Category: Pokémon

Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 28)

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There’s a certain time in every Pokémon game, it might come after about the fifth badge, when your team is fully established and indeed, most of them are fully evolved. It’s around this point of the game that you might begin to encounter the below creatures and ask yourself the classic question of Blackjack: do you stick with the previously reliables, or twist with some of the new shakers below? Well, that’s what I’m here to help you with, innit? Just don’t blame me if you’re left with a load of undeveloped babby Pokémon before the sixth Gym Leader battle.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 27)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 27)

Ice creams and gears, we’re at the heart of Generation V now. The last great Pokémon Generation, I called it. But listen, these things are always cyclical. I’m only denouncing later Generations now, the ones that younger players love today, in the same way that people probably dumped all over Generation II when it was the most gobsmacking thing I’d ever experienced, at the time. And if you go still further back, older folks would have looked at me memorising all of the original 151 Pokémon, their types, their moves, their cries, and said “put that down, you fool. Go out and get yourself a girlfriend.”

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 26)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 26)

We’re just about getting to the halfway point of the Unova Dex, which is traditionally where the Pokémon designs begin to get a little more interesting. You’re far away from the generic birds and rats, and getting into heavy metal crocodiles and ghostly coffins. Mind you, you occasionally get the odd trashbag cropping up in places of the Pokédex where it really shouldn’t be – like Stantler being near Blissey and the Legendary Dogs in Johto, or the many generic Water types taking up residence next to the Regis in Hoenn. This time around though, I fear the trash may be just a bit too literal.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 25)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 25)

Every Generation starts off with a bit of juice. You’ve got the Starters, some quickly evolving Bugs, and even the common birds have been taking level ups in coolness. Pidgeot and Fearow, classic though they may be, were hardly far removed from real-life birds. But Staraptor and Talonflame? Now we’re talking. Unfortunately, you do eventually have to get to the cave dwellers and fishing fodder. Bottom of the barrel merchants, these guys. You won’t find Zubat in Unova, you’ll be happy to hear. Instead, it’s… Woobat and Swoobat. So that’s tedious and uninspired, then.

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A pearl of wisdom for you – pressure makes diamonds, but leisure time is platinum

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Pokémon Diamond, Pearl & Platinum (2007 / 2009)

I like to think of myself as a pretty patient man, willing to accept cock-ups, malaise and the problems that one generally encounters in life. After all, I don’t tend to care too deeply about anything. I’m perfectly happy to be just sat there, as lazy as a snail, watching Countdown all day. And my primary motivation in work, and anything in life really, is not money, or fame – I just want to avoid any hassle.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 24)

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Welcome to Unova, featuring the fifth Generation of Pokémon, a New York City ripoff and probably the last Pokémon region truly worth visiting, if you really want my opinion. You won’t catch many Pidgeys and Rattatas on your journeys through the Unovan Routes, oh no. It’s a whole new batch of Pokémon to get you immersed in the new world, not a single Pokémon related to earlier Generations to be found here.

Of course, you know that Game Freak wouldn’t have changed things that drastically. You still have your Water, Fire and Grass starters. You still have generic birds and rodents, and a bug or two. Or twelve. Certainly it’ll be a while until we get to the robo-insect WMD and the dragon with heads for hands. As a general rule of thumb, with the exception of your starter Pokémon, you should always pick your team from the latter half of the Regional Dex.

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Hanging out in the fields with Arceus and the rest of the legends

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Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022)

It’s pretty self-inflicted I know, but sometimes I’m sad about the fact that I don’t go outside anymore. Unfortunately, street corners, fields and roadside kerbs just aren’t places for men in their thirties to be hanging around. Who could have pinpointed the last time you and a group of your mates were sat around on the grass, talking nonsense, watching the sun set slowly? Irishers have a bit of an extended adolescence in this regard, given our national proclivity for knacker drinking.

Nowadays, if I’m out and about, it’s only ever for a boringly practical purpose. It’s usually the commute (dear God), the shopping (Christ almighty), or if I’m really feeling defiant against my rapidly declining metabolism, I’m going running (Lords above). It’s all done with purpose, see? I’m not just going out for a quick, impromptu game of ball with my mates anymore. Or better still, a game of IRA. Not a very politically correct set of formative years, eh?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 23)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 23)

It doesn’t come as a surprise anymore that the Legendary Pokémon are so numerous that I have to divide them up into two separate parts. As I’ve said before, if every Pokémon is legendary, then none of them are, although you at least make sure to catch the one that appears on your version’s box art. That’s usually the easiest way of making yourself a battling god.

And speaking of god, if you’re a very talented trainer, by which I mean you’re either able to time travel back to 2007 when Nintendo events were being held, or if you had a flash cart and were good at hacking, then you could quite literally catch god, as you will see below. No, not the god of application forms or interior design or anything small-time like that, we’re talking about the god of everything. How overpowered is that?

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Gotta learn it all; it might be the toughest Pokémon battle there is

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Pokémon Stadium 2 (2001)

Alright, before we go any further, I want you to answer one thing: are you any good at Pokémon battles? Obviously if you say ‘no’, then you can get off this page immediately. That’ll be the end of it, I will not pursue you, I will not point and laugh at you. If you say you have a bit of battling ability, then I’ll have to cast a suspicious eye over you. Can you back that up? Did you make your fair share of other children cry, in playground Link Cable battles? Are you Mewtwo, or Mewpoo? Machoke, or Majoke? Hitmonchan, or Hitmonsham? You get the idea.

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Burkey’s waiting patiently for a Pokémon game where you don’t have to talk to anyone

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Pokémon Sun and Moon (2016)

No psychiatrist has ever managed to catch me and pin me to their long sofa yet, and if I valued my continued liberty to live my life outside of an asylum, then I’d better keep it that way. I will give you one psychological nugget (surprisingly not the best type of nugget out there) though. Not because I’m terribly arrogant enough to believe you really care what’s going on in my head, not at all. It’s just to give the police a bit of a clue if ever I’m wanted for murder.

Simply put, I am introverted to an incredible degree. Anyone with any level of introversion will recognise at once the idea of recharging one’s batteries after social interactions. Being introverted doesn’t mean you have to be a shrinking wallflower, a strong and silent type or even, God forbid, a boring prat. You can be the life and soul of the party if you like, but you better believe you’ll need that recharge period, that blessed bit of alone time when it comes.

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