Pokemon X & Y

Fortunately for my girls the Pokemon craze was a part of my childhood. It started with Pokemon Blue for the Gameboy, then I began watching the TV show, followed by spending a small fortune on collecting the trading cards. This all culminated in seeing the Pokemon movie at the cinema, which I won’t forget because you received a limited edition Pokemon card with each admission. With all these good memories, I sincerely hope that Elizabeth and Alison will show an interest in the world of Pokemon. To help gain their interest I recently downloaded Pokemon X for the girl’s 3DS.

Pokemon X & Y are the latest games for Nintendo’s handheld system, the 3DS. It is the first handheld Pokemon game to use 3D polygonal graphics, meaning that players are not just limited to an over top view of the world they live in. There are times in the game when the camera angle moves to ground level and you can see your surroundings from a third person perspective. The battle scenes look better though as they appear more dynamic compared to previous titles. I found this a welcomed addition to the series and made me really appreciate the game’s graphics, which I think hold up well in comparison to other Japanese style games.

The game follows a similar story to other instalments, in which you control a young Pokemon trainer who at the start receives their first Pokemon and begins an epic journey towards becoming the best Pokemon trainer in the land. The story of Pokemon X is that your character has just moved to a new town in the region of Kalos (looks very much like France) and when he/she receives their first Pokemon, they are tasked with exploring Kalos in order to collect more data for their Pokedex. Your objective soon changes to one where you must defeat all the gym leaders in Kalos for badges and then challenge the Elite Four of the Pokemon League and their champion in order to complete the game.

A new feature to the series is Mega Evolution, which allows fully evolved Pokemon, such as Charizard and Venusaur, to temporarily evolve further during battle. I absolutely love this feature, especially during an intense battle when you need something a little extra to annihilate your opponents. I expect that young gamers will also appreciate this feature when they find themselves in a difficult situation with an opponent.

Pokemon X&Y also makes full use of online connectivity, which is to be expected with today’s games because most gamers are now connected to the internet. Through the Player Search System (P.S.S.) you can find friends and strangers to battle or swap Pokemon with. There’s even a cloud based storage system that can accomodate up to 3,000 Pokemon, thereby allowing players to use all their Pokemon across either physical or digital copies of the games they own.

Just playing Pokemon X for a short amount of time made me want to revisit all things I had learnt about Pokemon when growing up. This is certainly a family friendly game and one that can become an obsession if you want to catch them all. The formula for a Pokemon game hasn’t been changed much over the years but why would you tinker with perfection. This version though makes great use of today’s technology that we have at our disposal.

Awesome! At the start you will notice there’s a Wii U in your character’s bedroom.