Pokemon SoulSilver - 'The Journey Begins' and 'Fucking Up Faulkner'

It’s no stretch to say that I was raised on Pokemon. I was in fifth grade when Gold and Silver came out, and my brother and I received them respectively. Silver was amazing, because it was all the awesomeness of the first game with twice the length, and this time with some actual storyline going on behind the scenes, which was awesome. When Ruby and Sapphire came out I just couldn’t get into them, being as they had somehow gotten shorter again and the world and new Pokemon weren’t as interesting as before. In the years since R/S the only Pokemon game I played was Red, which I stopped playing when all of my friends got way the hell ahead of me and I started to lose interest. However, now they’ve remade my favorite game in the franchise, so it’s time to pick up Ye Olde DS and relive my childhood! And I’m blogging it because I finally have an excuse to blog Pokemon and be current!

Okay, so the first thing to note about SoulSilver is of course that this is a DS game, 2 whole generations ahead of the original, and as such nothing looks the way it used to, haha. It’s all 3D! It looks really nice. The towns have a whole new life to them that they didn’t have before. I think the funniest symbol of the generational shift was that my character’s room now has a Wii in it instead of a Super Famicom~ !

As per the modern games’ tradition, in addition to your normal rival (S/G always had the biggest asshole of all the rivals, so I named him “ASSCOCK,” as per classic tradition) you have a rival that is the opposite gender of your character. I ended up with the most hilariously hyperactive chick with a similarly hyperactive Maril whose speech so far has all basically equated to ‘ZOMG POKEMON WWWW.’ We haven’t fought yet, but it should be fun. Also I’m pretty sure I could find porn of her already if I looked.

Where would I begin with all the graphical touches and little fun things thrown in? When you open your pack, it is divided into a bunch of sections, and as you look through a section or ‘pocket’ there is an indication of which part of your backpack that pocket is located. Finally, we understand how he keeps his shit organized! Though I guess it doesn’t explain how one pocket can store 99 super potions or whatever lol. I like how important trainers will show up behind their Pokemon at some points during battle to shout encouragement and stuff. The Pokecenters have gotten uber high-tech; they even have a damn escalator going to the basement! I love the use of the touch-screen because I hate menu navigation. And you get cute things like being able to change the wallpaper on your Pokegear. This, my friends, is how you make an immersive video game!

So, anyway, onto the actual playing. I started off with Totodile, whom I named BOSS NIGGA, because he is the most badass of the starters, hands-down. I then went through the reason that I always hated starting new games in Pokemon Silver, which is the journey to Mr. Pokemon’s house and back. It’s annoying enough to have to walk it so many times, but you don’t get any damn Pokeballs to catch the little shits nibbling at your ankles in the grass. By the time I got my Pokeballs, BOSS NIGGA was already at level 10 and knew Water Gun and Rage (I can’t tell you how much I love to see the phrase “BOSS NIGGA’s rage is building up!”)

I haven't even tried this thing out yet, but my bro says it's cool He got HeartGold BTW.

So anyway, I next caught a female Hoothoot which I named FIZZBITCH. I remember once having a Noctowl in Silver which was the first time that my strongest Pokemon wasn’t my starter, and I was quite proud, so I hope FIZZBITCH will be a good addition to the team. Next I caught a female Rattata named ‘Old Nancy‘ whom I don’t intend to do much with. I’ve grown bored of Rattata after having one in my recent Red playthrough that would always die too easily, so this one’s just a straggler. I caught it at first thinking that I would be trying to catch all of the Pokemon available, but when I realized that you had to catch certain ones during the day, I blew out that plan.

Now, when I caught FIZZBITCH I found out something important. You see, all along, BOSS NIGGA’s sprite had been following me around where I went. As it turns out, whatever Pokemon is assigned as the head of your party will follow you around. As soon as I discovered this, my natural reaction was ‘I NEED AN ONIX’ for reasons that should be obvious if you are a human fucking being.

Well, check out my luck! In the first major town (which is lovely at night, by the way, with it’s array of soft lanterns illuminating it) some random guy was willing to trade me an Onix for a Bellsprout, and it so happened to be Bellsprout Season on Route 30. I quickly caught a Bellsprout named TRADEBAIT and then gave it up for an Onix that this NPC, obviously the biggest genius in the universe, had named ‘Rocky’. I knew instantly that I had found my party leader.

Unfortunately, the first place I had to go was Sprout Tower, wherein every damn enemy uses Bellsprout – about the last thing you want to face with a rock and water type leading your party. Luckily FIZZBITCH was there to make easy work of things, and I managed to catch a Ghastly named ‘Fuuko-chan’ (for obvioius reasons). Now it was time to take on the first gym leader, Faulkner!

Faulkner’s gym was awesome, because when you walk in, you step on this platform that suddenly flies upward, propelled by a mess of gears, up to the array of platforms suspended high above the ground for the bird-based gym’s battles. I can’t wait to see what the other gyms are like! Unfortunately I lost my first match to Faulkner’s god damn level 13 Pidgeotto thanks to my Pokemon being weakened by the other trainers and my being too damn stupid to buy potions. Leading to a tweet like this:

@2010digitalboy: FUCK I LOST TO FUCKING FAULKER BITCH ASS PIECE OF SHIT WITH HIS FUCKING LVL 13 PIDGEOTTO FUCK YOUR SHIT

But luckily, after a quick trip to the Pokecenter, I totally crushed him with Rocky singlehandedly, leading to tweets like this:

@2010digitalboy: YEAH HOW YOU LIKE THAT FAULKER THAT’S CALLED DEFEAT BITCH, THAT’S WHY YOU DON’T FUCK WITH ROCKY THE ONIX MOTHAFUCKAAAAAA

@2010digitalboy: ADRIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN

@Shinmaru: @2010digitalboy rofl ROCKY ROCKY ROCKY ROCKY ROCKY

@2010digitalboy: @Shinmaru I CAN CHANGE! YOU CAN CHANGE! ALL OF US CAN CHANGE!!!!

Anyway, you can tell I’m having fun, but the coolest thing that I can do by posting every so often on my progress is track the status of my team after each gym. So let’s have a look!

Rocky (Onix) lvl. 11 – Attacks: Rock Smash, Tackle, Rock Throw, Bind <- Current planned party leader.

BOSS NIGGA (Totodile) lvl. 11 – Attacks: Scratch, Leer, Water Gun, Rage <- Insanely overpowered backup plan.

FIZZBITCH (HootHoot) lvl. 9 – Attacks: Tackle, Growl, Peck, Hypnosis <- Combination of bird and psychic is very useful

Old Nancy (Rattata) lvl. 7 – Attacks: Tackle, Tail Whip, Quick Attack, Focus Energy <- Waiting to be replaced by something more awesome

Fuuko-chan (Ghastly) lvl. 5 – Attacks: Hypnosis, Lick, Spite <- Might try to train depending on how much of a pain in the ass it turns out to be

EGG <- It’s an egg.