Pokemon X&Y.

Name: Pokemon X & Y

Type: AGON & ALEA

Platform: 3DS

Quick Breakdown:

This game falls under AGON because you are trying to be the best and create a party strong enough to defeat the Pokemon league and your friends.

This game falls under ALEA because you don’t know what Pokemon you will encounter in each wiled battle.

This game falls under MIMICRY because you are taking on the role of a Pokemon trainer.

Forms of play:

LUDUS – This game has clear preset rules and goals.

What needs does the game fulfill:

Competence – You have a clear sense of progression collecting gym badges and leveling up your Pokemon and when your Pokemon are a certain level they will evolve showing even greater signs that they have gotten stronger.

Relatedness – You can trade Pokemon with your friends or challenge them to a battle.

What player type(s) does this game suit best:

Killer because you can defeat your friends team and battle against random people online.

Explorer because even though the game follows a linear path from badge to badge there are small areas off the set path to explore, doing so may reward you with an area were you can fined rare Pokemon or a new move or just a rare item.

Achiever because you are defeating gym leaders to earn badges to enter the Pokemon league and prove that you are the greatest trainer in the world.

Socializer because you can trade and battle your Pokemon with friends online or offline in the same room as you.

Examples of Punishment and reward within the game:

if you lose you just spawn at the nearest Pokemon center and your team is healed back to full which isn’t much of a punishment except you also lose a bit of money, but aside from potions and pokeballs you will never really spend much money in the game anyway. If you win you are rewarded with experience and money if it was a trainer, if it was a gym leader you will also get a gym badge.

How does it deal with the Hedonic Treadmill:

There are plenty of Pokemon to collect to go for the catch them all victory but aside from that there is not much to bring you back as to start a new game you have to delete your save and start from scratch which in this day and age with multiple saves being standard it is unacceptable. This means that you have to choose giving up your data or playing the game again which may make you never play the game again and encourage the player to move on to a different product.

Analysis:

In every Pokemon game you have two main objectives; the first being to defeat all the gym leaders to collect their badges and take on the Pokemon league. There is usually a rival character who will challenge you throughout the game and be the final challenge at the end of the Pokemon league. The second objective is to catch all the Pokemon and complete you’re pokedex.

Pokemon X & Y Changes this formula by having four other kids that get Pokemon when you receive yours in stead of the one rival who would always choose your Pokemon’s weakness making each battle a challenge. This game however has you fight against the Pokemon that is weak to yours setting the tone for the entire game, it is to easy. The game does have a rival but most fights you have with her you are in a team battle working together and since she picks your Pokemon’s weakness she can compensate for your starters weakens instead of exploit it.

There was never a risk of failing in any of the Pokemon games because you can just heal at the Pokemon centers or get teleported to the nearest one when your entire party faints meaning there is no game over. Despite this the level progression felt wright making strategy count for a lot in a battle instead of out leveling your opponent and winning through raw power. This is thrown out of balance  in Pokemon X & Y, after the first gym they present you with an item called XP Share, which unlike previous games, does not need to be held by its intended target because it effects your whole party. This means you can just go through every battle with your strongest Pokemon and level your entire party taking away all risk and challenge of leveling up weaker Pokemon. I was level 30 while every trainer in the area was in the 19 – 21 level range, this just got boring.

The catch them all goal has also been made needlessly tedious so the game can have more verity. Each area use to only have between 2 – 4 new Pokemon to catch, this made it easy to move from area to area and collect every Pokemon along the way without spending to long in each location. But in Pokemon X & Y there are more than double the amount of Pokemon in each area turning the task of catching them all into hours of random battles in each area before you move on if you are going for a perfect run of the game.

I found myself getting extremely board with this game as the challenge was so low and the over saturation of each area felt like a waste of time trying to catch everything along the way. I ended up starting again, before i even got to the second gym, and handy capped myself by using the nuzlock challenge rules and turned the XP share off. This made the game much more enjoyable and challenging, so much so that I managed to achieve a state of flow in some of the more difficult battles. But this is only when I’m handy capping myself and I should not have to do that to enjoy a game.