Pokemon Ruby Version

"A game so unoriginal, Milli Vanilli shake their heads in pity."

Pokemon Ruby.

Overview
For years, Pokemon has rotted the minds of our world’s youth. Defiling their minds with images of little monsters that live inside balls, and dreams of becoming a “Pokemon Master”, the “ultimate” type of Pokemon trainer. But in recent times, Pokemon has (much to the relief to many) gone downhill in popularity. This is quite unfortunate, because Nintendo’s Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire was quite impressive, even though it’s only slightly different from any other Pokemon game. You know what, It’s not that impressive… Never mind. It’s just Pokemon red/blue with some bells and whistles… What a letdown. And here’s why:

Graphics 6/10 All cake, no icing. The cake tastes kind of bad too.

Wow. The graphics. Incredible. It’s almost like I’ve seen them before, oh wait, I have. In every other Pokemon game that is. It’s almost like they took one of the old games, and drew some prettier stuff over the pre-existing crap with a magic marker. Just like in the old games, whenever you use an attack, your Pokemon shakes around for a moment and some wavy crap comes out of it. Your main character looks just like everyone else, but with different clothes and a different hairstyle, quite a stupid looking one at that. It looks like birds defiled his head. Seriously, Pokemon developers, try for some originality next time, please. You can’t just keep making the same game over and over again.

I have to give them props though for making the drawings so pretty. Also, there are neat wavy effects everywhere, and the game is bright and colorful. Also, you have cute little Pokemon icons so you can remember who you nicknamed what… that is, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Sound 9/10 My ears are bleeding golden blood.

Can’t complain here. The music is very Pokemon-esque. Also, I find it difficult to hear on my GBA, so I can’t possibly care that much. The sound effects seem to work pretty seamlessly, and are well made, I suppose. If I had to mindlessly complain about anything in the sound department, I don’t like the fact that Hyper Beam doesn’t sound like… well; I can’t type it very well seeing as how it’s a sound and everything but I’ll try….. here it goes… psh… BLAALALALALA… there. I tried. It doesn’t sound like that, and that’s my only complaint. Whatever. In a very small, very Neanderthal-like nutshell: Sound Good. Music Upbeat. Fire Bad.

Controls 10/10 Child’s play. Maybe even fetus’s play.

Well let’s see here. Usually you have two options: Mash A all the time to do everything, or die. Can you do any less? Seriously, a trained monkey or even Jessica Simpson can operate these controls without much problem.

Thankfully, in this game, they add a much-needed RUN button, so you can flatfoot it for a while at TOP SPEED! Until you get your bike, so your lazy ass can be even lazier. Rejoice! Oh, and so you can be even more lazy, you can register your bike to your select button, so you don’t have to press even MORE buttons! God forbid.

Just so players don’t have to worry, the game does not include the buttons L or R. This is to prevent mental overload or brain cancer. I don’t know or understand what was going on in the developer’s minds, but the buttons probably COULD have been used as register buttons so players don’t have to keep switching their fishing poles with their bikes.

Story 4/10

Bah. I couldn’t tell what the story was. I basically assumed it was the basic: “Hey, you have to become the number one Pokemon trainer, and be better than some guy you don’t know” story, mixed in with the “team [insert name here] is up to some bad trouble and you have to stop them, mixed with some “retrieve stuff for me” crap on the side. Honestly, I don’t know what happened in the game. Don’t get me wrong, I read the stuff, but it was just so… unimportant… and stupid sounding.

Gameplay 6/10

Meh. It’s been done. Walk around in grass, find Pokemon, defeat gym members, stop team [insert name here], walk some more, surf, defeat some more gym members, change party, defeat rival, defeat Pokemon league, kill self. But this time, you can be a GIRL if you want!!! It’s an option completely useless to me, but important nonetheless. I suppose it comes in handy if you’re already a girl.

Nintendo decided to keep in the “grid walk” concept. Not a very good idea. This is a Gameboy Advance game, not Gameboy Pocket, not Gameboy color. We can rebuild it, we have the technology, so why not? Walking around in L-shaped patterns can be surprisingly annoying at times.

Some of the added crap is pretty neat. I kind of like the two-on-two battles. Unfortunately the two on two battles happen a less-than-desired amount of times. By the end of the game, there’s no challenging two-on-two battlers left. I also like the added stuff like abilities. Abilities are characteristics your Pokemon is born with that affect it automatically during battle without the use of PP. The contest was decent, however; it was for the most part useless. You get no prize for completing the contest, but it’s one of the most time-consuming events in the game.

Replay Value
5/10veteran players
8/10 newbies

I don’t really want to replay the game very much. It’s pretty much like saying I want to play Pokemon red/blue for the 20th time in a row. I’m fed up with the repetitiveness of the last six or so titles. I’ve played most of them to death. Besides, like any RPG, it’s too long to be played again, assuming you wish to catch ‘em all, and have a perfect party.

Newbs to the series might want to play the game over and over again. It’s a decent game, if you look at it from a fresh perspective.

Overall 7/10

The game is good, but lacks in originality. It has its points, but fails to deliver the freshness we gamers deserve. Maybe one day a Pokemon game will come out that’s not based around trading, walking around in a grid, or silly pictures of Pokemon fighting with unidentifiable crap coming out of their mouths or thin air.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/03