Zero Punctuation: Pokemon White

[Biodeamon]

I can't tell what i'm buying black or white for. the legendary on the front is black but the background is white...am i buying the thing for the cover art or the pokemon on the cover?! i wish they'd stick to the old layout where you've got a precious gem as the title, a legendary pokemon in the front and a shiny background in the back.

 

[Maclennan]

I think I know why Yahtzee really doesn't like Pokemon.
It's because he hates going to the gym!

Ba dum.

But seriously, I also hated the anorexic supermodel gym leader. Mainly because I kept using my water starter (bearded samurai that dual weilds shell swords). In fact, I forget how I beat her, since I kinda beat the game on the Tuesday after it came out (on a Sunday).

Heres the question he missed, what do the people in that world eat since every animal and most of the damn plants are pokemon?

I think a miltank would be quite tasty. Pikachu would probably be kind of stringy. They will probably resort to "iceberg lebtuce" soon.

Why would he need to cover that? People have eaten pokemon since the original games (Farfetch'd?). It just doesn't come up much.

Anyway, I disagree with some points in the video. First of all, when making a pokemon, you don't just change one letter in the name. You have to make it punny. Furthermore, video games typically ignore people who aren't involved in the subject matter (how many people in a Harvest Moon game don't live in a quiet farming town and do farming related things?). Besides, the whole 'these are our pets' thing makes the 'lots of people are affected' aspect a bit easier to swallow.

Really I just threw that in to to see how many people i could hook into talking about childhood icons like veal in the freezer. Also Pokemon cannibalism was worked into one reply.

Pokemon cannibalism? As in, Pokemon eating each other (which isn't really cannibalism), or Pidgeot eating Pidgey? There's quite a difference, since each is supposed to be a different species. Plus, in the former case, it's well known they eat each other; half the pokedex entries are about how many pokemon that one eats (the other half are about how much the species in question kills people).

The games I played had hardly any information on the eating other pokemon or killing people. In gold/silver you can buy a slowpokes tail as an item you can feed to your pokemon and for fun hunting for an easter egg i fed one to my slowpoke, unfortunately the programers never though to make an easter egg for such a devious act.

 

[MajoraPersona]

I think I know why Yahtzee really doesn't like Pokemon.
It's because he hates going to the gym!

Ba dum.

But seriously, I also hated the anorexic supermodel gym leader. Mainly because I kept using my water starter (bearded samurai that dual weilds shell swords). In fact, I forget how I beat her, since I kinda beat the game on the Tuesday after it came out (on a Sunday).

Heres the question he missed, what do the people in that world eat since every animal and most of the damn plants are pokemon?

I think a miltank would be quite tasty. Pikachu would probably be kind of stringy. They will probably resort to "iceberg lebtuce" soon.

Why would he need to cover that? People have eaten pokemon since the original games (Farfetch'd?). It just doesn't come up much.

Anyway, I disagree with some points in the video. First of all, when making a pokemon, you don't just change one letter in the name. You have to make it punny. Furthermore, video games typically ignore people who aren't involved in the subject matter (how many people in a Harvest Moon game don't live in a quiet farming town and do farming related things?). Besides, the whole 'these are our pets' thing makes the 'lots of people are affected' aspect a bit easier to swallow.

Really I just threw that in to to see how many people i could hook into talking about childhood icons like veal in the freezer. Also Pokemon cannibalism was worked into one reply.

Pokemon cannibalism? As in, Pokemon eating each other (which isn't really cannibalism), or Pidgeot eating Pidgey? There's quite a difference, since each is supposed to be a different species. Plus, in the former case, it's well known they eat each other; half the pokedex entries are about how many pokemon that one eats (the other half are about how much the species in question kills people).

The games I played had hardly any information on the eating other pokemon or killing people. In gold/silver you can buy a slowpokes tail as an item you can feed to your pokemon and for fun hunting for an easter egg i fed one to my slowpoke, unfortunately the programers never though to make an easter egg for such a devious act.

