25 Days of Pokémon: Top 5 Endgame Events

Capping off my month’s worth of ‘top five’ lists focusing on the Pokémon series, this list covers five of my very favorite moments or chain of events from late in their respective games. Some are only accessible after completing the main game, while others are incorporated as part of the plot late in the core experience. Honorable mentions go to the Unova Battle Subway and the Delta Episode from the recently released Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. This has been a fun and very different approach to my ’25 Days of Christmas’ special, and I’d certainly consider doing something similar in future years with some of my other favorite video game franchises, like Metal Gear, Metroid, or even some more Legend of Zelda (even though it is one of the most frequently represented series on this blog).

#5) Revisiting the Kanto gyms in Gold and Silver / Heart Gold and Soul Silver – The generation II titles and their DS remakes will always hold a special place for me, as the first proper Pokémon games that I played on the Gameboy Color, as well as the games that got me back into Pokémon just a few short years ago. While the Elite Four and battle against Lance was a properly climactic conclusion to the Johto storyline, discovering how much more lay beyond the borders in Kanto blew my mind as a kid. In reality, this retread of the Kanto region is a trimmed down, fast-paced romp compared to both its original Red/Blue incarnation, as well as the entirety of the Gold/Silver storyline, but it was still tons of fun to go up against the likes of Brock, Lt. Surge, Erica, Misty, and all the other classic gym leaders.

#4) The Distortion World in Platinum – As Cyrus sees his plan to summon the legendary Giratina revealed, the game transports you both to an alien realm, one that appropriately reflects Giratina’s representation of anti-matter. Waterfalls flow from one impossible floating cliff to another, stalks of unnatural plants appear and disappear, and the game requires you to adopt a mindset more common to a series like The Legend of Zelda to solve a few puzzles in order to progress to the final showdown with Giratina. This drastic jolt from intense end-of-the-world scenario to mystical realm of impossibility was one of the moments in Platinum that really made me appreciate the game’s bold and stranger direction than most of its predecessors, even if this approach had not panned out quite as effectively in earlier legs of my adventures through the Sinnoh region.

#3) The Pokémon World Tournament in Black 2 and White 2 – This tournament effectively served as a love letter to Pokémon fans. It allowed players to hone their skills and perfect their strategies while taking on gym leaders and league champions from all the previous regions in a bracket tournament, and even offered up the more highly-specialized tournaments demanding players only use Pokémon that fit a specific typing. Of the plethora of post-game offerings in the generation V sequels, the Pokémon World Tournament was the most intense, the most robust, and constantly offered plenty of opportunities for fun and learning with each successive battle.

#2) The League Champion Battle against Iris in Black 2 and White 2 – While Black and White’s league champion battle was interrupted due to the arrival of Team Plasma, the sequel games do it up properly as one of the most fitting endgame challenges, but also one of the most enjoyable battles in any Pokémon game to date. Iris is so bubbly and excited to see what you’ve made of yourself as a trainer after the remnants of Team Plasma disbanded, and it’s both a breath of fresh air following the darker implications of the main story, and a perfect endpoint for that same journey. This battle against Iris and her team of Pokémon had me on the edge of my seat for all of the right reasons.

#1) The Elite Four in Black and White – This team technically also accounts for the Elite Four present in Black 2 and White 2, but my first time challenging them was truly something special. The Elite Four have always served as the endgame gauntlet-style challenge in the Pokémon titles, forcing players to bring their very best team members and strategies, and carefully planning each move as they attempt to forge a path toward the league champion. And yet, some of these have proved too easy a feat, as was the case in X and Y as well as the recent Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Others still have had such a sudden leap in the scaling of the opponents Pokémon, as was the case in Platinum. The Elite Four of the Unova region present Pokémon that are at a level that is simply perfect for that endgame climax, offering up a high degree of challenge, but one that is certainly possible to overcome, given proper planning and flexibility in the heat of battle. The typings of the Pokémon in the possession of each member of the Elite Four still stands as my favorite combination, with Dark, Ghost, Psychic and Fighting taking the stage in wonderfully-rendered arenas that provide each of the four characters with their own unique arenas that reflect their personalities and provide players a brief look into who they are as individuals. Grimsley’s candleit lounge, Shauntal’s gloomy study, Marshall’s chain-link-surrounded fighting ring, and Caitlin’s lavish bedroom – Black and White breaks from the tradition of trekking down a single linear hallway, allowing you to tackle these in whichever order

25 Days of Pokémon - Top 5 Steel Pokémon

In keeping with the previous list, I thought it appropriate that I cover my five favorite Pokémon from my second-favorite typing, Steel. As with nearly every Pokémon detailed as part of this twenty-five days of Christmas special, these Pokémon are simply ones that I enjoyed using during my previous playthroughs, and ones that have served me well in both main storyline and postgame content. Their ordering is not necessarily a reflection of how well I think they would serve me in the competitive scene, as that’s not really my forte. Honorable mentions go to Lucario and Metagross, two Pokémon that - while both awesome in their own right - I prefer for their Fighting and Psychic moves, respectively.

#5) Scizor – Scyther seemed to be a fan-favorite when I was growing up and the Pokémon franchise was brand-spankin’-new. Imagine, then, just how excited young players became when they learned of Scizor, the Bug/Steel evolution of Scyther. Scizor’s dual-typing offers what is a decently useful buff, though it has a glaring weakness to Fire-type Pokémon, and doesn’t fare too well against Fighting-types either. However, the real appeal for my using Scizor during one of my Soul Silver replays lay in his widely varied moveset, which was key in taking down Grass, Psychic, Ghost, and fellow Bug Pokémon. He even fared quite well in the post-game tournaments of Black 2 once I transferred him over to the fifth generation games, and still proves quite useful for friendly competitive bouts in the sixth generation scene.

#4) Steelix – Another generation II evolution of a gen I Pokémon, Steelix is the bigger, badder, and generally cooler-looking evolution of Onix. It does what all good Steel Pokémon do in playing a defensive role, and then ups the ante with its secondary Ground typing. I relied quite heavily on Steelix during one of my replays of Soul Silver, and while Steelix performed wonderfully against the likes of Blaine and Lt. Surge, his crowning achievement was laying the smack-down on Red’s prized Pikachu while a snowstorm swelled atop Mt. Silver.

#3) Mawile – One of the more bizarre humanoid Pokémon designs, Mawile has two mouths - one on its proper, smaller face, and another gaping venus-flytrap mandible attached to the back of its skull. Depending on who you ask, people may describe Mawile as a cute and cuddly Pokémon, or one of the most lethal-looking things to come from the generation III titles. Either way, Mawile is a beast, both offensively and defensively. It can takes hits like a champ, and can learn Flamethrower, Brick Break, Shadow Ball, Ice Beam, Flash Cannon, Solar Beam, and more versatile moves to make it a wonderful jack-of-all-trades.

#2) Genesect – Once upon a time, Team Plasma decided to resurrect an ancient Bug Pokémon. They then decided that, in all his splendor, his physical form was not good enough, and so they decided to strap a giant cannon to his back. Genesect’s origin is probably the most perfect example of a terrible idea birthing something so awesomely dangerous since Team Rocket concocted Mewtwo in their own laboratories. The ability to give Genesect different drives that allow him to attack with Fire, Electric, Ice, and Water blasts respectively only adds to his diverse moveset, and his Bug/Steel dual-typing is certainly a welcome addition to the generally Psychic-heavy representation in the pantheon of legendary Pokémon.

