Pokemon: Annoying, yet Intriguing...

Argh, everywhere you go these days it's pokemon, Pokemon, POKEMON! I'm really getting sick of both Pokemon and Digimon, yet I had to try out the game that started the madness. Afterall, it must be pretty good to get so many worshipers, right? Well, let's see...

After playing it for a few hours, I thought it was actually a well made game, especially considering that it was made for Gameboy. The standards of a Gameboy game is generally to keep the player interested for about 10 minutes during a long road trip or during some waiting period, but Blue actually had me somewhat interested for a few hours. The game itself took over 20 hours to beat, and that's amazing considering that it was all tightly packed into a tiny 4-bit cartridge.

The graphics were quite decent, and the music was well orchestrated (for Gameboy, of course). The battle system is simple enough for a 5 year old to comprehend, yet the deeper strategies can challenge an avid 15 year old. One of the best features of the game was that you could record your various encounters with the 150+ Pokemon using a 'Pokedex,' which is one of your given tools. This adds replay value. I also found constructing one's own team to be a very good idea. Other games like FFL2 had options like this, but did not offer such a wide selection.

One of the most brilliant features, however, was that you could battle against a friend via game link. This adds tremendous replay value, and being able to challenge my friends (no, none of us have very good social lives =P ) made me actually WANT to play.

Although I hate these little freaks of nature, I will admit that the game in itself is well worth the purchase. Once I gave it a try, I found that beneath the stupidity lies a pretty darn good game.