The heat. It burnssss us

It's hot outside which means vidjo games, in contrast to cricket, have to be cancelled due to fine weather. Everyone, literally everyone, else is going to parks and filling up beer gardens and the social pressure is for us to do that too. Plus, because we have to open the windows, we can't see our screens anymore. Lastly, because all our energy has melted away, the slightest excuse prevents us from playing most games. Can't play Sonic Mega Collection to unlock Comix Zone without finding the right memory card first? We'd probably die of dehydration trying to find it. Have to take the Wiimote our of it's condom to put it in the Wii-Zapper? Death unless you've got a parasol to protect you. Standing up to play Kinect? Make sure you take at least five litres of water. Luckily though, there's always Pokemon*. Nice safe, friendly Pokemon sitting in the DS, flick it open, turn it on. Gaming happiness from our melted pool on the floor vantage point. We can even secrete the pokewalker about ourselves when we're forced to be outside so we're GAMING without anyone knowing it. 

As you are probably aware it is our go-to game franchise. It's the game we play whatever the weather (SEEMLESS LINK TO THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE, not even planned honest). We barely remember we're playing it soemtimes, it's become part of our autonomic nervous system. It's also the only game we've played this month and this content doesn't write itself. If it did it would look like this. So what's new in the world of Pokemon? We know you're dying to hear our opinion. We've remained stalwart mutes in response to the gaming journalists who have approached us for comment. Now, like the monsoon rains we're opening our floodgates to drench you with our gushing minds thoughts.

What's the Pokey-man haps? Not much crusaders. Not. Much. Not much and spin-off games.

1. PokePark 2: Wonders Beyond. We didn't play the first Pokepark game, it's a Wii game squarely targeted, as opposed to on the surface targeted, at the younger gamer and without the usual rare download or connectivity for the main games that persuaded us to buy Pokemon Collosseum 1+2, Pokemon Ranger, My Pokemon Ranch or the excellent (we're not even joking) Pokemon Channel. Despite our plans to not own it there's now a second one out and by all accounts it fixes some deflating bits and breaks some of the working bits of the first one. For shames.
2. Pokemon Conquest is the English title for Pokemon + Nobunga's Ambition, which you'll no doubt note is also in English. Word magic. In almost everything we've read about this game we're legally obliged to inform you that this game is a whacky/odd/very Japanese mashup between Pokemon and drum roll....... Nobunaga's Ambition a game series we're slightly mortified we'd never heard of before. We all have blind spots okay? We have dabbled in turn based grand strategy role-playing simulations before so we're filing this under might be worth a purchase. It's playable without a 3DS too which we're happy about. We were expecting Ninty to blindy pretend the DS never existed by now to shift 3DS sales but clearly unlike Sony and Microsoft they realise that yes, there is a massive advantage in creating games for platforms that many millions of people still own even if it isn't the latest one.
3. Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2 or should that be Pokemon Black and White 2? There's no rules for how you list a pair of games that have a paired sequel. Pokemon Black and White Squared? Pokemons Black and White? Pokemon Blacks and Whites? With Richie still a half human being and myself still ploughing through the end game of Pokemon White, our opinions on this are incipient but here's where we're at. Since the very first Pokemon games way back in the monochrome olden times of 1996 the franchise has been very successful on trading on the fact that you need more than one game (or at least a friend with a different version) to fulfill the ever moving goal of catching them all. These days with the mostly working GTS and a thriving online Pokemon community, that we have largely opted out of for fear of being seen as paedos, it is quite possible to catch most of them by hopping online every now and then. Nintendo, bless the dear masters, have also been infinitely generous in releasing rare and elusive Pokemon through Nintendo WFC. Cynically we're taking the release of a numbered sequel to Black and White (normally each generation is composed of a third game that complements and ever so slightly adds to the main two games of a generation; Silver, Gold and Crystal; Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald; Diamond, Pearl and Platinum) as Ninty's fix to squeeze as much as possible out of this generation. There's not a great deal of exclusive content in the new games revealed so far but there's more than a smattering of extra and tedious alternate Pokemon forms. Each new generation introduces a load of completely new Pokemon which keeps everyone happy as they find favorites amongst the new crop, work out the best to play competitively with and contrive nasty combos with the Pokemon inherited from previous generations. In recent years Nintendo have introduced the idea of Pokemon forms, which aren't new Pokemon but slightly different versions of existing ones. It's money for old rope and one we're not that bothered about. From the pre-release information, charmingly still launched upon the world through Japanese magazines, B&W II is all about new forms for legendary Pokemon. We're hoping the games are offering more than just that and initially it looks like it may be the case here with details of new areas and 'plot' but then in the past the new and exclusive content has been highly disappointing and clearly a focus of the hype. Upon launch it is evident you're playing the exact same game over again with minor minor changes.

So there we have it. Our long, uninteresting and dull comments on a game franchise you don't care about. Tomorrow on TGAM:- we don't post anything here we just read the words Ghost Recon and fall into a coma for a month. 

* It's so hot we're not even going to add the little accent over the e. Forgive us this sin.