#1) Aegislash – Perhaps some of you were curious as to how Aegislash, one of my all-time favorite Pokémon, was omitted from the top five Ghost-type Pokémon listing – after all, I only made mention of it and its pre-evolved forms in nearly every journal entry that accompanied my playthrough of Pokémon Y. The simple fact is that I was reserving it for this list, as trying to choose between Aegislash and Chandelure as my all-time favorite Ghost Pokémon would have been too close to call. From the moment I learned of Honedge’s dual Steel and Ghost typing, I knew I had to try my best to make it an integral part of my team, and boy did that decision pay off in spades. Aegislash’s moveset is incredibly versatile, his stats thoroughly impressive for both offensive and defensive, and his typing grants him unique additional defensive properties. Plus, his design – and those of his pre-evolutions – are so ridiculous, yet somehow intimidating, that it is awesomely perfect.

25 Days of Pokémon - Top 5 Ghost Pokémon

I’ve made mention in many of my previous Pokémon-related postings (especially my playthrough journals) that Ghost is my favorite Pokémon typing. It only makes sense, then, in my writing about some of my favorite elements of the franchise, that my five favorite Ghost Pokémon should be a topic of one of this month’s lists. While I do love a great number of Ghost Pokémon, I will adhere to my rule of five and five only, but will accordingly give honorable mention to the company of Golurk and Rotom.

#5) Sableye – While technically Ghost is its secondary typing and Dark its primary, I consider any Pokémon with a Ghost typing eligible for this list (and hey, it’s my list, so I can make the rules). Sableye was, surprisingly enough, one of my favorite Pokémon from my Sapphire playthrough. Its dual-typing gives it extra defense against both Dark and Ghost-type attacks, giving it no natural weaknesses save for the generation VI addition of Fairy-type attacks. Sableye can takes hits like a champ and dish out some decent attacks in return, despite what its tiny frame might let on.

#4) Drifblim – I didn’t think much of Drifblim prior to my catching one during my post-game adventures in the generation V titles, but what ultimately piqued my curiosity in this balloon Pokémon were the sinister implications described in the Pokedex entries for both it and its pre-evolved form, Drifloon. Drifloon’s Pokedex entry states that children who grab hold of them sometimes go missing, with other interpretations going so far as to say Drifloon takes children away to a land of the dead. Drifblim’s Ghost/Flying dual-typing and its ability to learn Thunderbolt led it to be a solid competitor in Unova’s Pokémon World Tournament matchups.

#3) Mismagius – Generation II introduced but one new Ghost Pokémon in the form of Misdreavus. While it was nice to see Game Freak add to the company of Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar, Misdreavus was not the most practical team member in those days, and did not receive a proper evolution until generation IV came around. Mismagius’s design is simple, yet effective, with its magician’s hat-shaped head and flowing robe-like body distinguishing it from other phantom Pokémon. Mismagius has a wide variety of typing pools it can draw its moves from, including the new Fairy moves in generation VI, making it a wonderfully useful Pokémon for taking down many a foe.

#2) Gourgeist – An unsung hero of the Ghost Pokémon, Gourgeist was my oddball pick in my playthrough of Y. I came across its pre-evolved form of Pumpkaboo late in the story, but when I learned of this Ghost/Grass Pokémon’s ability to learn Flame Charge, that secured its spot in my party. My Gourgeist was a Large size, and thus was able to both deal and take greater amounts of damage than his smaller kin, but was not nearly as slow as the Super Size variant. Taking to Super Training, I boosted Gourgeist’s speed, attack, and special attack, which – coupled with the speed increase earned from successive uses of Flame Charge – meant it could easily sweep many opposing Pokémon in a blitzkrieg offense.

#1) Chandelure – One of the first generation V designs I came across when I was getting back into the Pokémon franchise, Chandelure stood out to me as a wonderfully bizarre design – so much so, that I made it my mission to incorporate this Pokémon into my team as soon as I came across its pre-evolved form of Litwick. Chandelure is a perfect representation of what the Ghost Pokémon aesthetic is all about, as far as I’m concerned – the Victorian-style chandelier body combined with the purple flames and empty yellow eyes offers a creepy, yet somehow refined creature that fits right in with the limited company of its Ghost Pokémon kin. This lone Fire/Ghost dual typing offers many strong offensive options, and the abilities of Flame Body and Flash Fire can provide a unique edge over the competition in battle.

25 Days of Pokémon - Top 5 Pokémon Games

For this year’s twenty-five days of Christmas special, I’ll be focusing on the Pokémon series, albeit in a different manner than in years past. Instead of making one giant list of my favorite Pokémon or what have you, I’ve opted to make five separate ‘top five’ lists, each highlighting a different aspect of the series. Each will be posted roughly a week apart from one another, between now and December 24th. Today marks the second list, which details my five very favorite titles in the Pokémon series.

#5) Platinum – Generation IV is heralded as many as one of the weaker offerings of the main series of Pokémon games, due to its lack of new Pokémon, few of which are generally considered worthwhile team members, while others are obtainable only through a convoluted process. Still, I certainly found Team Galactic’s intent to tamper with time and space to serve their own needs entertaining, trumped only by Cyrus’ detached and selfish vision for the world. Platinum offers a completed package, with a bit of extra content not included in the original release of Diamond and Pearl, and between its Distortion World puzzle segment and expansive gyms, is still a fun Pokémon title, even if its reliance on event-distributed items and battery-sapping online components means it does not live up to the quality of some of its brethren.

#4) X and Y – The sixth generation games offered up plenty of new and different features that made the connection between player and Pokémon more immersive. These titles also fell victim to considerably easier playthroughs, thanks to the new experience share system that distributed exp. to all team members, even when wild Pokémon were caught. Even if large portions of routes were bypassed here and there, it was not uncommon to find the endgame Elite Four and Champion battles to be a cakewalk. Mega Evolutions proved a tad underwhelming, save for their use in the competitive scene, though the new Pokémon native to the Kalos region offered wonderful typings and movesets, by and large. X and Y did a great deal to advance the Pokémon formula players had become so familiar with, while being perhaps lighter on post-game content than what series veterans were accustomed to.

#3) Black 2 and White 2 – Two years after Ghetsis’ defeat, Team Plasma is back at it in the Unova region, and the influx of Pokémon from other regions during wild encounters makes for a vastly different play experience, despite running on the same setup as its Black and White predecessors. While it would have been easy for Black 2 and White 2 to simply ride on the coattails of the previous monochromatic titles, the team behind these two sequels decided to up the ante, offering brand new areas to explore, even greater ease of access to newcomers and veterans alike with regards to acquiring TMs and training Pokémon for specialized roles, and did away with the need for HMs in the main storyline almost entirely. There’s a lot to do and see in B2 and W2, from NPC trades, to post-game quests, to the test-your-might tournament that allowed trainers to challenge gym leaders and champions from all five major regions of the Pokémon world.

#2) Heart Gold and Soul Silver – The games that properly reintroduced me to Pokémon, these remakes of the generation II titles carry all the sense of fun and adventure in the Johto region over to a significantly easier-to-navigate menu and faster-paced battles. What Red and Blue laid out in ground work, Gold and Silver nigh on perfected for their heyday, and HG and SS do a masterful job of paying tribute to the Gameboy classics, making routes more distinctly identifiable, updating the soundtrack and splashing plenty of color on the screen, and implementing the generation IV online and wireless trade and battle components in a manner even more so seamless than Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum did beforehand. Few regions will ever stand up to the intelligent layout of Johto, or the solid offering of Pokémon encountered therein, and there’s no more enjoyable way to embark on this journey again than through these DS remakes.

