Time To Go Monochrome – Pokemon Black And White Review

POKEMON BLACK & WHITE (2011) – GAME FREAK

Reshiram and Zekrom look moody on the front covers

I think it would be fair to say that coming into the start of last year, the Pokemon franchise had become a bit stale. The games were still international best sellers, but the fourth generation of games (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum) had a pretty lazy roster of new monsters, and these were followed up by remakes of the second generation games Gold & Silver, which while good, were essentially rehashed games from the last decade. Pokemon needed a serious kick up the arse to keep itself relevant.

Enter the fifth generation of Pokemon, in the form of Black & White. These games brought 150 completely original monsters into the fray, and introduced a number of new features designed to get a whole new generation of children into Pokemon. Now the advertsing must have been pretty effective, because in November last year I actually went out and purchased a DS to get back into Pokemon after a five year hiatus, picking up a copy of Pokemon White in the process. After a modest 160 hours of game-time, I feel well placed to give my thoughts on whether Black & White have done the trick, and made Pokemon interesting again.