I've been at home off work due to long term surgery (which I'll explain in another post once I've gathered my thoughts) bored out of my mind at times when everyone else in the house has gone to work, college and university. I usually fill my time by watching T.V and playing video games, since I got the PS4 on launch it's all I've been playing, until last week. My brother has a 3DS which he hasn't touched so I picked it up and started Pokemon Y (there are two versions of the game, the other being Pokemon X, the main difference being the legendary Pokemon exclusive to each version). I've never played a 3DS before and the experience was alien to me, I know that its the best selling handheld in the world so i knew it had to be good.
It took me around 3 to 4 hours to get used to the handheld itself, I'm a console game so I'm not used to holding a small device and looking down for hours, the neck and joint pain subsided after the third day, of which I'm glad because Pokemon Y has been one of the best games I've ever played. The hook was there from the beginning due the the nostalgia of a childhood filled with watch Pokemon, buying the trading cards and dreaming of becoming a Pokemon trainer. The game is all about grinding out encounters with wild Pokemon and capturing new ones, levelling them up in order to beat gym leaders so that you can eventually beat the elite 4 and become the Champion. And thats only just a small portion of the game because once you "beat the game" theres a whole world open to catch every Pokemon if you choose, beat the elite 4 again, battle players online or fulfil my childhood dream of having all the Kanto region starters and levelling them to 100.
In order to get all the Kanto starters you have to trade with other trainers because you can't catch the starter Pokemon in the wild so you have to seek elsewhere to find them and trade with players who want something else in return. This is where Nintendo and Pokemon becomes unique (in my opinion) they have a system to breed Pokemon so that you can have the same Pokemon with different personality traits which effect the stat development, or trade with other trainers. I had chosen Charmander as my starter because he's the coolest Pokemon of my childhood. I had trade and get Bulbasaur and Squirtle, I searched through many blogs and joined a few forums to find people to trade with. This game had such power over me that I joined forums and asked people politely....oh who am I kidding! I practically begged and negotiated deals to get the Pokemon I wanted. On my way to getting all that I wanted I learnt how to breed Pokemon, how to maximise the xp from each battle, the strengths and weaknesses of each Pokemon type and most importantly I learned about strategy.
If you like Pokemon and have tonnes of free time on your hands then play this game. It's excellent and very few games offer such experience.