#1) Black and White – One of the few Pokémon games to actually present a decently compelling set of ideals for its villainous team to rally behind, the ‘free-Pokémon-from-their-masters’ cries of Team Plasma put you, the player, in a role that will be continuously questioned over the course of this bold new set of Pokémon titles. Generation V effectively barred players from using any non-Unova Pokémon until the postgame content, forcing creative team building strategies not unlike the days of Red and Blue on the Gameboy, but with overall better-balanced Pokémon to choose from, and highly creative and practical typing and moveset combinations to boot. What I found in Black and White was the most engrossing plot of the series, coupled with the most intelligent, creative, and strategic gameplay of any of the generations, bar none. Black 2 and White 2 did exceptionally well at building off of Black and White’s duality of getting back to the basics while simultaneously breaking into bold new territory, but at the end of the day, Black and White did it first, and did it best.

25 Days of Pokémon - Top 5 Starter Pokémon

For this year’s twenty-five days of Christmas special, I’ll be focusing on the Pokémon series, albeit in a different manner than in years past. Instead of making one giant list of my favorite Pokémon or what have you, I’ve opted to make five separate ‘top five’ lists, each highlighting a different aspect of the series. I will be posting these roughly a week apart from one another, between now and the end of December. So today marks the first list, which details my top five starter Pokémon!

Picking your starter in each Pokémon game is the first major decision toward the long journey ahead. The five listed below are my personal favorites for a variety of reasons, partially because I like their typings and movesets, partially because they simply look cool. But the biggest factor that played into their inclusion on this list was how well they worked for me as team members during my various playthroughs of Pokémon games – and not just for the main storyline, but the post-game content as well.

#4) Typhlosion – The fully-evolved form of Cyndaquil, Typhlosion was the first starter I ever picked in a Pokémon game, back in the days of Gold on the Gameboy Color. It was the first Pokémon I identified as one of my favorites, because despite being into the anime and trading cards during the generation I craze, I didn’t play any of the core video game entries until generation II. When I dove back into Pokémon a few years ago with Soul Silver, Cyndaquil was my obvious choice, and though I’ve since gone back and replayed that DS remake with Totodile and Chikorita, Typhlosion will always hold a special place for me.

#5, #3, and #2) Blaziken, Sceptile, and Swampert (respectively) – While my journal entries on the generation III games and their remakes have indicated my being overall less favorable toward them than practically every other release in the series, I will admit that if there is one thing I felt Ruby and Sapphire excelled at, it was the Pokémon they added to the mix. These three starters are considered by many to be some of the best out there, and for good reason – they changed up battle tactics considerably with Swampert’s dual-typing of Water/Ground, and Blaziken being the first in a line of Fire/Fighting combos. And while Sceptile remained a pure Grass type, its stats and moveset proved that it could certainly hold its own in the company of the other two. The generation III starter Pokémon are among the rare few starters that have seen consistent use between the main single player game and the competitive multiplayer scene.

#1) Greninja – The ninja frog that debuted in generation VI, Greninja is, surprisingly enough, my all-time favorite starter Pokémon. His Water/Dark dual-typing is oddball enough that it offers up moveset options that are both varied and practical, while his stats make him ideal for landing hits fast and hard. He’s become something of a fan-favorite since the release of X and Y, as well as the recent Super Smash Bros. Really though, when compared to his fellow Kalos starters, the only other one that stands up as somewhat practical beyond the main game is Chestnaught. Plus, Greninja's aesthetic is absolutely radical, tongue scarf, water shurikens and all.

DS review: Kirby Super Star Ultra

A remake of the SNES classic, Kirby Super Star Ultra features updated graphics including pre-rendered cutscenes that act as bookends to each stage. Though the black edges to these cutscenes are a tad unnecessary, their presentation is solid, as is the more clean and colorful look of the core gameplay which appears to run on the same engine as the GBA title Nightmare in Dreamland. The main game relies on the D-pad and buttons almost exclusively, retaining a very familiar control scheme, while the three minigames rely heavily on the stylus and touch screen. Two of these minigames, a shooting range and card matching, are very simple, requiring little more than quick reactions from players, while the third is slightly more involved as it demands players clear bugs and bombs off a conveyor belt feeding their respective Kirby.

Meanwhile, the core game is comprised of nine different modes, the majority of which act as samplings of slight variations on the core Kirby formula. The SNES release of Super Star was most notable for its addition of copy abilities, which allowed Kirby to inhale certain enemies in order to gain new attacks including the Cutter, Yo-yo, Sword, Bomb, and many more. These abilities are both plentiful and nicely varied, and Kirby can even abandon his current ability to add a partner character to his side. Every partner character bears the appearance of whatever enemy Kirby originally copied, and bears their own health bar separate from Kirby’s. While Kirby can grab various food items to restore his own health, tapping the partner character will share the health regeneration with them.

Aside from Gourmet Race’s fast-paced run against King Dedede to collect the most food items before crossing the finish line, the remaining five game modes are essentially quick snippets of what any other Kirby game would offer up. Meta Knight’s Revenge includes a countdown timer, making it arguably the most challenging of the lot, while The Great Cave Offensive is the complete opposite – a sluggish, time-consuming treasure hunt that lacks any real challenge, fun factor, or sense of fulfillment. Meta Knightmare Ultra offers up a retread of previous stages, allowing players to don the cape and faceplate of Meta Knight. It is the only one of major subgames that relies on the touch screen to activate Meta Knight’s abilities and attacks, each of which requires a different number of points gathered from defeated enemies. The stronger the enemies, the greater the number of points rewarded. The more powerful the attack, the greater the number of points required to activate it.

The soundtrack of Super Star Ultra is generally quite good, though the quality of the tunes in The Great Cave Offensive sound quite rough on the DS hardware. Super Star Ultra is a decent remake – nothing more, and nothing less. It contains everything that led the original to be so well-loved, but the fact that it does very little to incorporate the DS’ touch controls is disappointing. Because it is divided into many subgames, Super Star Ultra lacks any sense of exploration found in most other modern Kirby titles. While there are few Kirby games that ever feel too terribly challenging, Super Star Ultra is exceptionally easy from start to finish.

My rating: 7.25 (out of 10)

DS review: Pokémon Platinum

Set in the Sinnoh region, Pokémon Platinum is the compilation title for the Generation IV Pokémon titles and effectively follows the same story and series of events, albeit with a few expansions and alterations. The game begins with a very typical introduction to your character and neighbor/rival crossing paths with the Sinnoh region’s esteemed Professor Rowan, a mustached gentleman who grants you free choice of your starter Pokémon. From there, you make your way toward the first major towns via the numbered routes that connect them, but not before encountering a mysterious blue-haired man at a nearby lake who seems to have some interest in the legendary Pokémon rumored to reside there.

Pokémon Platinum deals with the same themes as its predecessors Diamond and Pearl. While Professor Rowan asks you to learn more about the connections between humans and Pokémon as well as the evolutionary process some Pokémon undergo, the local villainous group Team Galactic is concerned primarily with the Sinnoh region’s legendary Pokémon Palkia and Dialga, Pokémon rumored to have been instrumental in the creation of the region and perhaps even the rest of the world. While it is made strikingly obvious early on how dim-witted most of the Team Galactic followers are, the executive officers are much more collected individuals, and their intentions could result in the rewriting of both time and space – a far more serious implication than the thievery of Team Rocket.