To be fair, it's almost always flavour text. However, a good number of pokedex entries reference the fact that x pokemon eats y. And, admittedly, the references to pokemon attacks on humans are very rare; I definitely exaggerated that fact. There is, however, one particularly (in)famous instance, in the remakes of the original games, where a little girl goes missing. Her worried father sends you to find her, as he works on Two Island, but lives on Three, and his daughter usually brings him lunch via the ferry. When you get there, not only has a biker gang taken over the docks, but nobody's seen the girl. You later find her, in the deepest part of the forest. A Hypno had lured her there.

In the opposite direction (humans killing pokemon), one of the books in the Canalave Library (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) is about an ancient hero who used a sword to slaughter pokemon, without even eating them. He's later confronted by a powerful pokemon (assumed by some to be Giratina), as all the other pokemon fled the area.

Pokemon is a series about animals with super powers. They kill, maim, and eat each other on a regular basis. It doesn't come across much in the games, for obvious reasons. In the manga, however...

EDIT:

I can't tell what i'm buying black or white for. the legendary on the front is black but the background is white...am i buying the thing for the cover art or the pokemon on the cover?! i wish they'd stick to the old layout where you've got a precious gem as the title, a legendary pokemon in the front and a shiny background in the back.

You can catch the pokemon on the cover, but both of them were involved in the backstory. They used to be the exact same pokemon (supposedly), but split when the heroes got into a big disagreement. The version colour is, to my understanding, the colour of the one that won that battle; In Black, the black dragon won. In other words, you get the loser of the ancient battle.

 

[Sabinfrost]

Seriously, for all these people claiming that Yahtzee doesn't know scarfing from rocks, the meta-game is an invention of fans, mostly played online using emulators, it's hardly a feature of the game off the shelf. Your average Pokemon player doesn't bother with finesse, when your starter Pokemon can sweep 90% of the game on it's own, why would they.

The bulk of the content in Pokemon is made for 10 year olds, the problem with that is that all the 10 year olds that bought the original are 25 and have moved on.

 

[BlueGeek]

Don't know if anyone picked up on this, but this video is Yahtzee's 200th ZP on The Escapist.

yaaaaaaaay

 

[Jdb]

stuff

All of that is just adding new features. None of it actually changes the way the game is played. Rock-paper-scissors, turn-based combat. It hasn't budged an inch.

Did I mention Super Mario Sunshine before? That's a fundamental change to gameplay that adds new dimensions. It's not simply a new temporary power-up, it introduced concepts and puzzles that would have not been possible without it.

It's like playing rock-paper-scissors with two hands instead of one. There's more going on, but it's still the same game.

 

[SimpleJack]

Yeah, when I saw the covers for each game I didn't know which one I would rather get.

Pokemon black has a white pokemon on the cover....
but Pokemon White has a black pokemon on the cover...

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

[hypermage]

"...Keith Richards in a pharmacist's stock room..."

Heh, nice.

 

[Conn1496]

What you need to know about Pokemon is that:
A) The storyline will always suck.
B) Pokemon "Boss battles" suck.
C) "Catch 'em all" Is a motto for the creepy Pokemon players.

 

[Bobbity]

Kill the necromancer! Kill him dead!

I actually rather like the game while there's a set goal, but it gets very boring very quickly once the story wraps up.

 

[Jian-Li]

You should watch the next season of pokemon. I knew the series has been in decline since Johnto but this one is actually climbing out of the pit.

 

[kingofcrash63]

Okay, i have a few coments to make here;

1.PLEASE DO MORE DISSING OF POKEMON TV!!!! only because, i hate,HATE that all the girls that liked him would never get anything from it except a twit/twat/STUPID MOTHER FUCKER that thinks he so cool because he caught all of, what, 15 FRIGGEN pokemon! seriously ladies, get a real boyfriend good god.

2.pokemon yellow was awsome wasn't it?

3.15 years huh? that makes ash...25 years old or somthing. seiriously, shouldn't he have matured yet, or at the very least, GROW A FUGGEN BEARD??(GG=CK)

4.i got black, and the ledgendary looks like he has a big furry stiffy

5.at 1:12-1:20 in the episode, true dat!

