Nintendo Okie

Pokemon Rumble is among the first games to have a demo available on WiiWare.  The service has been long awaited and it’s finally here.  So what does this first batch of demos include?  Well here’s a bit of a peek at Pokemon Rumble.

The game begins telling you a story about toy pokemon while a Rattata is slowly being wound up.  This is the character you’ll play as and after a bit of an introductory story telling you about a Battle Royale you’re tossed onto a world map where there is a door slightly open.  You are told this is the entrance to the Battle Royale and to participate you have to have a power level of 100 or more.  You’re not strong enough, but Rattata sneaks in anyway.  You’re quickly defeated by the much stronger pokemon and tossed back out into the cold, cruel world. 

From there you are shown one of the game’s many varying levels.  In these levels you’ll battle other toy Pokemon.  These battles take place, quite unlike a traditional Pokemon game, in real time and the game is very similar to many brawlers today.  You travel around the game’s different levels fighting wave after wave of “enemy” toy pokemon using the attacks you have at hand.  The game can be controlled either with the Wii Remote on its side, NES style, or by using the classic controller.  I would highly recommend using the latter option.  Due to the large amount of moving, many times in diagonal directions the Wii Remote’s D-pad began to hurt my thumb.  The analog stick on the classic controller was a much more comfortable option.  

Each level is sectioned off into what could be considered smaller battle arenas.  They are populated with huge amounts of pokemon.  After defeating all the pokemon in an area you reach a trampoline which will bounce you to another section of the level where you start the process again.  Randomly defeated pokemon will be turned into statues that you can collect.  These statues allow you to switch your active pokemon to one of these that you’ve defeated.  At the end of each level awaits a very powerful toy pokemon that has been wound up a bit too tight and has grown to immense proportions.  Defeat it and you gain a very powerful ally. 

The game’s perspective is shown in a ¾ isometric view and uses a cel-shaded art style.  Pokemon Rumble is not the prettiest game to look at.  The characters all seem to have hard edges, but it does remind me a bit of Wind Waker, so if you like that art style you won’t have any issues with this game.  All the characters I ran into were immediately recognizable, even the ones that were very similar in appearance, i.e. Primape and Mankey.  I was able to play through four of the game’s different levels and they were all quite varied in appearance.

The demo for the game lasts 15 minutes and ends right as you collect a pokemon that is powerful enough to enter the Battle Royale.  Once the demo ends you are taken back to the Wii Shop Channel where you’re given the option to purchase the game if you choose.  It’s a sneaky little thing that may cause some people to purchase the game immediately.  It was evident to me that the game could get repetitive very quickly if the game play didn’t change much from the demo.  I was doing the same actions over and over through each level and there was nothing, aside from appearance, that made the levels feel different from each other.  Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the game’s pokemon will be highly beneficial and fans of Pokemon may really enjoy this change to the pokemon RPG formula.  You can have up to four people playing simultaneously and each can have the pokemon of their choice, as long as it’s been collected.  There were options on the map that were not available in the demo and I would probably purchase the game based on the demo alone.