The Pokémon new to generation IV are a strange bunch whose typings are not exactly evenly distributed. There are quite a few new evolutions given to Pokémon from the previous four generations, and while Lickilicky, Magmortar, and Rhyperior may be able to utilize broader movesets than their pre-evolutions, their rather bloated and uninspired appearances beg the question as to why Game Freak felt the need to add another stage to these evolutionary lines. Meanwhile, early Sinnoh-local Pokémon like Shinx (an electric type), Starly (normal/flying), and Bidoof (a normal type that acts as this generation’s Rattata or Sentret) can easily be caught to round out your party to a decent degree, but access to further fourth generation Pokémon is severely limited until late in the main game. The majority of your time spent in the wild, exploring caves, and surfing on the three major lakes in the Sinnoh region will result in encounter after encounter with Geodudes, Machops, Psyducks, as well as a few other overly-familiar faces. Even an egg that is gifted to you during the first half of the game hatches into a Togepi, an event all too familiar to anyone who played the generation II titles or their DS remakes that followed a couple of years after the release of Pokémon Platinum.

Graphically, the game looks superb. 3D models mesh well with the 2D character sprites, while the Pokémon display a decent range of actions as they make their debut in a battle. A few of the older Pokémon are displayed in strange poses, but on the whole the battle segments look very good. The gyms follow a formula of ‘something old, something new’, as the first couple are helmed by leaders that favor Ground and Grass types, while later gyms allow Ghost, Steel, and Ice type Pokémon have their moment in the spotlight. While the three starter Pokémon do stick to the tried and true typings of Grass, Water, and Fire for their early evolutions, their final dual-typings are a breath of fresh air to the series, as they adopt Grass/Ground, Water/Steel, and Fire/Fighting respectively. That said, the moves that these starter Pokémon learn over the course of the game are not exactly in perfect balance with one another, and exploring every inch of the Sinnoh region’s various routes and locales would greatly benefit your team’s versatility and strategies.

Routes have been compressed, packing a comparable number of trainers and seemingly greater quality/quantity of items into smaller spaces. Generally speaking, this makes the trek between points of interest far less monotonous or time-consuming, though a few routes suffer from lackluster design and layout as a result. Cities, on the other hand, are all brilliantly realized, with interesting themes guiding their aesthetic approaches. Oreburgh City is home to both the Ground type gym and a mining industry, while Hearthome City is large and entertainment-oriented, with the Ghost type gym taking on a sort of funhouse setup. The gyms incorporate interesting puzzle mechanics, such as sliding punching bags along rails to knock obstructions out of a pathway and raising the water level to connect floating bridge segments.

While the story crescendos in the most grandiose fashion, the postgame is lacking when compared to many other entries in the series. Attempting to catch both Palkia and Dialga is exciting in its own right, The Battle Frontier from Pokémon Emerald makes a return, and there is always the option to import Pokémon from any of the five GBA releases via the Pal Park. But Platinum seems to focus more on incorporating the extra content that is non-essential to the main game as side quests and distractions, which leads to very mixed results. The Underground area can be tackled with friends to dig for fossils and mess around with harmless traps, though it has a tendency to drain the battery charge on your DS faster than normal gameplay. Meanwhile, a park wherein you can walk around with one of your Pokémon outside of its Pokéball serves no discernible purpose outside of gathering a few odd items. A visit to the purportedly haunted Old Chateau and the ability to team up with an NPC trainer on Iron Island make up some of the game’s more memorable and cleverly crafted sidequests.

Commanding your Pokémon to carry out attacks, healing them up with potions or berries, and even swapping party members are all incredibly quick and easy actions, thanks to the incorporation of the touch screen as your command list. However, the rest of the game sees minimal use of the touch screen, relying heavily on the buttons and D-pad for navigating menus, engaging in Wi-Fi trades, and shuffling your teammates. It results in the overall gameplay carrying out at a rate that is a little bit slower than 2010's Heart Gold and Soul Silver remakes, and the DS’ touch control fame feeling very much underutilized and underappreciated. When not engaged in battle, the bottom screen is used to display one of many Pokétch apps. These can include (but are not limited to) a miniaturized version of the health display for your team members, a map of the region with blinking markers for keeping track of roaming legendary Pokémon, a dowsing machine used for uncovering hidden treasures, as well as the notably less exciting calculator and memo pad. Because Pokémon Platinum is built into the original smaller grey DS cartridges, it cannot hold as much information as the larger black cartridges used by every Pokémon game that followed, leading to some lengthy save times.

There are a few strange alterations to long-standing Pokémon traditions, like riding the bike. Instead of it being used as a faster means of traveling between 'Point A' and 'Point B', it is now actually required to ascend certain muddy slopes and continue on to the next town. The bike can run in two gear settings which players can easily alter at the push of the B button, but the faster setting is needed to even scale the aforementioned mud slopes, so it’s a wonder that Game Freak even bothered with the slower and supposedly ‘more easily controlled’ gear setting. Similarly, the process of gathering berries introduced in Gold and Silver returns, as does the process of planting them introduced in Ruby and Sapphire, with the latter portion of the optional scavenging routine being less welcome. Purchasing mulch and combining it with ideal berries to grow more trees and ultimately use the fruits of your labor (no pun intended) for poffins that can help boost your Pokémon’s personality traits comes across as a convoluted, lethargic, and generally boring process that really only benefits the individuals interested in tackling the game’s Pokémon beauty pageant. Trees will eventually grow back on their own after a day or two, and the same berries you’ve known since generation II can still immediately be put to use as healing objects.

The challenge factor for the main game is decent at the start, but seems to taper off before the halfway point. The game seems to discourage the importing of Pokémon from outside games early on, as Pokémon that exceed level 10 before the first two gyms have been completed will frequently disobey you (your Sinnoh starter Pokémon excluded). But the lack of interesting new Pokémon available as well as the lack of particularly interesting old ones makes the first few hours just a tad frustrating for just about anyone, regardless of their team’s make up. Once that second gym badge is acquired and the hurdle overcome, however, Pokémon Platinum becomes a surprisingly easy game to burn through, lasting approximately twenty hours. The only significant required challenge comes from the Elite Four, as each member sees a notable gap in the staggering of the numbered levels of their respective Pokémon.

There is a second egg Pokémon that you are given during the game’s second half that hatches into a Riolu, who can ultimately evolve into Lucario and become a highly valuable asset to your team as well as a solid counter to the Elite Four. The problem is that Riolu is not acquired until late in the game, long after most of your team members would be at level thirty or higher, and it would have been a more rewarding and interesting experience had the game granted you use of Riolu early on in place of Togepi. Over the course of Pokémon Platinum’s main game, you will need to use all but about two HM moves, with no fewer than four being necessary for navigating Victory Road. This will limit the movesets of your core party Pokémon to a considerable degree, or alternatively result in your needing to revisit Victory Road to grind for more experience in the event that you braved the cavern with a Bidoof or some comparable HM pack mule in tow – either option only compounds the issues presented by a limited array of new Pokémon.

Pokémon Platinum looks and sounds fantastic, with exceptionally crafted locales and one of the best soundtracks in the series. The battle system is an impressive modernization of the classic turn-based routine introduced in the original Gameboy titles. The intelligent, fun gym layouts as well as the late game puzzle mechanics of the Distortion World are incredibly fresh and welcome additions to the franchise. But for all these boosts to the quality of Pokémon Platinum’s presentation, the lack of useful or interesting wild Pokémon available prior to the postgame really drags the overall experience down. If Game Freak is going to bother making a new Pokémon game, they should at least provide you the option of running with all-new Pokémon instead of actively shoving the old and all-too familiar in your face.

