Pokemon White

It's been a long time since I last beat a Pokemon game (Pokemon Red, back in seventh grade), but it hasn't actually been that long since I played one. I briefly had Pokemon Silver on my backlog, a game I remember picking up to play years ago but wasn't sure why I put it down. After a few sessions of playing it on my old Game Boy Color somewhat recently, I figured it out- the game would delete my save file at random! Unless I was willing to sit down and play through the game in one sitting, it just wasn't going to happen. Perhaps someday I'll pick up the DS port of that generation's games, but eventually I was given a copy of Pokemon White of the most recent generation (5, I think) and decided to play that one first. It felt like a great game to re-enter the series on, as everything I loved about Pokemon Red was here, yet updated with 150 new pokemon, a few new types, and a whole lot of depth for those interested. One of the main things I appreciated was that Pokemon White focuses solely on its own 150 pokemon- you don't have to worry about catching Rattatas and Psyducks in addition to your Audinos and Sawks. Like the original you start off with a fire/water/grass type and work your way through eight gyms to earn badges, then take on the elite 4, and then catch a legendary pokemon with your trusty master ball. What I don't remember from the old games was following that up immediately with a 'final boss'- perhaps a fellow blogger may remember, but isn't catching Mewtwo basically the 'end' of the game aside from the sidequest of catching 'em all? Here you take on two bosses to finish up the game. Another thing that stood out to me was the villainous team- where Team Rocket in the original games was just a group of liars and cheats out to steal your pokemon, Team Plasma is actually kind of interesting. They seem to be the only ones in this game who realize that capturing animals and forcing them to fight for our pleasure is pretty fucked up. They almost feels like a harsh critique on PETA, but since this is a kids game they quickly turn from 'Pokemon liberators' to basic villains. Still though, I'm surprised the idea was addressed at all. There's a whole lot more to the games that I haven't explored, but it's questionable whether I'll return to it later- I'm 2 years behind the curve for generation 5, so maybe I'll get in on the ground floor of the upcoming sixth generation. As long as it's as good as Pokemon White, I'll give it a serious play.