First Impressions: Pokémon Ranger (DS) ~ All These Circles Make Me Dizzy.

Wikipedia entry. (Since the official site is updated to the latest entry in the series.)

Sometimes games have a lot of potential. And this game surely has potential. This Pokémon spin-off is based on one of the opponent types in the main series. Yet, some games then fail horribly to deliver. I was planning to make write this article in a story-ish thing-y but I wanted to be direct for this game. It made me think about something. If you ever ask yourself why I don’t review that many bad games on my blog is because the games I play are the games that catch my eye and I think are interesting to play. I also look beyond the graphics and other things while I’m playing. And I trust my instinct in order to avoid bad games. Yet, it happens that a bad game slips in here and there, but when I’m having fun and when I’m enjoying myself, that makes the game a lot better. Remember that I judge my games extremely personally. That might be a flaw of my reviewing skills, since I should actually review my games more so that I look if it would be for everybody. Anyways, I thought this was important to say since there are a lot of fans for this game. So, to avoid flaming in the comments I better explain myself. But feel free to leave me a comment to tell me how I did or what you think of this game. Anyways, here we go!

The first isn’t always the best.

This game made me doubt my instinct of choosing great games. I’m going to be extremely honest here, this game is flawed. Yet, it’s a game I’ll finish since I want to beat the first one in the series before I continue to play the other games in the series. I did play the sequel and the 3rd game in the series and I really enjoyed my time there. I never beaten them though. Okay, Guardian Signs I had beaten but not 100%, since I had a part of the epilogue left to beat.

I’m going to dive into the parts I didn’t like of this game first. Honestly, I don’t like the overworld animation. Some Pokémon seem a bit jittery when they move and the running animation of your character is way to fast for your friend Pokémon to keep up. And this causes a lot of issues. Pokémon will no clip through walls and various other locations to reach you. When they can’t cross a certain river or other place, they will spawn next to you after a short while of being off screen.

The graphics in this game look really neat though. It’s another take on how things can look in the main series. I’m so glad they took it in an other direction yet, similar. But the level design don’t look very pleasant. Not that it looks ugly or anything but I really don’t feel the polish of the other Pokémon games that go into cities.

Bad?

But there are other things really makes me want to rip this game apart. First of all, the map screen is a total joke. It’s actually useless. Your map is more like a radar with an arrow representing you and squares if there is a door you can enter. Also, it displays Pokémon nearby. I actually found a glitch in the map. Before the sewer part in Fall City, you need to try to get on top the entrance of the sewers, that road, and look at the map then. It’ll appear that a lot of Pokémon are there.

Secondly, I really dislike in this game is the music. It’s bland and forgettable. I actually had to play the OST to remember the music. I really hope that the music in the rest of the game makes up for the music in the first section of the game.

Thirdly, while the capturing of Pokémon is an awesome idea and it works in the game as well, it’s the only really enjoyable part of the gameplay. The locations to explore are bland and generic. Also the capturing can be really frustrating since sometimes the Pokémon will run on the side of the screen which makes drawing your circles around them a real pain to execute. Not to mention the possible damage to your touch screen if you get a bit to … circle-happy? Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the possible interruption you can have in mid-capture when your styler levels up. Yeah, it can happen.

But the biggest let down has to be the extremely weak story. Even the first Pokémon game had a better story. It suffers from cheesy-ness, generic characters and basic plots. The plot can be summed up easily by: “Superstyler is stolen by bad guys to cause evil.” No character gets depth and stay dolls on strings to play a certain role. Such a lost opportunity. This makes predicting the story extremely easy and ruins the thrill of the story.

Why do I still play this?

By now you might think that I have given up fate for this game. But surprisingly, there is a charm in this game that keeps pulling me in over and over again. Even with the obvious flaws of this game, it remains fun. Exploring the, linear, places to progress is fun.

Finding the right Pokémon to assist you in destroying a big rock is sweet. Also, you really need to think about which Pokémon you have to take along since you can’t have them all at the same time.

The controls of this game is a major plus. You can use the D-Pad and/or the stylus to move. And it actually works extremely well. Yet, I managed to find a bug in the controls. When you have a ladder that goes down, try walking at the side. When you are in middle at the side, the screen will shake while your character continues to walk in front of him.

But in conclusion, this game is good but not great. This game plays it extremely safe to introduce us to a new spin-off that is a lot of fun. But it needs a lot of polish to make the game more fun. This game might have some serious flaws but it doesn’t destroy the game and it’s still playable. But I’m going to leave it here. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this review. Until the next one. 🙂

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Types of gamers

Thanks Nhi for creating this.

