Pokemon – Battle Revolution

Once we were happy.

It was the summer, we were young(er), and we roamed a far, far away galaxy.

First we played LEGO Star Wars – The Original Trilogy and then LEGO Star Wars – The Complete Saga.

Every Saturday morning we would get up and play for hours.

Other games showed up in the mail, via GameFly, but were generally sent back rather soon.

Until that day.

The day that Pokemon – Battle Revolution showed up.

The game that ruined our Saturday mornings!

The main thing wrong with Pokemon – Battle Revolution is that it is a single player game.

There are some modes where you can play against somebody who has a Nintendo DS. But if you are sitting at home and do not have a DS, it is pretty much single player.

Or so it seems to me. I have tried to figure out a way to play two player and have failed.

The second problem with Pokemon – Battle Revolution is that my daughter absolutely loves Pokemon. At least the Pokemon cartoon on TV.

So Bulbasaur and Chimchar muscled out Yoda and Darth Vader for the Saturday morning gaming spot.

And I was reduced to reading text on the screen too complicated for my daughter to understand yet, which turned out to be pretty minimal after a short time. She gets things from context very quickly.

Still, despite my disappointment, Pokemon – Battle Revolution isn’t a bad game. It is accessible. Even somebody like me, whose main knowledge about Pokemon is “Pikachu is the cute one” can get in and play without too much effort.

And it is even fun, for a little while.

Then it starts to feel repetitive. Very repetitive.

The game should be called Pokemon – Battle Repetition.

The essence of the whole game… of all Pokemon games I understand… is Pokemon battling other Pokemon.

And so the game, which takes place on the island of Poketopia, is made up of a series of arena where you take your Pokemon to fight.

The arenas have different rules. Some times it is a one on one fight, other times two on two. We hit one arena where you and your computer opponent get a random pick of Pokemon from both of your cards, so you might get to fight with a different set of Pokemon under your control.

But in the end, each Pokemon has four skills that are generally effective or not versus any given opposing Pokemon. I quickly learned what combo was best for each Pokemon and only ever lost when I ran up against an opposing Pokemon that was completely resistant to all of my attacks.

Boring!

But not to my daughter.

So weeks went by with Pokemon as the lead our Wii popularity contest while I waited for a hero to come save me.

Like Nixon, I needed a plumber.