Pokemon Colosseum
A lot of people say that Nintendo doesn’t understand its fanbase, but evidently that isn’t true. What other company would announce their new home console core Pokemon series game by sitting an Asian man at a desk and having him say “New Home Console Core Pokemon Series Game” over and over for 90 seconds, knowing the Pokemon fans would still lose their minds for the three minutes a day they’re allowed out of their cage. Especially since the old home console pokemon series games were so decidedly average.
I’d say Pokemon Colosseum is the Shadow the Hedgehog of its franchise, but perhaps that’s a little extreme; at no point does Pikachu curb-stomp a man for being behind on his protection payments, though in retrospect that sounds like a criticism. Also, whereas Shadow the Edgehog was a one-off foray into the g-unknown, Pokemon continued playing it fast and edgy with Colosseum’s sequel, Pokemon XD: which immediately sounds bad for sounding like it’s trying to appeal to those little Scene gremlins, and then you realise the XD stands for “Xtra-Dark” and it immediately gets significantly worse.
But you know what? I applaud the Pokemon series for trying something new with an IP becoming more re-hashed and stale than an Amy-Schumer-and-old-marijuana sandwich. The main new thing going for it is the “Shadow Pokemon,” Pokemon made into fighting machines by closing “the door to their hearts:” okay maybe the Shadow the Hedgehog comparison is more apt than first thought. These pokemon can only be seen by your overly weeaboo-uguu companion - whose name is your choice, so obviously her name is Derrick – who can see Pokemon’s souls or something, probably from lacking one of her own through being AGGRESSIVELY ginger. They are then obtained through a genuinely quite interesting fusion of the series’ two main mechanics – catching Pokemon DURING Pokemon battles. The juggling act of gameplay this results in, rather than the pokemon series’ old clutch of “select strongest effective move until all opposing brightly-coloured critters are obliterated,” is actually a breath of fresh air for the series, well done Pokemon. The game’s also got a more involved story, though the Very Hungry Caterpillar is more involved than the story of most Pokemon games and it’s not exactly War and Peace here either, and the graphics and environments are obviously a big step up from the Gameboy’s speck of a screen, which is nice.
If only those enhanced graphics were used to render something not completely stupid-looking. Seriously, it’s readily apparent they were trying to do something gritty with the desert setting and the story but it comes off more like Scooby-Doo. It’s like the school play version of Mad Max – The game starts with a cinematic of the villain’s base getting blown up by the unnamed protagonist, who looks like Yugi Moto’s troubled step-brother, while riding off on some science-baiting unicycle-thing. This is immediately followed by an encounter with a man who makes motorbike noises, and then challenges you to battle his two raccoons. …Now that I’ve written that down raccoon-fighting actually sounds Mad Max-y, let me try another example. During a long story section in the actually quite gritty Pyrite Town (actually scrap that, I just remembered it’s called fucking Pyrite Town), you’re stopped by a quote-unquote “Fortune Teller,” who has BRIGHT pink Princess Leia hair and bloody Penfold glasses that look drawn on, who tells you “What you seek is in the North,” and generally couldn’t be LESS gritty if she replaced all her internal organs with sand. And the names, oh god, the names; I will now read, verbatim, the names of the nine evil team-members who impede your progress towards a boss battle at “Mount Battle,” which already sounds like a sex move you’d use during a three-way; *Ahem*
Rider Turich
Hunter Drovic
Rider Kimit
Rider Riden
Hunter Telia
My personal favourite, Street Performer Nortz
Immediately followed by Hunter Weeg
and finally, Cipher Peons Kison and Berlin.
I understand you need a lot of names for NPCs, Pokemon, but honestly calling them all Bob and Steve would be better than this, there’s no need to make my spellchecker have a seizure. Even with the Villains you can feel the literal minutes of effort that went into their names; the leader of Cipher is called Nascar or something, he only shows up like three times, and the evil villains that created the “Snag Machine” that allows you to steal Pokemon, that most heinous of crimes? Are called “Team Snagem.” “Snag ‘em.” It’s, it’s a pun. Apparently. The music at least is on board, Pyrite Town’s theme is a belter, but everything else just lacks, cohesion. The graphics aren’t offensive but they aren’t quite enough, half the Pokemon look like weird playdough creatures – they’ve tried to compensate for low-quality textures and it hasn’t quite worked. There’s also a lot of back-tracking, you can only save at terminals now instead of whenever you like, and the dialogue is about as ham-fisted as up-coming Marvel superhero “Meatman.”
All that said, though, I do like Pokemon Colosseum, honest; you just have to be prepared to not take the game as seriously as it’s taking itself. The new battles hold up as fun throughout, and actually ramp up in challenge, too; bosses aren’t afraid to throw legendaries at you, who are famously torturous to capture, even if they’re the weird Gen 2 trio I refer to as the legendary hamsters because they very clearly aren’t dogs. Look at Raikou. Look at him. Tell me what kind of a dog that is. I’ll wait. Because he’s a fucking TIGER