Well, it’s a big pain if you always need to explain which games you like and which you don’t. You can lazily say that you are for example a casual gamer or a shooter guy. But if you think about it, there are a million names then. I started to look around and think about which types of gamers I think exist. Because this subject is mostly opinion based, feel free to give me your opinion. I’m not wrong, since it’s my opinion. I can be mistaken and needing to correct myself. That’s a totally different cookie to crumble. If I had to tell which type of gamer I am, I would have an issue. Be warned, the types of gamers I talk about are the main games they play, exceptions are always there. Also, let me know with which type you can relate the most. 

Type 1: Casual Free Timer

Finding a picture where they are both presented well was such a trouble.

You mostly see these gamers at a busstop or in a doctor’s waiting room. They have a tablet or a mobile to tap away on.

You also could find them on Facebook playing games where you need to reach easy objectives like switching jewels or collecting coins.

Many other types of gamers don’t recognize these people as gamers. Sadly enough, since they are gamers. But they don’t devote their lives to games. While it’s possible that they buy an app here and there, it’s not the end of the world for them if they can’t play a game.

They also sort of avoid other games that require an other device or controller. It’s possible that you can also find them with an emulator on their phone to mostly play handheld games from their childhood.

Type 2: Die Hard Fanboy

Some minecrafters and Call Of Duty players are a major example.

These gamers don’t care much about other games. They devote their whole life at mostly one game. Games that dare to be similar to their “holy” game are called names and they give them bad rep.

I’m not going to get ranty about the Call Of Duty players so spare me there please. I don’t do easy targets.

What I mean by that is that these type of gamers are the best troll bait you can get. Since they go out of their way to be the best in the game they play. Some go as far as bullying or making somebody feel bad if they are defeated.

They are also the living version of WikiPedia about their game. Some even dream to go working at the company which produces the series/game they love so much. They also get extremely excited as soon as a new title in their series is announced. They are also the first to rant when there is too much change in the sequel.

It’s also possible that they are a fanboy of one company. And they praise everything that they release. Since for them, everything their developers touch turns into an emptier wallet for the fanboys.

Type 3: Old school & retro gamers

Pixely retro-goodness?

This type of gamer doesn’t care about the time the game is released. They just play what ever catches their eye on various gaming websites and blogs.

For some retro gamers, the older the better. They are also the style of gamers that play in texture packs to make the game look older.

They always love the original and think that the new entries in a series are killing the series.

Many under them are big collectors, sometimes of one company or system. They start playing a game but sometimes don’t finish them since another game caught their interest.

Angry responses they give when somebody starts nagging about graphics. (I get even annoyed by graphic junkies) Since they don’t really care about that.

Most retro gamers want to know the ins and outs of the system so that they can explain what happened if a game isn’t working and that they maybe can fix it. Or replace something when it’s broken.

There is no real difference between old school and retro since they are pretty much the same.

Type 4: Platform/genre gamers

It feels great to be a gamer.

I don’t mean here people who play platform games. Not only that, platform and genre gamers are people who only play on one platform.

They see other consoles as less worthy to play and often say bad things about them. Pointing out their flaws or saying that their platform is better.

You can also have gamers who only play on consoles or handhelds.

PC gamers are a prime example. Devoted PC gamers will build their own PC and buy the PC version of a game even when there is a console version.

The genre gamers try to play as many games from one genre as they can. Most (in)famous of these guys are the shooter fans. They have loads upon loads of games of the same genre and are mostly extremely good at it.

They also have a certain game in the genre that is their absolute favorite. They often compare other games to the holy game of them.

Type 5: Mainstreamer

The mainstream guys are the ones who sometimes buy all the consoles. Buy all the things. A new console by Google? Oh, that doesn’t stop them. They go out and buy it.

They follow the latest gaming news and always want to play the newest of the newest. If it’s not new, they don’t play it. If it isn’t hyped, it’s no point in the schedule for them.

Mostly triple A title (expensive games to create. Big name games too.) games. Indy games they don’t care much about.

Wait wait, stop there.

Hold on a second, what am I doing here? Something doesn’t add up here. If I continue with this, I can find a piece of myself in each type. To me it’s extremely pointless of trying to see which types of gamers there are.

Many issues raise up. First, personal preference. You can like a series and it suddenly dies out. Then you can go from a mainstreamer to an old school gamer.

There are in fact, three main types of gamers. Mainstream, Old school and Casual. Since let’s face it, if you don’t follow the mainstream you either play games on Facebook or your mobile. If that’s not the case, you play games on your DS or other platforms.

Secondly, you can always merge types of gamers. You can be an oldschool NES gamer. Does this makes the two types of gamers actually one type?

Thirdly, the gaming market changes so quickly that this article can go out of date in matter of months if I truly continued in this fashion.

Before I go on a big rant, finally there is the issue of time. Yup, the older you get, the less time you get to play games sadly enough.

All in all, I think it’s silly to put gamers into groups. We all have one thing in common, we play games to pass our time and enjoy them. Some might devote more time on it then others. Some will even go blogging or/and collecting them.

Anyways, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments. But for now, NekoJonez out!