January 15, 2011
Marwencol Showtimes At The Uptown
Pokemon: Modern Gladiators
Pokemon is a game that’s been marketed to children since its release. The concept of catching cutesy monsters(which really aren’t so cute, if you actually think about it), and trading and battling them with your friends is simple, right?
You’d think so, but no.
Y’see, Pokemon… It’s only a kid’s game on the surface. Once you actually look at the mechanics in-depth, once you actually examine the way the game is coded and programmed… It’s probably one of the most complex games on the market today. What is it about the games that’s so complicated? How exactly are they more than just a young child’s pastime?
Well, to start with, since the original Red and Blue on the Game Boy, there were these things called Effort Values- EVs for short. They’re invisible attributes (in addition to your Pokemon’s main attributes) which change your pokemon’s statistics differently based upon which pokemon you train them against. There are various websites and guides that tell you exactly how many of these invisible points you get from each pokemon- given that there’s now over 500 different types of pokemon. Suffice it to say, these guides are pretty comprehensive.
Oh, but there’s more. See, each pokemon can only have a certain number of effort values before they can’t gain any more. After that, their statistics simply improve as normal, until they reach level 100. People spend hours upon hours defeating the same pokemon, grinding their pocket monster up to top shape.
Sound tedious? Sound difficult?
Try doing it six times in a row, once for each pokemon in your party. Then try doing it six more times, so you can breed your pokemon. You pair two pokemon of opposite genders up in a daycare, they get their mojo on, then they hatch an egg. That egg, if memory serves, has the statistics of the mother and the moveset of the father. Oh, right, there’s also your pokemon’s moves that you have to consider- each pokemon can learn four different ‘moves’- basically, attacks that they can use in combat. I don’t even know how many moves there are, but I’m fairly positive there are more moves than there are pokemon.
Furthermore, since the second generation (Gold and Silver) the games have included something called the PokeRus. It’s a type of ‘pokemon virus’ which doubles your Effort Values gained. It’s got a 3 in 65,536 chance of being on any given pokemon. And you can’t tell it’s on them when you catch then. You’ve got to take them to a pokemon center. Then within 48 hours, you’ve got to get as many of your party infected with it as possible. Most people go through the whole game without even being aware it exists… But there’s always those OCD types who’ve simply gotta have it.
As if all that’s not complicated enough, Nintendo’s introduced even more bells and whistles to their little engines of destruction with recent releases. Pokemon in the newer generations have ‘natures’- basically, their personality. This, naturally, affects their stats. On top of that, each pokemon now comes prepackaged with a special ability. Oh, and the stat total of every pokemon, even those of the same type, varies ever so slightly. Not to mention ‘contest’ statistics- coolness, cuteness, charm, etc.
It should follow that with all these new statistics, there’s a million new things to do in the games. You can wander around looking for hidden items, build a fort underground, take part in contests and competitions not related to the pokemon league, give your pokemon haircuts- yeah, that’s right- battle online, trade online, play minigames for items….
Christ, these games are complicated.
Of course, that’s just the mechanics. We’ve not even gotten into the mature themes inherent in the game. I’d say it was like Shrek, where there’s the odd dirty joke tossed in to keep the parents entertained, but it’s really not. Honestly, I think it’s mostly unintentional.
I mean, to start with, has anyone ever thought about the morality of enslaving creatures and forcing them to fight for you? It’s particularly questionable in that said creatures are strongly implied to be sentient. Sounds a little bit like slavery, doesn’t it? Kind of makes you wonder if your pokemon’s eventual ‘adoration’ for you might really be Stockholm Syndrome.
That’s not the only thing. You can give your pokemon steroids. Well, Nintendo calls them vitamins. They increase your stats, to a degree, in the same manner as battling- but your pokemon can only have so much before their body rejects it or something. Maybe it’s the cutoff point before they start looking like an anthropomorphic Barry Bonds.
What’s more, in Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, there’s something called the “pokeathlon”. Basically, it’s the Pokemon Olympics- because clearly having pokemon that can kick the ass of everyone else’s pokemon isn’t enough, they’ve gotta be professional athlete..creature… Things as well. It’s not really strange that Nintendo would introduce something like this. What is strange is this woman who sells something called Aprijuice.
It increases your pokemon’s ‘athletic abilities’.
Whoa, wait. Hold on. So some shady old woman offers to sell you-no, actually teach you to MAKE a special drink for your pokemon that makes them better athletes? Okay, maybe the vitamins aren’t the steroids. Maybe it’s the Aprijuice.
Let’s review: You’ve got your pokemon. An adorable little sentient weapon of mass destruction. That pokemon has base statistics, a move set, effort values, tournament statsistics, athletic statistics, a personality/temperament, a special ability, a chance of having a special condition that makes it level up more effectively, a chance of being ‘shiny’ (a different colour than the rest), not to mention its gender which is relevant to breeding, which takes a different amount of time depending on which pokemon you’re raising, and they’ve all got a different chance of being encountered in the wild, and of course you’ve got to level them up a specific way and then breed them and then repeat it over and over until you have an unstoppable engine of terror and then do this six times in a row, even more if you want more than one party of pokemon, of course there’s also….
Fuck it. I’m going to go play Everquest. It’s less complicated.
Pokemon is a hell of a lot more complicated than you’d think, being a kids game. I don’t even want to think of the programming that must have gone into making the myriad elements of the game work, not to mention the number of hours you’ve got to put in if you ever want to play competitively. I’ll do my best to describe things- but suffice it to say, this game is deceptively complex.
To contact the author of this post: nicholas.greene@wildgunmen.com
lol, that’s why I stopped playing, it got way to complicated, i just liked it for funzies XD
Nice article.
Forget the last sentence though. Whenever they make the Pokemon MMORPG, it will be a hundred times bigger than Everquest ever was, and likely uproot WoW as king of the genre.
“and likely uproot WoW as king of the genre.”
I sure wouldn’t be surprised.
haha amen
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There’s a very depressing analysis of the Poke’mon cartoon series.
http://community.livejourna...
It’s pretty long but it’s definitely worth reading. I was shocked by how perfectly it explains the series.
Woah! That blew my mind! Thanks for that,I think?
that link wouldn’t work for me
The game’s are for any age imo, the anime is for kids though
EDIT—also this effort value shi* is only for hardcore players who try their best to beat other people, you can play the game fully without even knowing or caring about effort value’s
The writer forgot to mention Individual Values, getting those good is the most time consuming mechanic in the game.
And there you have it.
Basically
Anime = For Kids
Games = For Teenagers-Adults (if they want to get serious that is)
But of course the writer forgot individual values which are a big pain in the ass.
Hehe it was so funny that a year ago a guy in my class was telling me how his lv100 Infernape (Fully evolved fire starter of Diamond Pearl and Platinum) kicks ass, so i challenged it and his whole team with only three pokemon (all ev trained and everything), beat his ass.
also sparkle pokemon
Wow. I just learned about Effort Values. I’ve played Pokemon since Red/Blue came out and I’ve never heard of that. I guess you learn something new everyday.
Did somebody say..
JAPANESE BUG FIGHTS!?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHBiWe5dTew
I CHOOSE YOU, SPIDEY!