Ems: Pokemon Black and White is released in the UK today, Chris and I are going to let everyone know what we think of the starters before we even own the game.
Chris: We decided on our choices for starters a few days ago while we started to hype ourselves up over it’s impending release. So without any knowledge of what we’ll actually come across we made snap judgements of which was our best choice to start exploring the Unnova region with.
Also, I apologise for the bad drawings. Just got a new tablet and I’m breaking it in.
Emily Clarke:
I’ve already decided against all my instincts to go with the grass type. Normally I go with fire, always have. Usually because they are pretty, but also because I like fire and red things anyway so I just sort of gravitate. This time I had an instant dislike for the fire type starter before I saw the last evolution. It looks like a pig in a circus costume for goodness sake. I decided we would not get along and that it was time for change. Against all my usual preferences I am going to pick up the Snivy. I don’t even carry a grass type in my team under usual circumstances. I avoid it as best I can because the designs usually irritate me. Some of them are cute, the animal-plants can be cuter than the sort of living plants they sometimes have – you can’t hug a Bellsprout after all. It would be all cold and planty – possibly soily too but I digress. The Serpiriour is the prettiest and I don’t think any of them are particularly badass so there’s nothing to override my ‘ooh shiny’ instincts.
The Oshawott is the cute one here. Only as a ‘baby’ of course, because the last one is sort of big with sort of facial hair, I’m not quite sure what’s going on there. It starts as a cute fuzzy otter thing and then it becomes a teenage otter thing and then it’s a mustached triangle.
As for the pig, I have nothing against pigs, pigs are adorable and then sort of awesome when large for some reason. This pig is in no way cool. I don’t understand how anyone can find this design aesthetically pleasing. It’s like they decided that fire types are always popular and decided to mix things up by making it the ugliest dang thing that ever came to be. As I said before, it looks as if it’s grabbed half of it’s costume from the dated fighting game list and the other half from Marvel’s reject costume design bin for minor villain sidekicks.
And that’s why I’m going all leafy this time, thanks for being patient with me.
Chris Goodchild:
When making my decision on what Pokemon I want to pick as my starter for Black I first thought back through all the other starters I’ve picked over the years. I’ve played at least one of every generation of Pokemon game to date (not including the spin offs) and for most of them I’ve chosen the grass starter. I’ve always quite liked the grass types however I also remembered that I once started Pokemon Gold with a Cindiquill. This little fire starter was a lot of fun to play through Gold with, possibly because there was a large forest early on and probably became one of the strongest Pokemon I’ve ever trained. Thats why I’ve decided to go with Tepig.
The water starter Oshawott doesn’t appeal to me at all. In fact most of the water starters haven’t appealed to me. Except Mudkip. I like Mudkips. No, really. I do. As for Snivey, it has some sort of appeal to me and an odd air of smugness, which is usually something I like. However, the overwhelming urge I had to try something a little bit different just took over. Despite all this I don’t like Tepig’s design much at all. He kinda looks like he was cobbled together from a Spoink, a Charmander and a Turtwig. However the appeal of fire has a strong pull to it and its just been too long since I had a really powerful fire Pokemon.
Its also worth noting that I let Ems decide on her starter first and therefore i was bound by the “Gary Oak Law” to immediately pick the Fire one when she chose Snivey.
It’s not the end of the world for Oshawott though. If you watched the video we posted yesterday you’ll know that Madeline, my girlfriend, chose Oshawott as her starter so the little thing’s probably gonna have an ok life.
We’ll have our first impressions of the two games up by the end of the week and a full review as soon as we can. Pokemon games aren’t known for being short.
And don’t worry. Those cuffs are WAY too big for that Oshawott.
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Ah, Mudkip, good times, good times
Cool drawings! I’m surprised how hyped younger kids are for this game. I had a bunch come into the department store I work at today asking for the game, it doesn’t launch until Sunday in Canada so I couldn’t give it to them.
It brings me back, I was just like them when Pokemon Silver launched, I think I was in grade 7 – I remember running home at lunch to pick up the game.