Pokemon is back in the gaming Zeitgeist

To be honest with you, I never really understand the whole Pokemon phenomenon.

As a lover of classic animation, I hated the amateurish looking Pokemon cartoons, and when the Pokemon movie came out to enormous success, again, I just didn’t get it at all.

Still, there’s plenty of Pokemon fans out there to this day, and if the faithful readers of TG want to read about Pokemon, who am I to deny them? Hearing that Pokemon was in the news again, and I saw that with Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2 this is the first time there’s been direct sequels to Pokemon.

So what does the gaming community think of Black and White 2? As Flayrah.com writes, “It’s the same as it ever was, without even any new Pokemon to catch…It’s formulaic, but the formula works.” At the same time, the site warns, “Unless you are a fanatic, it may be best to keep your Black and White until the next generation.”

411 Mania also similarly remarked that with the new Pokemon Black and White there’s nothing that’s changed on a big level. At the same time “it adds and tweaks small things throughout, making it an enjoyable experience for fans of the series.”

As Mania writes, the pros to the game are the Pokemon World Tournament addition, but the big con to the game is there’s no big changes to Pokemon universe. Additionally, the “random battles can sometimes be too frequent,” and this is a game strictly for Pokemon fans. “[The] game won’t convince non-Pokemon fans to switch.”

Then again, there’s something to be said for some games that stay true to themselves and don’t change radically.

Foe example, in PCMag’s review of the game, the publication felt that even though “it’s still the same Pokemon formula,” there still “enough changes from the last version to feel fresh,” along with “plenty of content.” With some games, you don’t have to reinvent or reboot the wheel for players to have a great time, and the latest Pokemon sequels could indeed be those games.