My rating: 8 (out of 10)

Pokémon Platinum journal - entry six

It took me three full runs through the Elite Four and a little over a half an hour grinding in Victory Road to gather enough experience points to best Cynthia’s team of Pokémon. While I found the combination of different types she brought to the fight kept me on my toes, her Togekiss led me to be the most annoyed, as most of my Pokémon that stood the best chance of taking her Togekiss down had weak defense while most of the others simply had a natural weakness to Flying type moves. The resulting choice for her Togekiss to spam a single attack over and over got old rather fast, despite the fact that I had more than one Pokémon whose speed stat or moveset allowed them to move first.

The Elite Four proved very different than previous incarnations. While the typings commanded by the Elite Four members were curious, the gauntlet run setup as a whole felt lackluster when compared to that of Soul Silver or the generation V titles. Really, the only notable challenge came from Cynthia, and I don’t feel that my having chosen a different Sinnoh starter would have made much of a difference in this scenario.

While I did stick with the core team I set out to use for Platinum up through my first attempt at defeating the Elite Four, I came to realize that Chimecho was acting largely as a support member to my team. While this was fine for the gyms and trainer battles that had led up to that point, Chimecho’s lack of versatility and moves that only allowed for so much in the way of offensive power led me to swap him out in favor of another Psychic type. While I briefly considered Bronzong, I knew my team already had a significant weakness to Fire Pokémon, and opted instead to seek out the three Lake Guardians. As soon as I realized Mesprit was determined to wander Sinnoh in the hopes that I might chase him, I gave up on that venture, focusing instead on Uxie and Azelf. Uxie’s higher defense stats, while impressive, ultimately led me to select Azelf and his higher attack stats. I wanted a Pokémon that could learn a couple of strong Psychic moves, but that could also be useful in countering other types not as well accounted for by the rest of my party. Azelf hit the opponent Pokémon hard and fast, and that was just the edge I needed.

So here it is – my Pokémon Platinum ‘dream team’, consisting of Empoleon, Blaziken, Venusaur, Aerodactyl, Froslass, and Azelf. I’m glad I stuck with these six core typings from start to finish, even if I did swap one team member out at the eleventh hour. As I am posting this, I have already captured Giratina, Dialga, and Palkia (to surprisingly little resistance and small number of catch attempts with the latter two). I have yet to explore the majority of the postgame content, so my review will be a little ways off yet. But do know that this is likely the final journal entry for my Pokémon Platinum playthrough, and that my next journal series will focus on the sixth generation Pokémon games (though I am currently still unsure as to which title I want to purchase between Pokémon X and Pokémon Y).

Pokémon Platinum journal - entry five

The climax of the Team Galactic storyline was spectacular. It’s cool to see the villain team actually come so close to seeing their plans realized, and it’s even more amusing to me that Cyrus recognized how inept his followers were but couldn’t give two hoots. In the end, the work of Team Galactic served Cyrus and Cyrus alone, as he wanted to rewrite space and time to fit his own desires. Unfortunately for him, despite using Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf to call upon Palkia and Dialga, Giratina intervened, sucking him, the protagonist character, and Sinnoh Champion Cynthia into the Distortion World. From there, it was up to the protagonist to confront Giratina and ultimately close the rift that the legendary Pokémon opened in order to prevent reality from being swallowed up by the chaos and inverse reality of the Distortion World. Due to his cold, unmoving nature (even when he’s been bested by a young trainer several times), his vision stays clear – he even believes that the protagonist will ultimately champion the cause he set out to bring about. Because of all that, Cyrus is easily one of my favorite lead villains in the Pokémon series.

The Sunnyshore City gym had a decent layout with some mildly amusing puzzle mechanics at play, though nothing extraordinary. In truth, Volkner’s gym was relatively easy to crank through – I didn’t sweep his team with just one Pokémon, and I certainly found it a bit more challenging than the Dragon type gym in Black/White or Black 2/White 2. As the final gym though, it wasn’t all that difficult. What I have found more so frustrating, however, are the final Elite Four battle with Lucian and the champion battle with Cynthia. This is due less to the teams of Pokémon each individual uses, but more on how much of a gap there is in the levels of each team commanded by the members of the Elite Four. Throughout the rest of my Pokémon Platinum playthrough, I found that I was a few levels ahead of where I probably needed to be, and while I would see one of my team members faint from time to time or run out of PP for an ideal move before I hit the next town’s Pokémon Center, I always felt that I was in a good position to defeat my opponents. Seeing the sudden jump in the levels of opposing Pokémon, I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for anyone who played through the game blind or used solely Sinnoh-native Pokémon.

The game’s constant demand that I use HMs does not help the situation. I found this element frustrating in Soul Silver, as I had to use multiple HMs to travel from Johto to Kanto. But at least I didn’t need to have the entirety of my core team with me at the time – as soon as I reached the other side, I could then use fly to quickly travel back and forth, changing my team members out at the Pokémon Center. Over the course of Platinum, you are required to use no fewer than six separate HMs just to progress through the story, and while you can catch a Machop or a Bidoof to shoulder this burden on, you still have to use four separate HMs to make your way through Victory Road. It’s an annoying, poorly thought-out requirement, as it means you either have to accommodate for one subpar Pokémon with a wholly boring and ineffective moveset, or divvy these HM moves up among six stronger and more practical Pokémon, robbing each of at least one more practical or effective move. I didn’t spend a lot of time grinding as I played through Platinum because I never felt the need to, but I guess I am going to need to devote a few hours to that process now.

Pokémon Platinum journal - entry four

Good on Pokémon Platinum for keeping some characters outside of the traditional core circle relevant later in the main game. The brief mention by Byron that Roark is in fact his son and Maylene’s meeting back up with you as you both push through the blizzard toward Snowpoint City actually go a long way in making me more invested in the people living in Sinnoh. Even more appreciated is the game’s devotion to the Team Galactic plotline. It takes a while for the mystery surrounding them to reach a boiling point, but when it does is it impressive. I don’t think any of the other Pokémon games gave their local bad guy team so notable a leg-up with more than a few hours to go before the finale. While I had my complaints about the pacing during the game’s earlier stretches, it’s been pretty great ever since.

As for the challenge factor from the gyms, they largely depend on which starter you chose. As I previously mentioned, I imported both Venusaur and Blaziken from Soul Silver, but if you were running solely with Pokémon caught in Platinum, you might find certain gyms significantly more challenging and/or frustrating. For example, Candice’s Ice types would be a pushover for anyone using Infernape, but could be a real pain for anyone using Empoleon or Torterra. Byron’s Steel types are weak to Fighting Pokémon as well as Fire, so Infernape is by default the best choice there as well, though both his Steelix and Bastiodon have dual typings that could be easily countered with the other two starters. All this traces back to Platinum's lack of support for newer generation Pokémon early on. True, the wild Pokémon you encounter after the fourth or fifth gym amp up the variety and are at higher levels, but there's still the factor of grinding for experience points at play. The game does, however, allow you to go ahead and scour Iron Island for extra items and experience points, and this is one of the game's best designed sub-areas.

