Pokémon Platinum

Ah, Pokémon!

It means so much to so many people, but to me it means "guilty pleasure". It has all the shame of Twilight without the domestic abuse, and all the embarrassing awfulness of one of Monty Python's billions of unmemorable sketches, only without a good one to follow up on. And yet somehow it just keeps pulling me back, seducing me with its perfectly geometrical hairstyles, single-genus ecosystems, and the ability to name your rival "Douche".

Pokémon Platinum (Game Freak, 2008) is the third of the so-called "Generation IV" Pokémon games. I'm going to assume there is no-one left alive on the planet who is still unfamiliar with the Pokémon franchise. Even the marmoset-eating Amazonians who have yet to lay eyes on anyone from outside the jungle are probably at least getting the anime by now. However, since they probably haven't yet played the games (it will take a while before even original Game Boys work their way up river), I'll give a brief overview:

Pokémon games are essentially very stripped-down top-down RPGs. They make streamlining something of an art. "Epic stories?" asketh the games. "Bullshit! Want to know what your objective is? To catch 'em all, that's what. Why? Fuck you, that's why!" And oddly enough, that works. You start the game and set up your character, choosing your gender, name, and first Pokémon very quickly. From then on the game-world will bombard you with encouragement to go out and capture and train Pokémon. The entire world, as it appears, is utterly obsessed with the idea. Not once on your journeys will you meet anyone who doesn't adore Pokémon. You won't even meet anyone who even feels ambivalent about them. No; the whole world loves Pokémon and expects you to as well. Indeed, if anyone asks you and you get a rare "yes/no" dialogue option you can rest assured that the "no" response will link you right back to "yes".

It's hard to resist that kind of enthusiasm, but in case you can the game also uses a dozen techniques to make the process addictive as hell. For a start you receive a Pokédex which logs all the different kinds of Pokémon you receive or see. It's surprising how easily it will drive you to scour the long grass (where wild Pokémon attack) looking for each and every last type that could possibly appear in any given area. But there are also subtler systems are work: for example, each Pokémon has one or more "types" -- fire, flying, rock, etc. -- which define its elemental or physical traits, and there's something of a rock-paper-scissors system at work there, with certain types being weak or strong to other types. Successful trainers pretty much require a good variety of critters at their disposal. This not only ensures that you go out of your way to enslave new party members, but you also end up putting a lot of work in training them up, ensuring that you then spend a lot of time away from the story grinding away. Having the oppertunity to expand your little army, however, turns it from grinding into plain good fun.

The reason why I'm taking the time to talk about gameplay that's been consistent and unchanged in thirteen years is precisely because it's been consistent and unchanged in thirteen years. You could look at any review of Platinum Edition and it will almost certainly fail to talk about the gameplay in-depth, because the underlying system is identical to how it was over a decade ago. And not just the base system: many of the stats for various Pokémon and moves are identical, or have had only minor changes. The story, likewise, has been relatively unchanged over the years. You still come from a backwards little town where you live with your single mum, and a professor lives nearby who gives you your first Pokémon. You still advance through eight gyms where you earn badges to compete in the league. You still face off against a rival, and battle a villainous yet incompetent crime syndicate.

To put it bluntly, Nintendo's found a winning formula and they are utterly unwilling to replace or modify it. Sure, there are a few new features here: there's a day/night system based on the DS's clock, effecting which Pokémon come out in the wild when. There're some neat wireless tools I've yet to try out. So on, so forth. But you could remove any new feature without in any way affecting the overall game.

And nowhere is this unwillingness to change more evident than in the use of the DS's technology. Bear in mind that both Pokémon and the DS are made by Nintendo. Pokémon (and especially Platinum) are something of flagship games for the console, and you would expect that they'd make excellent use of the touchscreen built into the bottom of the console. Well, for the first hour or so of my gaming experience the bottom screen showed mostly this:

Pictured: efficient use of screen space.

That! Using up my power, no less! For ages I had absolutely nothing but a static boring image taking up the lower screen of my DS. What a waste. And what do I get later on, when I acquire the much touted Pokétch?

&^)*^&*)%!!!

Yes, it's a watch. And not just any watch! Pokétch comes with many useless apps, like a pedometer, something to listen to the noise each of your Pokémon make, and other such rubbish. It's a total waste of the technology at hand. Granted, the touch screen is used for combat, and you can use it to scroll through functions in your inventory or Pokédex, but that's hardly much, and for the latter you'd be better off just using the arrow pad, since you'll be using it anyway. In the mean time every menu and bit of dialogue shows up on the top screen, requiring you to use conventional controls to use them. The conventional response here is along the lines of "what the fuck!?" Would it be too much to ask for Nintendo to make use of the technology it's invested in?

Just for shits and giggles, here's how I feel the lower screen should look:

Voilá! The menu is now centered around the same silly Pokétch that was there previously, only now it obsoletes the X button and is easier to access. And for an added bonus there's enough room for a dialogue box at the top. How hard was that?

To be fair, Pokémon Platinum is far from a bad game. It's addictive, fun and innocent. But it'd really fails to use the technology at hand, and it's really short of any innovation. I think that after more than a decade we should be entitled to something at least slightly new from Nintendo.