Friendly Rivalries: An Assessment

I boarded the ferry with Professor Kukui, my friend and rival Hau, and the office supplies bandit and we traveled by map to the second island, Akala Island, to continue the Alola challenge.  Apparently there are three challenges on Akala Island with three different Trial Captains.  One of these captains, Mallow, and the Kahuna of the island, Olivia, greeted us at landfall.  I did my best to come up with an appropriate joke for the situation, but all I could think of was "it's really sweet that Marshmallow would come to greet us."  Clearly I shouldn't quit my day job anytime soon.
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Continuing with the trend started in Generation 4 (yes I said Generation 4,:fight me about it), Pokemon Sun offers you the "rival is your friend" plotline.  I have spoken with my similarly-minded friends about this and we came to the conclusion that the whole friendly rival thing doesn't quite work the way that Nintendo/Gamefreak would hope it does.  I would say that the reason for this failure is in the nature of the game as a whole.

Let's look at Gen 1 and 2 as the counter-examples.  These two games had ruthless, tough, mean-spirited rivals that are always one step ahead of you with tough pokemon and tough attitudes.  Blue was cocksure and ambitious.  He had no reservations about admitting that he was out to show the world that he is the best; he was always quick to demean and belittle the main protagonist--the player character.  Gen 2 had Silver--an actual pokemon thief.

"Geez, Silver calm down"

Fast forward to Generation 4, 5, 6, and now 7 and the player's rivals are all childhood friends or new friends of the player character.  Gen 5 tells you, the player, outright that the characters Bianca and Cheren have been your friends from childhood.  The Band of Pokemon thieves in Gen 6 were all one-note character stereotypes (of course the big buy is into dancing, of course the small whiney kid is into collecting and analyzing data, of course the girl is scared of everything--because who cares about breaking down gender and character tropes in artistic media, right?) and they were all presented as friends who are competing with you.

Generation 7's rival character is Hau and Hau's character trait--Hau's only character trait--is that he likes to eat malasada. Woo.

The reason that Blue and Silver always make the short list of everyone's top Pokemon NPC countdowns is because their implementation was in line with the player's expectations of the medium of the videogame.

One plays a video game to be challenged.  A game is a puzzle--it's a thing that needs to be solved.  It's a set of obstacles that present themselves to the player such that the player has an innate desire to push on and overcome these same obstacles.  The reward is coming out on top.  "You did it!  You won!"  In a game you're trying to overcome the odds--it's a natural outcome of the medium.  There's something working against you.  As a direct result of this, it's really easy to put together a mean, intimidating rival for your game.  Your rival, especially in pokemon, is the personification of the game--the game is trying to beat you and your rival is working against you in that same way.  On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to implement a friendly rivalry that works.

The best way to rationalize it is that a friendly rivalry, even in Pokemon, breaks game flow.  It's hard to get a player to care about an NPC.  That's even before we factor into the equation the fact that these same NPC's lack dimension.  It's hard to care about a cardboard cutout--and no amount of Tierno's dancing, nor Hau's joking about food is going to get me to care about them.  It's hard to get someone to care about your video game character as a friend, but it's easy to identify an enemy.

That's why friendly rivalries so easily fall flat on their faces.  In a show or in a book or a comic, these characters could be written in such a way that they are more sympathetic and, dare I say it, friendly.  However, in the medium of "video game", the friendliness of the rivalry undercuts the rules of the game.

If the game is trying to beat you, the avatar and personification of that very same game should be as heckling and mean as well.  It's easier to pull off--and it's just plain better motivation to get good, son.

And this one?  Honestly I don't even know what I should be feeling here...

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Wasn't that a nice diversion?  Here I am teaching you all these things.  You're gonna be so smart by the end of this play through.

I ran into Sina and Dexio, Professor Sycamore's assistants) from Pokemon Y version.  Sina challenged me to a battle.  This was actually interesting for me because I had never seen what kinds of pokemon either one of them uses.  Turns out, she uses Ice Pokemon: Delibird and Glaceon.

[Insert Sex pun here]

Too bad I had Growlie with me, huh?

Three vs. Two: Breaking the Psychic Deadlock

THE PROBLEM

The first generation pokemon games, monumental pieces of video game history to be sure, are mired in gameplay issues and inconsistencies.  The calculation for critical hits, the absolute broken-ness of "wrap", the complete ineffectiveness of the ghost type in general (which couldn't hit normal, nor psychic types): the list goes on and on.  Of all of these issues, the Psychic Deadlock is the most widely known.

It is also the most substantial.