The generation IV Pokémon are shining through more noticeably now, while some of the generation II and III Pokémon have decided to lay claim to the abundance of wild encounters previously filled by generation I regulars. I did go out of my way to catch a Snowver, and though I have no real intention of using him during this particular playthrough, I don’t have many Ice type Pokémon well-suited for the Black 2 Pokémon World Tournament. Snowver’s Ice and Grass dual-typing may prove useful there in the long run. I also caught two Snorunts – one male and one female. The male will similarly be transported to Black 2 and evolved into Glalie, while the female has filled the final slot on my Platinum team as Froslass. I love Ghost type Pokémon, and the dual typing with Ice is an interesting, exciting combination.

Pokémon Platinum journal - entry three

If I had to associate a Pokémon name with this most recent leg of Pokémon Platinum, It would be Serperior (*ba-dum-tiss*, bad Pokémon pun).

Really though, the game seems to have pulled itself out of the slump of uninteresting wild battles and bland environment designs. Sea routes filled with swimming trainers, ancient remnants of Sinnoh’s past, and misty mountain bridges make for far more interesting and eye catching areas – the latter introduces the fog environment factor which, while admittedly an interesting concept, diminishes both player and opponent Pokémon accuracy so significantly that it’s largely a stare down, with only every third or fourth attack landing on its target. Even option side areas like the Old Chateau and Fuego Ironworks make for brief but well-crafted distractions.

Wild encounters have now broadened to accommodate Floatzels, Bronzors, Shellos and more. While Platinum still seems to push Pokémon from previous generations more than I think is healthy for its success as a product, I am very glad to see newer Pokémon becoming more frequent and overshadowing Geodudes and Machops (with any luck, hopefully those generation I Pokémon will disappear from wild encounters completely as I make my way toward Canalave City). The layouts of both Maylene and Crasher Wake’s gyms were the best yet, while the trainers within used a nice variety of Pokémon (even if some of those Pokémon used movesets that loosely fell into the category they were intended to match).

The Sinnoh region is notably smaller than Johto or Unova, and it tries to mask this (to mixed results) by having players loop around its various regions in odd patterns. While Johto was more or less a straight progression from one gym to another (the only major exception being the backtracking to sort out Team Rocket’s takeover of Goldenrod City’s radio station), Platinum utilizes a Metroid-esque routine of allowing players access to sub-areas of locales previously visited once they have acquired the necessary HMs or badges. While most of these sub-areas (the likes of which include the aforementioned Old Chateau and Fuego Ironworks), the process of visiting, revisiting, and revisiting areas yet again can result in finding yourself lost and confused, depending on how far you’ve traveled from where the game intends for you to head next.

I’ve actually decided to go ahead and catch as many generation IV Pokémon as I can while I’m travelling around Sinnoh, as well as the odd generation I, II, and III Pokémon I have otherwise been barred access to. I never really set out to catch them all when I sought to revisit the franchise via Soul Silver and White, but seeing as how I have more than 460 Pokémon recorded on my national Pokédex in Black 2, It wouldn’t actually require that much extra effort to complete what I can. I do recognize, however, that Arceus is more or less out of the question unless I can gain him through a trade or Nintendo performs some other distribution event in the future.

I really love the personalities of the characters in Platinum. While the rival character is a little too ecstatic and hyper for my liking, at least he isn’t a snobby brat. Meanwhile, Cynthia and the gym leaders share an interesting dynamic with nicely varied attitudes and physical appearances that add quite a spark of inspiration to the otherwise typical trainer character models. From the standpoint of Platinum’s graphics, sound design, and overall artistic presentation, the game is a real winner for me. It’s unfortunate that the game mechanics don’t all stack up equally, but the game is definitely now on a consistent upward climb. Aside from tackling this upcoming Steel gym, my next most important goal is catching my final team member Snorunt and evolving it into Froslass.

Pokémon Platinum journal - entry two

I’ve finally gotten past the hurdle of Pokémon below level thirty not obeying me, as I’ve now beaten three gyms. While Gardenia’s gym battle was rather typical of a second gym as well as a Grass type gym, Fantina’s Ghost type gym was easily my favorite thus far. The puzzle element and notably higher number of trainers within made the pattern less predictable, while the specific Pokémon owned by Fantina had nicely varied movesets.

The routes between towns, however, are becoming notably less impressive, with pathways that zig and zag for no real reason, and only slight variation in an otherwise straightforward (if not cramped) pathway. I don’t care much for Platinum’s insistence on adding extra complexity to previously simple things, either. The bike is no longer just a means for faster transportation, but must be used to speed over certain hills in order to progress, while there is a whole system in place for laying down mulch for replanting trees and, in turn, picking more berries. The bike hills could have easily been replaced with the small bushes that need to be cut by a Pokémon, as you get both that HM and the bicycle around the same time. Meanwhile, the berry tree planting process seems counter-intuitive for a game aimed largely at young gamers.

I’m similarly none too impressed with severely limited number of wild Pokémon I’ve encountered by this point. The Team Galactic storyline is making some headway, the people of the Sinnoh region have noticed their presence, and the gym leaders have all presented distinct styles and personalities. But I’ve seen more Geodudes, Machops, and Bidoofs than I care to count, with Starlys and Shinxes being the next most common. I went ahead and caught a single Clefairy shortly before facing Gardenia, simply because of the fact that I had never caught one during any of my previous Pokémon adventures. It may be true that I plan to stick to my core team of six, predetermined Pokémon, but a little more variety in the wild encounters would be nice. The Togepi that Cynthia gave me only compounded my frustrations with this – I had no interest in using Togepi any of the four times I trekked through Johto in Gold/Soul Silver, and that certainly hasn’t changed now.

I’ve only dabbled in the extra content a little bit, and neither the Amity Square distractions nor the Underground bonus area impressed me much. The Underground might have been more immediately exciting had I picked up Platinum during its heyday, but the act of needing to track down another player who owns Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum in order to catch one of the more elusive and interesting Pokémon, Spiritomb, seems like a ton of unnecessary hassle. Why not make it so that players could just interact thirty-odd times with another player in any of the generation IV games via the Pokémon Center’s Union Room? As for Amity Square, all I got out of it were a few halfway-decent items to add to my backpack. I’m seriously hoping that this is the low point of the game, and that things will go up from here, because while Platinum started off strong enough, it reached a seriously obnoxious pattern of repetition and ill-conceived hindrances not long after the first gym.

Pokémon Platinum journal - entry one

As I mentioned in yesterday’s ‘Top 5 Legendary Pokémon’ post, Pokémon Platinum was the next title I intended to tackle. As luck would have it, the copy I ordered last week arrived a few days ahead of schedule. I spent a decent chunk of this afternoon starting up my game file and importing the majority of my team members from Soul Silver. Much like in my playthrough of Black 2, I plan to use a core team of six Pokémon, only rotating members out for the sake of traversing areas that require use of an HM to proceed. Aside from replaying Soul Silver with Hoenn starters and my brief adventures with Gale of Darkness, my time spent using Pokémon from generations III and IV has been relatively limited. As a result, my intended team members for the majority of Platinum version are as follows: Piplup, Torchic, Bulbasaur, Chingling, Aerodactyl, and Snorunt. Aerodactyl is in place to round out an otherwise notable weakness to Fire types, while Bulbasaur and Turtwig are the only two Grass starters I have never personally used in a core Pokémon game - and to be honest, I flat out dislike the way Turtwig and his evolutions look, despite his Grass/Ground typing being mildly interesting. I don’t really have anything against Chimchar, but I’ve always found Torchic and his evolutionary line far more interesting. As for Snorunt, I anticipate she will be the last member to join my team, as I ultimately intend to evolve her into Froslass.

