The last Pokémon game I owned was Pearl and before that was Blue. Yeah the original one! I haven’t been keeping up with Pokémon games lately and really only played the main series. I never did try any of the spin offs but I hear the puzzle one for the N64 was fun. So last Sunday I fell in with the other trainers in the US and picked up SoulSilver. Its a remake of the Silver game. Actually now that i think about it I did own Silver for a few weeks. It was a used JP copy I found at EB Games so long ago. Never really put much time into it since at the time i only knew enough to dechiper the names of the Pokémons.
Compared to Pearl, SoulSilver has a few nice changes. Luckily I was able to transfer two of my Pokémons from Pearl to SoulSilver before I got started. Nothing like a jump start to get things going. The two lucky Pokémon were Jirachi and Magikarp. Yes, the utterly useless (well semi-useless atm, he can use tackle) Pokémon. You have to remember though Magikarp transforms into Gyrados, a dragon type Pokémon. I use Jirachi primarily followed by the first several Pokémon I found though I’m still trying to round out my party to cover all bases.
The PokéWalker is an oddity of a device. I did own one of the Pocket Pikachus from way back so this is about the same. Only difference is it can be any Pokémon though one thing to note though is the Pokémon you want to bring along must be in the Pokémon storage system (Bill’s PC) and NOT in your party. The PokéWalker is mostly usable out of the box, the clip backing is not preinstalled. It is kinda annoying that you have to disassemble it to add the back with the clip and they don’t provide you a lanyard strap either. I have a feeling it’s like this since some versions of the game come with a PokéWalker cover and a strap.
It functions like any other pedometer however it seems to be able to tell somewhat if your really moving or just shaking it for a few watts. I think I picked up about 960 steps while walking to work today. The steps translates to watts that can be used on the back end. I don’t know what the conversion is but I assume it’s like 18-20 steps per watt unless its based on continuous movement. The watts can be used to look for items or even find Pokémon to fight and capture. Combat is simple. Each Pokémon has 4 life bars and you need to bring down the life bars to about half or less to capture it. Each hit reduce the life bar by one. You have 3 commands, attack, evade, and capture. Attack is straight forward and your Pokémon attacks usually and takes a blow themselves if the wild Pokémon attacks back. However if the wild Pokémon uses evade, your attack will miss and they’ll get a free hit on you. Of course this works vice versa. Once they’re low enough you can use the capture options to grab them. Once your done you can transfer all the Pokémon back to soulSilver.
Overall the game and the device are fun, enough to even pull me from FFXIII for a few.
