Who's That Pokémon!?

    So during one of my hungover states last weekend I once again cracked out my card and made an impulse purchase to make my hangover seem little, in comparison to the MIGHTY AWESOMEness I had just bought. Pokémon White/Black, which brings the total count of our little pocket monsters to 646!

    On a side note I was about to claim how racially tolerant I am because I bought the black version of the game, but then I looked down and saw the box in front of me clearly stating the WHITE version, with a big black monster on it that I'm assuming I'm meant to catch. Ugh, even when I try not to be racist!.. Anyways it doesn't mean anything right? I blame Nintendo for coming up with such a dividing name for the franchise, they may as well have called it Pokémon Nicole Kidman/Barack Obama versions. Those CRAZY Japanese people (whom I secretly love) they come up with all kinds of inappropriate things....

"Anyone Remember this?"

   Was that racist of me? Anyways, of course the moment I popped the game into the DS and 5 Pokémon later it was about 12.30 AM (I started at about 5.30PM), if you ever wanted to get old really fast, this game is the way to go! It's like a really crappy time machine that only goes forward for you. I have to say though, they actually did make an effort to improve everything this time around with much improved graphics (the Pokémon actually MOVE this time OMG), the battle system is smoother this time around and, as per usual, they've crammed it full of new moves and Pokémon to make it as addictive as ever.

    What I WAS fairly surprised to see was the what the games' storyline was about, which basically revolves around the ethics of the premise. The premise, if you didn't know, is about going on a journey catching every fucking thing that tries to get in YOUR way and if not you must beat the UNHOLY shit out of them. It's fairly ridiculous as characters in the game hark on about how Pokémon and Humans live in harmony even though humans enslave them and make them battle until they pass out or enter them into ridiculous beauty pageants (seriously, I just came across  a pageant and made my horse thing wear sunglasses and a top hat, which made him look FAB btw!), all for their own personal entertainment. BUT the storyline is about a group stealing other peoples Pokémon so they can free them to live their own lives, sounds like a good lesson for children right? Kudos to the developers for making a storyline with realistic values.... except it's up to YOU to make sure that doesn't happen! Ha I guess I do always like to play the villain...

"JAAAAAAA!! I CAUGHT A VILD PICKACHU!"

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    So yeah that was kinda neat to me that they acknowledged the moral ethics (if not exactly the way it should be done). What wasn't so neat to me was the new Pokémon. In previous versions of the game you would come across the old mixed with the new with familiarity at your side. However in this newest version it's almost entirely brand new Pokémon from the get go, in fact I don't think I've seen any originals yet. This wouldn't a problem except for how god damn fucking UGLY they all are! I mean, you're encouraged to catch them all but in all honesty I didn't want most of them only except that I had to take them in if I wanted to progress. One of them is a bin bag with eyes, then there's one that's literally a pigeon, but called Pidove instead. If I wanted a god damn pigeon I'd take a stroll down to the Spanish Arch, with a bin bag handy (maybe with eyes stuck on it), and throw it over the pigeon. Seán has caught a pigeon! Bin Bag gains 50 Whoopdey-Fucking-Doo-Points! My main starting Pokémon looks like an ultra retarded pig at the moment (I don't want to see what it will become next) and there's a stupid little yorkshire terrier looking one that would have my foot coming out of its mouth because I'd kick it so hard in the ass if it were real.

"FUCKINGUGLYRETARDFACE, I choose you!!!"

 
    I haven't gotten too far into it but so far there are very few that impress me so fingers crossed that I will want to enslave more Pokémon to do my bidding. At least the music is cheery! So far though I've clocked probably near 20 hours into it so I guess it's doing something right and I've barely scratched the surface of it yet. AND apparently there's a whole online section I have yet to delve into yet, so I can't, like TOTALLY WAIT to do beauty pageants with you guys!

Anyways, since I haven't gotten very far into it at all I can't speak much more on this topic.Who would've thought my first proper post back in a while would be about Pokémon eh?

Until next time... Toodles!

When Virtual Became My Reality

I remember when I was young the first time I played a video game. It was as clear as my first memory (which was me at the age of two, waddling down the corridor like a drunken gymnast who failed at the splits, I was after pissing myself). It all started with a program called MS DOS and a game called Sim Farm. For those of you who don't know, Sim Farm was made by Maxis, which went on to make other custard cream-like addictions such as The Sims. Now I don't know why, but even at the age of Five when I played Sim Farm I never considered myself ever to be the farmer type, it just wasn't in my blood. Yet making a 256 colour, 2-D, ever failing farm was intoxicating, I just HAD to spray more and more pesticide to keep my strawberries safe (although if this was reality, my strawberries would probably kill someone or many someone's with the insane amount of pesticide I used).

So Sim Farm was basically my introduction to the gaming world. The next step was when a little grey box that you plugged little grey boxes into Jack Bauer'ed it's way into my life. The Super Nintendo. If Sim Farm was an addiction, this would the the creation that should've made me go into video game rehab. Super Mario World dominated my life for some time, it was sort of the stem of my retarded video game flower. I couldn't get enough of going from level to level stomping, flying, eating, destroying castles, killing koopa kids, rescuing an inept princess who can't even bake a cake without a life threatening situation becoming involved:

"Actually, it's quite disturbing if you think of it realistically"

So Mario played a large part in destroying my social life at my early age. However the next part of my video  game life played (anyone see the pun here!?) a cosmological  obsession in my life that changed how I perceived dimensions in game and also what I (disturbingly, but not dangerously...I think...) drew. It was a new game for the PC and I think it's one everyone knows, it brought "doom" to my social life (I'm having so much PUN!!! writing these):

"Black Friday at Walmart"

If you didn't get it from the pun you're pretty stupid. Anyways, Doom brought violence in video games into my life. Unlike Mario which did it in a subtle way, Doom literally let you blow up creatures into giblets right in front of you, it was an orgy of violence that filled an insatiable pit and left you wanting more. It sounds so sadistic (maybe this game is what made me sadistic) but every time you came across a new enemy you always wondered what it would like after firing a rocket into their face, which often resulted in variations of half-eaten gone off hamburgers from McDonald's. And it was in 3-D, something I had never seen before (well.... apart from reality). So it was just totally Oreo Cookie in my life (it means awesome). However there was one more game that would solidify the very moment when I began wishing video game was reality. You could say it was a "Legend of" a game. And it totally "Zelda"'d my life (ok maybe that wasn't a good one.... nor did it make sense).

"Nintendo: Buy now and exchange €50 for your soul!"

The Goddam Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Renowned world over as the greatest video game ever created, it could make me breakfast it was so amazing (although, it never did :( ). This game shattered my barrier of video game reality and  actual reality, it absorbed me like Brian Cowen absorbs debt. It was my new reality. Any time I stopped playing, it would be like my world was The Sims, I'd eat, I'd talk some sort of gibberish to the neighbours, I'd pee on the floor and cry, I'd develop some sort of ability to accidentally create fires all the time, until I hit pause and went back to reality in Hyrule.

Of course there's many games in between all of those and after, but these were the asteroid hits to my brain and have left large impact craters. But good impact craters, not like the one that got rid of Velociraptors. They have left me with memories more fond than a snack box after a night out and more real than Michael Jackson's nose (although, that's not really hard to achieve), video games are just Oreo Cookie.