6.apparently team stup-i mean plasma has bought out rocket...don't ask

7.N isn't a massive twat, he is THE massive twat, the ponce

8.dude...black and white as in YIN AND YANG!!!! i know it was hard to avoid that, but where i go to work that joke has been used, beeten, stabbed, shot, burned, buried, and pissed on.

8.well really the only thing that keeps ME comin back is the plot, i like to mock it...a lot!...N what kind of a name is that i mean seriously.

9.(Pokemon names, drawings, and politics) ...hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah(cough)hahaha(haaaaaack)(clears throat)...moveing on.

10.(stratogy) why to true.

11.(gym battle)[straight face].............................(snicker).......LOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

12.(hasn't stoped laughing yet....)

(F)13.yeah but you can't..."catch" a puzzle like most MALE trainers "catch" a gardivior/lopunny......for there own "reasons"

at any rate, my rating: LOOOOOOOOOOOOL

 

[Wesley Brannock]

I stopped caring about " Pokemon " when they went over 150. The reason is simple it went like this ( Me- " Wow I just got all the " Pokemon " beat all the gym leaders and became a Pokemon master " ) ( Company - " Yeah well that doesn't mean much since we just added more Pokemon , more trainers , and another huge battle ) ( Me - " Well in that case I'm not playing your " new " game since I just beat the old one that's just like your f**king " new " one. )

 

[emeraldrafael]

(F)13.yeah but you can't..."catch" a puzzle like most MALE trainers "catch" a gardivior/lopunny......for there own "reasons"

Both those pokemon have a 50/50 chance of being male female (in comparison to the usual 87.5/12.5 percent).

 

[kingofcrash63]

(F)13.yeah but you can't..."catch" a puzzle like most MALE trainers "catch" a gardivior/lopunny......for there own "reasons"

Both those pokemon have a 50/50 chance of being male female (in comparison to the usual 87.5/12.5 percent).

This is True

 

[OceanRunner]

I want a Cockon, Wholk, and Monkeyscribblesthing for my championship team.

 

[HUYI82]

Yahtzee was spot on with this review, i feel exactly the same and left the series a long time ago, last game i played was pokemon ruby and then i realised that i was playing the exact same thing just repackaged as another game title, it gets boring very very fast! and the sad thing is this game sells like hotcakes each and every time they release a new one, i think this must be Nintendo's main income because pokemon makes them so much money!

 

[My1stLuvJak]

Well, crazy as it may be, there's no arguing that, for pure time sink type games, Pokemon is number one. Nothing else even comes close, to my mind (and I'd WAAAAY rather get deep into Pokemon than, say, World of Warcraft).

A site that will make you see Pokemon as the deepest RPG ever made: serebii.net

..and, if you're at all into pokemon, looking at this site will do just what Yahtzee said - that is, make you into a nutjob, someone who knows FAR too much about the innards of the RPG they're playing

 

[AdmiralMemo]

Awesome review. RBY started the trend, GSC fixed the bugs, and everything else is the franchise on life support. Seriously... How is anyone supposed to catch 600 Pokemon? 150 was like medium difficulty and 250 was like hard difficulty, but beyond that, you need to make Pokemon your full-time job for about 6 months to get everything caught.

Now, don't get me wrong... I like Pokemon well enough, but I think the later installments didn't make any major improvements on the series.

 

[C2Ultima]

I'm pretty sure they're the same game, apart from a few version exclusives and White Forest/Black City.

Its late, but what kind of idiot posted this? Pokemon black is different from white, and its the plot branching thats different? Rofl, is this random guy serious?

So you're calling me an idiot?

Even so, I'll pretend that I'm replying to a mature statement, rather than whatever that was.

Unlike you, I'm not making assumptions out of thin air. I'm a pokemon fan, and I've played both Black and White, and I'm simply saying that there aren't any significant differences in the plot or gameplay of either version. Sure, Reshiram and Zerkrom switch places in both games and some items have different names, but the story is essentially the same. The differences between the two (White Forest to Black City, version exclusive Pokemon, etc.) don't make any significant differences to the plot or gameplay.