I like to describe Pokemon to those who don't play the games (nonbelievers, infidels, whatever you want to call them) as "extended rock, paper scissors".  It's a game of traits and how they interact with one another.  Choose any trait--it would be strong against some things and weak against other things.  For example, trees would be strong against rain, but weak against axes.  Humans are strong against dying alone, but weak against drain cleaner.  In Pokemon you have your standard fire/water/grass sort of thing going on: fire consumes grass, grass drinks water, water puts out fire, blahblahblah.  The way it worked was intuitive, for the most part.  Fire moves would deal double damage to grass pokemon and grass moves would deal halved damage to fire pokemon. There were many types that interacted in weird and sometimes silly ways.  As a matter of fact, in the first games there were 15 different types of Pokemon:

Grass, Poison, Ground, Flame, Electric, Water, Rock, Flying, Ice, Normal, Bug, Ghost, Fighting and Dragon.

Don't forget about Psychic.

While it was mentioned specifically and repeatedly in both the anime and the games that there was no "universally powerful" type, this was frankly untrue.  As it were, barring the existences of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and Jesus, this is the first lie that I remember being told.  That type was "psychic".

Theoretically, the Psychic type had the same strengths and weaknesses as any other type.  It was listed as being strong against the fighting and poison types.  It was listed as being vulnerable to bug and ghost types.  On paper, it had the same shortcomings as any other type of pokemon.  The problem was in the execution.

There were 14 psychic pokemon in Generation 1 and even more that could learn psychic moves.  There were only 12 bug pokemon and 3 ghost pokemon in that same generation.  Furthermore, neither of these types had any resistance to psychic moves.  As a matter of fact, no pokemon in generation 1 would receive reduced damage from psychic moves except psychic pokemon themselves.

Sorry Ash, you can never win against a Psychic Pokemon

Here are a few facts.

1) There were 14 psychic pokemon in Gen 1.
2) There were 12 bug pokemon.
3) There were 3 ghost pokemon.
4) There were 33 poison pokemon.
5) There were 7 fighting pokemon.



This means that there were 39 pokemon that had a weakness to psychic moves and only 15 pokemon that had types that were listed as super-effective against the psychic type.

Also, there were only three moves that were introduced in total that dealt extra damage to these psychic pokemon.  These moves were "Twinneedle" (bug type), "Pin Missile" (bug type), and "Lick" (ghost type).  Only five pokemon in the game could learn these moves.  This means that of the 15 pokemon that, theoretically, would be strong against psychic pokemon, only 5 would actually be so effective.

Also Also, four of those pokemon were dual-type pokemon with the poison type.  This means that only one pokemon learned a move that would deal extra damage against a psychic pokemon without receiving extra damage from psychic attacks.  That pokemon was Jolteon and it was not even a bug, nor poison type.

Also Also Also, due to a glitch in the game, the only ghost type move in the game, "Lick", actually dealt zero damage to psychic pokemon.  Wow.

THE GENERATION 2 FIX

Clearly, there was a problem.  Gen 2 fixed this problem by adding two new pokemon types.  These were the "Dark" and "Steel" types.

Dark type pokemon are characterized by being sneaky or ruthless.  This type is called "evil" in Japan and for good reason: some of the first dark pokemon revealed were "witchy crow", and "devil hound". Psychic moves would be ineffective against the dark type.  Dark moves deal increased damage against psychic pokemon.

Steel Pokemon are pokemon that are made of iron or that have some affinity for iron.  Often these pokemon have high physical defenses.  Examples include "metal rock snake" and "magnet".  While steel pokemon do not deal increased damage to psychic types, they are resistant to psychic moves.

With the psychic deadlock finally broken, the pokemon franchise took huge steps towards rebalancing in such a way that made the game more playable.  There really wasn't any one type that was the best--and finally the gameplay reflected this.  I would stop short of saying that it was fixed.  There were some types that were still severely underpowered compared to others and many of these balance issues would persist well into the franchise history.  But by adding two new types, Gold and Silver fixed what was most broken and did so with style.

This and other small mechanics changes would cause major changes in the way the metagame was structured for Generation 2 games.  No one could have foreseen what would happen next...

Next: Breaking the Stall

Three vs. Two: Introduction to Gen 2

I was thinking the other day (fool that I am) and I have come to the conclusion that Gen 3 (Ruby/Sapphire) is better than Gen 2 (Gold/Silver).

Because I’m an older millennial who’s been doing this way too long, it should come as no shock that my favorite game in the series is Pokemon Silver version.  Partly, this is because it has my favorite starter of all (evidence shown), but I want to say that the bulk of the love I have for this title is due to all the things it fixed from the Generation 1 games.  

