers me, and this isn't the only game where this occurs but it's the only game I'm talking about right now. I wonder, why is it that my lvl1 Dratini's hyper beam looks exactly like it does when it has become a lvl100 Dragonite? Maybe it is just me, but I feel that the attacks should look more powerful as the pokemon grows more powerful; is this such a strange concept? If you watched the latest pokemon movie you can clearly see a difference in the potency of Lickylicky's hyper beam as opposed to Dialga's. There's one last thing about the battle animations that really gets me mad. Let's say I used hyper beam with my lvl100 Dragonite. It shoots the opponent's pokemon and drains all of its hp. This is what happens: Dragonite uses hyper beam, it hits the opposing pokemon and knocks it to the floor, the opposing pokemon gets up, returns to its original position, then stumbles around dizzily until it falls. Why does this happen!?!?!? Why doesn't it just stay down!?!?!? Who programmed this? I want to slap you!
The game's most disappointing shortcoming would have to be the lack of a story mode. That's right, all you do in this game is battle battle battle. We're back to the ways of Pokemon Stadium. So, this game with all of its problems and those couple good things manage a 4 out of 10 from me. The lack of story mode take away most points in my book. It keeps four because the game actually works and if you want to battle your friends online, it is great. But for $50 and with all of those shortcomings, I feel a 4 is quite generous.
4/10
-CA
No comments:
Post a Comment