Is there something wrong with being 25 and getting seriously into a Pokémon game? I mean, sure, I’m a gaming geek, which is all well and good, but there’s still something odd about playing Pokémon in your 20s.
Let me elaborate. I recently visited my very good friend UberBunneh in America, and while I was there we jointly bought the Gold and Silver remakes (I got HeartGold, she got SoulSilver), with the intention of playing through them semi-simultaneously and trading Pokémon in the ultimate quest to catch ‘em all. So yes, here we are, in our 20s, bonding through Pokémon.
It is, of course, incredibly enjoyable. There’s a certain nostalgia in playing the remakes, particularly as many of these Pokémon are the ones we knew from when we were younger, not to mention that there’s a strange addiction in wanting to be the very best, like no one ever was. Every time I get to a new area of the game I’m checking online to see if there’s any new Pokémon I can catch, and I’m not resting until I get them. I’m studying gym leaders’ Pokémon beforehand, and actually training up my miniature army before taking them into battle. What’s more, I’m consulting with Bunneh over what we can trade and when.
And yet, this is a “kid’s game”, meant to be played by school kids who like to spread rumours about how to catch Mew because, honest guys, Sam in Year 9 caught one and he never lies. It creates this strange dichotomy, where on one hand I’m enjoying this “child’s” game and on the other I’m telling myself I should really be trying to pretend to be an adult and focus on things like jobs and bills and producing unwanted offspring that I can ignore until they set fire to a Sainsbury’s distribution centre 12 years down the line. Or worse, I should be focusing my gaming attention on the likes of Call Of Duty and pwning n00bs and then insulting them over voice chat about how I had sex with their mother, because, you know, that’s the kind of game that adults should be playing, right?
Ultimately, the enjoyment wins. After all, I have a buddy playing along with me who is my best friend in a world we must defend, and let’s face it, playing Pokémon with a buddy is the way it’s meant to be played. AND I’m still able to juggle all those boring adult things without anything getting horribly affected. After all, I am somehow still employed. And silly little DS games are a nice break from the craziness of the outside world. Like all games tend to be these days for me.
And as for playing more adult games, playing Generic First Person Shooter #4824 makes me want to fall asleep. I played the demo of Killzone 3 and despite the amount of SHOUTING and EXPLOSIONS and GUNS and GIANT CANNONS and JETPACKS and MANLY MEN DOING MANLY THINGS I was slowly dying of boredom. Give me something that can keep me interested. Sure, Pokémon’s probably not the most mentally stimulating game ever, but it’s deeper than SPACE MARINES AT WAR SHOUTING AND EXPLODING EACH OTHER YEAH!
So yeah, I’m a 25-year old Pokémon trainer, and I’m bloody happy with that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to travel across the land, searching far and wide. I know it’s my destiny.
(P.S. if you now have the Pokémon theme tune stuck in your head off the back of this, then my work here is done)
Sidenote: it’s been a while since I last updated, but now I’m aiming for a M/W/F update schedule, free time permitting, with a much more professional (yet still casual) writing style. Feel free to beat me with sticks if I fail to keep this up.
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