Okay, if we’re being honest, it’s probably mostly the nostalgia thing.  There is no denying that this game sparks strong feelings in Pokemon trainers my age because of the timing behind it.  Nostalgia is a devious sonuvabitch: often the memories that are remembered the most fondly turn out to be ones wherein the wait was paid off.  Put another way, the things that you remember with the most childish whimsy are those things where you waited for days and weeks and months patiently—that then lived up to the hype.

It is said that when "Pikablu" opens its eyes, the famines will begin...

I would argue that Pokemon 2 was that sort of memory, the kind of experience where the buildup was worth the wait.  The year 2000 was a time distinctly before the explosion of the internet: information about Pokemon 2 (or anything, for that matter) was scarce.  All we knew in America was that the game was out in Japan—and that it was awesome.  Some lucky ones of us had a friend who was a subscriber to “Beckett Pokemon Collector” because they were trading card collectors (I was this person in my circle of friends), so we were able to glean some little bit of honey from the information contained within.  A rare few of us had a friend with a Japanese copy of the title (often this friend was that rich prick you only hung out with because this person had BOTH a Playstation and a Nintendo 64, the bastard).  We knew that it was out—we even knew the Japanese names of some of the monsters— Otachi, Arigetsu, Redian— it was a wait unlike any other.  

Everyone knew a guy who knew a guy who worked for Nintendo and everyone had heard from a very reliable source that etc. etc.  It’s no wonder that the fan theories that erupted were so widely believed: “Pokegods" like "Nidogod" and “Pikablu”.  Who was “Houou” (eventually Ho-Oh)? Why was he in the anime already?!  All we could do was suppose.  And wait.

And as it were, Gen 2 was fantastic.

The games, Pokemon gold and silver versions, improved upon everything in the red and blue versions.  They offered a much more balanced and nuanced experience at both the technical level and the world-building level.  

But we must still address the elephant in the room. There is a large caste of the pokemon community collectively referred to as “gen one-ers” that is so fanatically devoted to the original installment that they refuse to see the positives in any other titles.  Along with this, they fail to see the negatives in their own favorite game.  Red version was phenomenal, but it had a lot of issues (which I would love to get into—some other time).  As a matter of fact, a lot of things about Pokemon that are currently taken for granted amongst current fans of the series can trace their origins back to the second or third generation, not the first.  

Taking the “Gen One-ers” out of the discussion (because fuck those guys, amiright?), the bulk of the rest of the pokemon community—especially those around my age (those in their twenties)—tends to favor Generation 2: Gold, Silver, and Crystal.  Their rankings of the titles in the series often manifest as some transposition of “Gen 2, Gen 1, 'all the rest’”.

I can’t deny that I am a member of this very same crowd.  This is something that actually causes me physical pain.  I am a contrarian and I hate being “just like everyone else”.  Alternatively, I cannot deny that Generation 2, the second game in the series, is undoubtedly my favorite.

However, because I am, above all else, a critic, I feel it important to come to terms with a few things about Generation 2 that maybe aren’t so great.  I was thinking about this this morning and I came to a startling conclusion that, while Silver version may be my favorite game in the series, it may actually be one of the weaker ones.  

I think that, on this the 20th anniversary year of pokemon, it might be a good idea to look back at my favorite game in the series with a more critical eye.  I will do my best to stay grounded and to give a fair assessment of the title.  I will also try my hardest to keep this from becoming one of those unbearable buzzfeed “Top X Things that are Awesome about BLANK” lists wherein everything is rationalized with “…because it’s awesome”.

Escape from the Parfume Palace

The problem with the sidequests in Pokemon games is that they inevitably boil down to "find item X and rub it on slot Y" until the supporting characters tell you how smart you are.  Thus it is with my character and Shauna (the most insufferable of the Pokemon Thieves, whose only character trait is "being a girl"): sent to "find Pokeflute and rub it on Snorlax" until it wakes up.

Apparently, though, I had to find the king of the palace's poodle in the gardens first, so this quest went from annoying to infuriating real quick.

I found the dog and played the "Farfetch'd game" (to catch a trainer's pokemon by chasing it around) from Pokemon Silver version and found myself watching fireworks with Shauna.  I have no clue where these events fit in logically with one another, but rest assured that they were all mandatory and definitely related to my quest to catch all the pokemon.

At this point, Nintendo once again tried to shove its stupid characters in my face with its terrible, terrible writing by having Shauna say that she was really happy to watch the fireworks because "[she] has never watched fireworks alone with a boy before."

NO, I reject this.  I will not accept a crappy love story on top of your crappy regular story.  I have to go lie down.
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I sarcastically alluded to the fact that Pokemon White and Y are both terrible in terms of character development in a few previous posts and I want to clarify my feelings on this matter.  I recognize that the best Pokemon game of all time, Pokemon Red version, was similarly plagued by "disposable character syndrome". 