This Platinum playthrough should, in theory, be equal parts familiar and new experiences. While I’m familiar with the generation IV engine via Soul Silver, the Sinnoh region and many of its native Pokémon are foreign to me. Also, the team members I have chosen to work with are types that have long served me well, while their dual typings and movesets are a bit different from what I have used in the past. I specifically chose Platinum over Diamond or Pearl for the reason that it is, to my understanding, a more complete package than its predecessors. From what I hear, there are more areas to explore, and the battles with gym leaders and Team Galactic executives are not only more challenging, but also present a greater degree of variety.

While I can say the game plays very similar to Soul Silver from the outset, Platinum does not appear to utilize the touch screen as frequently or as intelligently as in Soul Silver. The various towns see typical layouts, though the aesthetics of wind farms and coal mines are pleasing to look at. Extra little additions here and there like specks of snow lingering on pine trees and fields of flowers go a long way in making the Sinnoh region interesting to explore. From a graphical standpoint, Platinum is already proving that it looks as good if not better than Soul Silver. The soundtrack is equally impressive, and if it continues on the hot streak of interesting and memorable tunes it has dealt out thus far, could rank among my favorite soundtracks of the franchise.

Where Platinum sees its biggest falter early on, I think, is in its severe limitation of the usefulness of imported Pokémon. Whereas most Pokémon games will give you a slap on the wrist for boosting Pokémon over level ten prior to the first gym by making it so that there is a chance they may not listen to your commands, Platinum sets this benchmark even higher. You must beat the first two gyms before any imported Pokémon will obey you without question, and even then, if they are over level thirty, there is no guarantee that they will perform the specific attacks that you request. It may seem like a slight hurdle early on, and I admit, it is largely aimed at players like myself who intend to import all but one of their core team members, but it doesn’t make it any less obnoxious, especially when the second gym is filled with Grass types – something my Torchic-turned-Combusken should have no problem sweeping through, were it not for the fact that he only seems to want to listen to me every third attack or so.

My frustrations with that aside, I appreciate the fact that the intro segment is quick. The tradition of an NPC showing you how to catch a wild Pokémon and explaining the big adventure that awaits is all said and done in a matter of fifteen minutes, as opposed to the nearly forty-five it took in Soul Silver. Among the many things I hope they implement in X and Y would be the option to skip the tutorial section. There are enough people who have been playing Pokémon since the days of Red and Blue who do not need their hands held today, much less two generations ago.

Top 10 Games of the Seventh Generation Consoles - #1: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

This is easily the most impressive Zelda title I’ve played since Ocarina of Time and the Oracle titles. Whereas Twilight Princess blatantly tried to align itself with Ocarina of Time and offered up a host of uninspired and generally non-threatening bosses, Skyward Sword borrowed elements of practically every previous Zelda game and meshed them with a brand new combat system. The result is one of the most fresh and enjoyable experiences I’ve had with any video game in a long while, and the most fun I've had with a Zelda release in over a decade.

Certainly, the core essence of Zelda is retained, but there’s plenty of new characters and content to indulge in, like sassy and prideful Demon Lord Ghirahim or the Timeshift Stones that are scattered about Lanayru Desert. Ganondorf has long reigned as my favorite video game villain of all time (specifically, his Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker incarnations), But Ghirahim ranks quite highly as well. While Skyward Sword’s enemy number one is full of attitude from the first encounter to the last, he slowly reveals more and more about his true nature with each encounter he has with Link – and I don’t mean that we learn more about his plans to revive his master, as that is something we know practically from the outset. Rather, we see how truly prideful he is, as well as how he is unable to deal with someone else besting him in battle, let alone a human.

As for the new combat system, it is what the Wii was designed for – a perfect 1:1 reaction as Link swings his sword up, down, sideways, and vertically. The dungeons are chock full of fun puzzles and stronger enemies than usual, many of whom require a specific angle of attack from Link’s sword. There’s a curious collection of items at Link’s disposal, including a whip, double clawshot, and the beetle, though none of these serve to replace pre-existing items as is typical of Zelda titles. Many of the items also see multiple applications, such as the whip being used to swing across chasms and pull on switches. While few of the dungeons ever reach the scale of those in Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask, they are all wonderfully inspired on both the front of puzzle design and aesthetic presentation.

The soundtrack is gorgeous, the art style phenomenal, and the characters – especially a more bright and talkative Zelda – genuinely lovable. Skyward Sword ends with one of the most epic, atmospheric boss fights to ever grace the series, which is saying a lot, considering how well-received the boss fights in nearly any Zelda game tend to be. This is the story that sets in motion all the patterns witnessed in the rest of the series, and I could not have asked for a more perfect way for it to be conveyed. It’s a game that I waited more than two years to play after its initial reveal, a game that I was excited for unlike any other before it, and a game that delivered everything I had hoped for and more.

Top 10 Games of the Seventh Generation Consoles - #2: No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

While there have been plenty of solid sequels and revamps of classic titles on the seventh generation titles, few developers have dared to tread into brand-new territory. Few have dared to create something so bold as No More Heroes. Much as I love the Mass Effect sequels, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and the other games that found their way onto this list, they are all sequels or spiritual successors to previous releases. Though the No More Heroes titles do draw inspiration from contemporary hack-and-slash action titles and 8-bit arcade-y games, the culmination is a wonderful breath of fresh air, not just to the genre, but to video games as an entertainment medium.

Both the original No More Heroes and its sequel Desperate Struggle are (among other things) unapologetic – Travis Touchdown slices and dices his foes into bloody pools, spouting off vulgar one-liners during his moments of downtime that are equal parts awesome and silly. The original game defined a brand-new experience and was one of the earliest Wii titles to really nail the motion controls down by balancing those with a traditional button/joystick combo. While No More Heroes boasts many a colorful environment and memorable assassin, the sequel cleaned up the entire experienced, streamlining the overworld and amping up the combat just enough that it was more fast-paced without teetering into the realm of frenetic.

The sequel also saw a more focused, darker story – one of Travis seeking revenge – which still managed to balance the silly with the gritty. While the first game was more off-the-walls goofy, the references to Star Wars and Back to the Future therein seemed unorganized and random compared to the sequel’s mecha boss fight between robots inspired by anime Space Runaway Ideon and Gurren Lagann, or a narrow forest whose twisted dead trees and red night sky were an obvious nod to Capcom’s explosively popular Resident Evil 4. Instead of giving off the impression that the game was chock full of ideas that creator Suda51 thought were cool, NMH2 came across as more of a love letter – not only to the creative minds behind the works Suda was paying homage to, but to fans of the original NMH as well.

Personally, I am a bit partial to Desperate Struggle. It’s much easier to jump into, has a higher degree of replayability due to its time attack Death Match mode and general faster pacing. But I won’t deny that the boss fights in the original No More Heroes were some of the best I’ve experienced in any game. Being such a huge fan as I am of the Legend of Zelda series, that is the standard with which I compare the boss fights of any and all other video games, and it is incredibly rare that another title provides as consistently high-quality encounters. But the UAA ranking matches in the NMH games are truly something to behold – a brilliant mesh of flair and challenge that defines the core of the experience.

