Taking Up the Pokemon HeartGold Challenge (Really)
Posted on Mar 23, 2010 by Lori in DS
I failed miserably at my attempt to get through the EA Sports Active 30-day challenge. So now I’m trading in my resistance band for a Tamagotchi-esque pedometer and getting my Pokém-on.
Before I go any further, in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that Dave and I received copies of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver to review. And to be perfectly honest, half of the reason why I wanted it was because it had multiplayer (and we don’t play a lot of multiplayer DS games)—the other half was the desire to see Dave play a Pokémon game. And get into it.
Another thing that I will divulge is that I had never played a Pokémon game before. I was fully expecting to play the game and review it with the end result being that, while it will likely appeal to my six-year-old nephew, it wasn’t the kind of game that would appeal to an older demographic.
Boy, was I wrong.
Dave: I admittedly wasn’t really looking forward to putting time in with SoulSilver, given that the games are aggressively marketed at children. However, I also know the games have enough of an adult following that they can’t possibly have that limited an appeal.
Never having played a Pokémon game, let alone the original Silver, I’m not qualified to discuss its merits relative to other Pokémon games… but as a Poké-noob, I’ve found it to be essentially a pretty standard (and pretty enjoyable) portable JRPG where the difference is that, instead of party members, you have pets.
Now, I never read instruction manuals—and I assumed that, because this game was geared towards kids, I wouldn’t need to. That said, once I was faced with the choice of which Pokémon to take as my first, I panicked. What if I choose incorrectly? What if it doesn’t like the name I gave it? Then, as if by magic, I took one look at the Chikorita and knew what I had to do. I choose you, ChickCorea!
As the game progressed, I discovered that Pokémon games actually fit my gamer profile rather well. You collect cool things, you talk to creatures until they like you, you grind around in the grass and fight lots of monsters, and you gain mad experience and swell loot. What more can a obsessive dungeon-crawler ask for?
I was scheduled to attend the DSi XL launch in Toronto last Thursday and, upon hearing that I had playing Pokémon HeartGold, Paul Hunter fom NextGenPlayer (who had SoulSilver) urged me to bring my Pokéwalker to the event. He and Alice Stancu were both there when I arrived, Pokéwalkers in hand, ready to trade; though I hadn’t gotten the hang of loading my Pokémon onto my device, Alice helped me out. Once ChickCorea was in and ready for business, the trading began, and we were like twelve-year-olds squealing excitedly at what we got. I got a Parlyz Heal! I don’t know what that is, but it sounds exciting!
After only having the game for less than a week, I’m not even close to finishing the game, and I haven’t tried out the multiplayer aspects yet; Dave’s been busy but, when he gets his Pokémon party up to snuff, I’ll let you know how it goes. But I actually find myself loading a new Pokémon into my Pokéwalker every day (despite the fact that I work from home and don’t walk around all that much) and, when I do leave the house, I feel no shame in showing it off to my friends. ChickCorea is still my favourite, followed closely by Ratman John… and though I still haven’t figured out what MetaPod does besides harden (quiet, you), but I named it FartPod, which makes me giggle.
Yes, I’m twelve.
(P.S. I know that the accent is missing in the title of this post. It’s a bug.)