Want to know if your game has DispCharSynd? Try to describe your supporting cast in any way without describing their job or their physical features.  If your only description ends up being something like "has a dog", "likes to dance" or "closet homosexual", then your character is shallow and useless and if it were a marine in "Aliens", it would most certainly be one of the ones that are killed off early and easily.

The thing is that Red version ALSO didn't have a real plot.  This was a game written back in the days where the entire story was told in the booklet that comes with the game--and the rest is made up by the player.  White Version and Y version, however, are given considerably less slack in the story and character-development areas of the game simply because they TRY too hard in these areas.  If White version took some time off pushing its hamfisted message of Pokemon suffrage into your face every 5 seconds and instead focused on letting you, the player, run the story, it could have gotten away with having odious and inconsequential characters, but since it spent so much time banging-on about its plot, the cast members were too easily exposed for the cardboard cutouts that they were.  The result is that you have presented a roller coaster and populated the entire thing with cardboard cutouts of "Winnie the Pooh".  Not necessarily a bad ride, but perhaps a little distracting and you have the constant feeling of shame and indigestion.

The End of Pokemon White

Not really much to say about the anticlimax of the century: I beat "N" with only "Tusks" the Haxorus (there HAS to be an "overpowered Dragon-type" joke in there somewhere...) and then I fought Ghestis (the true villain) afterwards and similarly beat him in 8 moves using only Haxorus. 

Afterwards, I got a pep talk from "N" about pursuing my dreams or some nonsense like that.

And then the credits rolled...
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I'm not sure how I feel about Pokemon White being over--on the one hand the writing was heavy-handed and the plot was fantastically bad, but the pokemon designs were interesting and the world layout was...satisfactory.  Okay, I guess coming up with things I liked is a little difficult.

Now, I'm just being critical because I love the Pokemon series so don't take this the wrong way, but Pokemon White was not a good game.  I'm not saying it was bad, it was just average.

Why do you play pokemon?  The story?  I sure hope not, the story for this game was good, but not great: it definitely suffered from "Decent Premise, Terrible Writing Syndrome".  The idea of whether or not Pokemon training is ethical was great to bring up--and injected an excellent bit of self-awareness for a series which has always been "Shoot First, Ask Questions Later".

The problem with this is that the whole "pokemon battles as arguments of ideals" allegory that this game was pushing the whole time (Zekrom and Reshiram themselves, representing dissenting opinions) fell absolutely flat on its face along with the entirety of the game's dialogue, which ranged from "bad" to "unforgivably bad".  I wonder if the entire game was written on "Take your kid to work day"...

No, you play a pokemon game for the battling and the pokemon design and selection.  Here, the game wasn't terrible, but it still didn't shine.  For every cool-looking Leavanny or Scraggy, there was a dumb-looking Stunfisk or an uninspired Klink, Vanilluxe, or Cryogonal.  As a matter of fact, the total number of stupid-looking pokemon definitely outnumbers the cool ones that I remember--and the negatives from this game are most definitely the things I recall the most.

I can't remember one bad thing about Red and Blue version...wait, I just remembered Rock Tunnel...
nevermind.  But Silver Version--there we are, that's the example I will use.  Silver version was perfect I think.  I can't recall a bad section of the game: awesome pokemon design, access to good pokemon early (but not overpowered ones) in order to get you hooked--constantly changing environments and a story that was compelling and not in-your-face the whole time banging-on about friendship or dreams or arguments or some nonsense like that.

Ruby was good I guess--less homogenous in terms of pokemon access (as in, you tended to get about 40 cool new pokemon at a time followed by hours of gameplay where no new monsters appear) and a bit too plot-heavy (I never DID get behind that "legendary pokemon as a main plot point" thing), but overall solid.

Diamond and Pearl I can't for the life of me remember--must not have liked them very much--and I never DID like those three starter options.  Turtwig, Chimchar, Piplup: Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.  While I know many people will disagree with that last statement, it is my opinion and I would just like to say: nanna-nanna-boo-boo, stick your head in doo doo.

So Pokemon White?  Put it above Diamond and Pearl but below Red and Silver versions.  Maybe just below Ruby and Sapphire.

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But today isn't about goodbyes, it is about new beginnings.  I thought I was done with Pokemon--but Nintendo just keeps me hanging on.  A new game is out--and that means a new Pokemon Playthrough.  Therefore, I am proud to announce the start of:

I have reset my trainer card to reflect the change:

Of course you can continue to expect witty commentary, snide remarks, and what I consider humor.