Pokemon Rumble - WiiWare

[SIZE="4"]Pokémon Rumble – WiiWare[/SIZE]



Recently I’ve decided to give up on XBLA because of all the horrific crap that spews out of it weekly (and Splosion Man counts for most it). So along come Nintendo with their version, WiiWare. A representative of this is Pokémon Rumble. Is it good? Well...

Eh.

Pokémon Rumble takes place in an alternate style to the main Pokémon Franchise. Instead of fighting everyone’s favourite deformed and elementally enhanced animals you are now a clockwork toy version of the deformed and elementally enhanced animals, which fight your deformed and elementally enhanced enemies. Which I think is good, but didn’t we used to be able to play as the Pokémon numerous times before? I think you could in Pokémon Dash, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 1 and 2, Pokémon Channel. Wait a tick, those were Mediocre spin-offs, guess what? So is this. The ideas have sort of already been done before in other spin offs, it’s a good idea I’ll give it that but honestly it’s pretty much been done before and this just didn’t seem different in anyway.

So what’s the story in this clockwork chaos caper? None, you start off at a Rattata, try to take on the tougher Pokémon in some Battle Royale Tournament thing and lose, go to the forest to train and befriend stronger Pokémon (already done in Mystery Dungeon) and that little Rattata is no longer needed in the rest of the game (already done in Pokémon Red and Blue). You get to the end of the level and beat the boss, you win and pass onto the next level.


Flee my bretheren! That monkey's zig zag line will kill us all!

The controls are simple, Control Pad/Stick to move, 2 to use first attack and 1 to use second attack (what a twist!). The controls are good but really the whole point of this game is to button-mash everything you see until it’s completely destroyed (already done in Pokémon Pinball). Button Mashing, for me is pretty much the laziest way to win a game. Pressing the same button over and over again just doesn’t feel like a game, it’s just seems more like a game of Whack a Mole only you have just one mole constantly popping out. Sure you can take it as an endurance test but there still needs to have some challenge. Speaking of which this game is one of the easiest games I’ve played; I beat this game on all difficulties, without dying and it took me just under 4 hours. I paid £7 for a game that lasts for 4 hours? What a rip off!

What really bugs me about this game is that it’s just far, far too repetitive. The game is divided into 4 levels, C Rank, B Rank, A Rank and S Rank. Each Level has 6 different areas in A Forest area, A Plains area, Cave, Furnace, Beach and Haunted Tower area. Each area has different types of Pokémon to befriend e.g. The Forest area has Grass and Bug Types, The Cave area has Rock, Ground and Steel types etc. Once you befriend a Pokémon with a high enough level you get to go back to the Battle Royale from the beginning and beat it. And that’s it. Next Rank is the exact, and I mean EXACT, same thing. No new levels, no new layout, just exactly the same as the last rank but with stronger Pokémon. BULL****!

What also bugs me is that you can only get the Pokémon from Red and Blue, and Diamond and Pearl. It’s just stupid because you can befriend a Weavile, but not a Sneasel. So they’ve missed out pretty much more than half of the Pokémon out of the whole series. It’s like buying Mario Kart to find Mario’s an unlockable character. Also you can’t get your Pokémon any higher than the level you got them. So say you got your favourite Pokémon, you won’t keep it for long as the enemies will get stronger as you progress through each area.


See if you can spot the Pokemon Horrific Ego Version special guest appearance

Now despite all the **** that’s been thrown onto the game already we do have the mob and bucket of the game to try and clean up this mess. The Multiplayer. I usually have something against multiplayer because everyone seems to have much more fun with multiplayer than the single player, the part of the game which pretty much makes the game stand up on it’s own for. I really only accept the multiplayer if the single player can be done as a co-op mode but is still decent as a single player, like Saints Row 2, Super Smash Bros Brawl or Left 4 Dead (1 or 2). Just games that need multiplayer to make it fun and to make it stand up on it’s own just pisses me off (**** you Modern Warfare 2). This game however can go straight to my pile of good multiplayer games. The games multiplayer is really fun. Playing this with 3 other people is just really, REALLY amusing. That may sound hypocritical, but really, this is a decent game. Just it could be a lot better, more stages, more Pokémon, better controls etc. Speaking of something that needs improving

THE GRAPHICS ARE THE MOST HORRIBLE THINGS I’VE EVER SEEN! Seriously look at the major design flaws; I know it’s supposed to be a “toy version” of the Pokémon but really the graphics are just poor. Usually I’d just brush off graphics but this deserves a special mention. They’ve turned Pokémon designs into shapes. Lady Gaga wears shapes; did Nintendo really stoop to her level?

CONCLUSION

If I had to choose over WiiWare or XBLA, I‘d choose WiiWare, because with WiiWare even if a game is bad it can still at least produce some fun out of it. With XBLA however, it‘s bad, just plain bad. It promises us great features and remarkable gameplay when it just throws **** into your face. When someone tells you “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, ****ing don’t.

+Thoroughly entertaining Multiplayer
+ Controls work fine...
- ...But its constant Button Mashing
- The graphics are horrible
- The most repetitive game I’ve ever come across
- Not worth £7

[SIZE="4"]5[/SIZE]

Next Time on Rawpowered Reviews: Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing