Do Pokemon dream of electric rats?
As it turned out, Pokemon Black & White, the latest entrants in the tremendously successful Pokemon franchise, were actually pretty awesome. But while the game itself was great, and many of the new online features looked nifty, gamers couldn’t check out one of the biggest new additions to the franchise – the Pokemon Global Link, and the Pokemon Dream World – since the servers weren’t online.
That’s now changed. The Pokemon Global Link is up and running, and if you have Pokemon Black & White you can hook your DS up to the interwebs and sync your game to the website.
So, what’s the point of it? While the Global Link adds the Global Battle Union to keep track of your statistics from PvP matches online, the main feature is the Pokemon Dream World, a semi-social game that allows players to obtain Pokemon not native to the new Unova region, as well as Pokemon with abilities they might not naturally acquire in the games.
It’s kind of complicated, but here’s the gist of it: You tuck one of your Pokemon into bed in the game, which links it to the website. Once there, you can play a number of minigames and interact with other trainers and dreaming Pokemon (in theory, I haven’t figured out how to do this yet) as well as obtain and trade special items. As you can see here, I sent my Lampent into the dream world to test it out for myself.
By walking down the Dream Road, you can encounter Pokemon and items, and must play minigames in order to befriend them. I helped a Kangaskhan search for a Bonsly (and found it with less than 10 seconds to spare), and piled ice cream for a Bidoof and Farfetch’d – but I really, really suck at the ice cream game.
It’s an interesting little experiment, and it’ll definitely keep me coming back for more. I mean, in the Dream World you can catch a Ninetales with the ability Drought. Do you have any idea how overpowered that is?
It learns Solarbeam, too. Just to make things worse. Sheesh.
Published: Apr 13, 2011 11:46 pm