Top 10 Games of the Seventh Generation Consoles - #3: Bioshock and Bioshock 2

The opening to the original Bioshock was an interactive sequence that blew me away when I first played it. Six years later, I still consider it to be one of the (if not the single) best introductory sequences in any video game. While the brief monologue Jack relays moments before his plane crashes into the ocean serve to provide players with some inkling of who he is and what is to come, it’s still deliberately vague. The game takes you (the player) and protagonist Jack from a familiar setting and thrusts you into a strange, dangerous, and yet ever-intriguing environment: the city of Rapture.

Bioshock is a curious game in the sense that most of the story is conveyed to Jack via audio diaries and radio chatter from both Atlas and Andrew Ryan. To tell more than to show is always a risky formula for a game, but having Jack enter Rapture after it has already gone to hell in a hand basket allows players to focus more on the hauntingly gorgeous setting. Little Sisters urge their Big Daddy protectors on to new corpses, blissfully unaware of the walking guinea pigs they have been transformed into. Sander Cohen has Jack go on a murderous scavenger hunt to gain passage through Fort Frolic. And the direct interactions Jack has with characters like Cohen, Tenenbaum, and Ryan cultivate one of the game’s most important aspects – choice.

While the core of Bioshock will remain the same for each and every player, there is a significant degree of freedom to how the game is experienced. Aside from the option to save or harvest the Little Sisters for precious ADAM, players can choose which weapons and plasmids to upgrade. They can choose to explore areas not important to their current objectives to better explore the fallen city, and they can choose to pick up or not pick up audio diaries that would better inform them of what led to Rapture becoming a such a horrifying place.

While most would argue that the story of the first Bioshock is superior to the sequel, I would argue that the method of storytelling in Bioshock 2 trumps that of its predecessor. The ‘stranger in a strange land’ approach does not work particularly well in a second visit to the same locale, and 2K avoided this problem altogether by putting players in the boots of a Big Daddy named Subject Delta. One of the original Big Daddies, Delta is far more powerful and intelligent than the typical Bouncer or Rosie and can wield much more powerful variants of the weapons Jack previously used. Because players would already know the fate of the characters from the first game, there was no reason to pull a ‘smoke and mirrors’ routine. Bioshock 2 gave players the run of the place almost instantly, and expands upon the stories of major characters that shaped the experience of the first game, while also introducing all-new characters who were key in both the rise and fall of Andrew Ryan’s underwater utopia-turned-dystopia.

Bioshock 2 looks better, sounds better, and - most importantly - plays better than its predecessor. Chunks of coral and more heavily flooded areas give players a sense that Rapture has decayed even further since their last visit. The gun controls are more tight and the hacking process distracts less from the core gameplay. As a Big Daddy, you are certainly tougher than any normal human, but then again, the splicers have mutated so far along that they are more dangerous and creepy than ever.

It would be inaccurate to state that the Bioshock titles belong to the horror genre. While certainly spooky, they consistently utilize elements from action, adventure, and RPG genres. But if there is one thing that can unquestionably be stated about Bioshock and Bioshock 2, it is that they are two of the most thought-provoking games of their day, due to the ideologies they bring into play and the questions they raise – not just within the context of Rapture, but also for the people who make and play video games.

Top 10 Games of the Seventh Generation Consoles - #4: Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3

While I thoroughly enjoyed the original Mass Effect, the sequels improved upon the gameplay and storytelling significantly. The first game provided a glimpse of the greater universe that you actually get to explore in the sequels, and while there are certainly elements of BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic that inspired the Mass Effect games, the homeworlds and cultures of the Asari, Turians, Krogans, Hanar, and so on feel strikingly original.

These two games run incredibly close for me. While neither is perfect, they both have their strengths and weaknesses that ranks them at approximately equal quality in my eyes. Mass Effect 2 was more reliant on shooter mechanics, but offered a greater host of side missions and squad members. Mass Effect 3, though more focused on reaching the end of Commander Shepard’s story, brings back many traditional RPG elements absent in ME2 and offers fewer squad members that, while specialized to one role or another, are more adaptable than in the previous installment.

Above all else, what impressed me most about the two games was the weight of your decisions and how it impacted the manner in which the greater story unfolded. The original Mass Effect forced you to choose one human squadmate to live and the other was left to die, but these were characters that I frankly could not have cared less about. Sure, there was the romance subplot, but it only offered two options per gender. Mass Effect 2 rectified all of this by including loyalty missions – sidequests that would earn Shepard the trust of his squadmates. Opt not to complete a loyalty mission and there’s a good chance your pals might not survive to the end of the game. As for the romance subplot, there were significantly more choices available to both male and female Shepard, each of them arguably more interesting and involved than those offered in ME1. Mass Effect 2 required much more time and attention than the first game, but it also gave a lot more back. It was a game that allowed you to play however you wanted, and your decisions would carry over to Mass Effect 3. The characters you allowed to live would appear in Mass Effect 3, potentially offering you assistance in your fight against the Reapers, while those who died might be mentioned in dialogue, but were otherwise nowhere to be seen.

The Mass Effect sequels are phenomenal spiritual successors to the Knights of the Old Republic titles as well as the original Mass Effect. Gone are the clunky periods of exploring uncharted worlds in the Mako, gone are the repetitive landscapes and underground bases - all replaced with planets that exude a sense of adventure. While BioWare’s love for space operas like Star Wars are clearly visible in the art and story direction of Mass Effect, these games host their own lively universe - one that was equally creative and engaging. Whether Shepard is investigating a string of disappearances on human colonies, securing the last hope of curing the Krogan genophage, or helping to beat back Reaper forces from one of the moons orbiting the Turian homeworld, each quest is uniquely exciting.

Top 10 Games of the Seventh Generation Consoles - #5: Pokémon Black and Pokémon White

Over the years, Game Freak has done quite a bit of experimenting with the Pokémon series, between the core entries and the side games/spinoffs. While still a six-member party RPG game, the inclusion of dual types and special abilities provided a new dynamic to strategies players would adopt. However, the Generation IV titles Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum were less well-received by many in the Pokémon community following their release, due to a number of factors including a lack of balance in the representation of the then-seventeen types, as well as some new evolutions of pre-existing Pokémon that some fans considered entirely unnecessary.

Thus, the Generation V games known as Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version saw Game Freak perform a sort of balancing act between the new and the old. The fundamentals of the game were retained, and many familiar tasks were streamlined to better utilize the DS’ hardware. Trading was no longer handled through the Pokémon Centers – rather any player could access the ‘trade’ and ‘battle’ options on a whim via the handheld’s lower screen and interact accordingly with a friend/opponent nearby. The simple act of combining the Pokémon Center and PokéMart into a single building proved to be a giant time-saver.

Meanwhile, the one-hundred and fifty Pokémon players could catch in Black and White were all new, with access to Pokémon from previous generations being restricted (outside of trading) until the sizeable post-game section. The types were carefully chosen to create a near-perfect balance. Though some generation V Pokémon were perhaps more ideal to certain players than others, the fully evolved form of each Pokémon had a practical use and could serve to complement a party well. The Elite Four put up a solid challenge, and the concept of having the antagonistic Team Plasma’s desire be the liberation of Pokémon from their owners/partners made for a strikingly original and entertaining spin on an old classic - one that was mildly more thought-provoking than the plans laid out by previous baddies who wished to drown/dry up the world or mess with the time-space continuum. Everything Game Freak implemented in Black and White, they did so with good reason, and the games stand out as what I would consider to be among the best in the series as a result. There’s a decent degree of challenge, though the game allows for a great range of freedom with selecting party members and strategies. Above all else, Pokémon Black and White are just plain fun to play.