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Game Overview: "Pokemon Sun and Moon" hit shelves

David Sobel
COPY EDITOR

The newest games in GameFreak's
acclaimed Pokemon game series, titled
"Pokemon Sun" and "Pokemon Moon," finally
hit shelves on Friday, November 18 for the
Nintendo 3DS. This game, like many other
popular game series, received a midnight
release, which I decided to attend as my
first midnight release (there's a first time
for everything). If "Pokemon GO" was your
first Pokemon "game" and you still enjoy it
continue to do so, but you may find it pales in
comparison to the fullrfledged experience if
you decide to give itago. That said, at the time
of writing I have only been able to put a few
hours into the game, butIm going to provide a
few initial insights Ive had.

Story

Pokemon games have always been
known for having rather simple stories, which
typically entail playing as a new trainer who
has yet to receive their first Pokemon and is
the "new kid in town." However, before we
even get to that point this time, there's a cool
cinematic chase scene that the player is shown,
involving a mysterious girl on the run from
what is presumed to be some evil organization.
This kind of intro is new for the series, which
historically has not had many "cinematic"
moments, as it were. Before you officially
begin the game, you are given the choice of
being male or female, along with afew choices
ofskin tone, which is far more options than we
have previously seen. You can change things
like hairstyle, color, and more later on in the
game. After that you'll begin the game being
woken up by your character's mother, aptly
named "Mom," who informs you of a visitor.
This visitor ends up being Professor Kukui, a
very casual guy who seemingly always requires
a fanfare of guitar riffs and upbeat percussion
along with his presence. After some dialogue
and such, you finally get the chance to choose
your starter Pokemon. There are three options
as per usual, featuring a grass, fire, and water
type starter. Respectively, these are RowleL
the owl Pokemon; Litten, the cat Pokemon;
and Popplio, the seal Pokemon. Seeing as Im
a somewhat shallow person, I picked the one
I thought was cutest, which was Rowlet Keep
in mind that, as usual, these Pokemon will
not stay so cute forever. After choosing your
starter, you get to see a short scene where you
as the trainer gain their trust then proceed to
hug them (I squealed abit, Iwon't lie). Beating
"Sun" and "Moon" is a notably different
undertaking when compared to previous
games in the series, as this time your goal is not
to visit eight towns and defeat Gym Leaders.
Rather, your goal is to travel to all four islands
of the Alola region and complete various
trials, with the final trial ofeach location being
defeating its "Kahuna" As of right now, it is
unclear what happens after you complete all
four final trials. As expected from Pokemon
games, along your journey you will be a bit
sidetracked by an evil organization, this time
referred to as Team Skull, whose main job is to
getin your way and serve as the obligatory evil
group who goes around terrorizing people and
Pokemon under the orders of a leader with a

   
   

very skewed view of creating aperfect world.
Gameplay and Features

Pokemon has retained avery defined
gameplay formula over the years, "Sun" and
"Moon" being no exceptions. In terms ofgame
mechanics, everything is the more or less
same, except for the introduction on moves.
These are powerful attacks that a Pokemon
can use for causing some major damage to
the opponent Pokemon, which is activated by
using the ZrRing feature. Most of the notable
changes are present in the organization of
inrgame functions, notably the pause menu,
which features a paginated system for options,
like viewing your Pokemon party, looking at
the Pokedex, and other new features such as
the builtrin QR scanner. With that in mind, I'll
address a few new features.

The QR scanner allows you to
scan QR codes which are associated with a
certain Pokemon. You get one new scan every
2 hours, and you can scan up to 10 codes in
a single sitting Each code you scan awards
you 10 points towards the "island scanner"
and registers the scanned Pokemon in your
Pokedex. Once you receive 100 points, you can
activate the island scanner, which will make a
Pokemon that would otherwise not appear in
"Sun" and "Moon" show up in a place defined
by the scanner. I was able to easily get to 100
points by visiting Pokemon GO Hub, who has

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80 or so QR codes available which cover most
Pokemon native to the Alola region. Speaking
of, there are new, “Alolan"variants of Pokemon
from the first generation of Pokemon games
(Red and Blue), which are essentially variants
that adapted to the more tropical climate ofthe
Alola region. For instance, a Rattata, normally
a purple rat, is gray and has moustacherlike
whiskers. Long before the release of "Sun"
and "Moon," the intemet got a chance to see
various Alolan Pokemon, out of which Alolan
Exeggutor became popular enough to become
a meme. I highly implore you to Google that
one if you’d like a good laugh.

Up next is the new Festival Plaza
which acts as a virtual hub for interacting
with other players in your local area or over
wireless, be it through chatting, battling. or
trading Pokemon. Interacting with other
trainers is interesting, as you have the
option of paging another player (yes, paging
them), which allows you to interact with a

downloaded version oftheir character, viewing
information from winrtorloss ratios to how
many eggs they have hatched in the game. You
also have the option of adding up to 50 other
players to your VIP list which means that they
will consistently show up in your particular
Festival Plaza In addition, everything in the
Festival Plaza that doesn't involve interacting
with strangers uses Festival Coins (FC), a
currency utilized only within the Plaza FC
is gained by interacting with other players, to
then be used atvarious facilities, such as ashop
that sells items which increase your Poke’mon's
affection towards you, a lottery, and a haunted
house, which I have read involves sending in
one ofyour Pokemon then receiving a random
item when they come back. Chances are that
I may not use this feature too often, but I like
seeing GameFreak making more efforts to
increase interaction between players.

The last notable feature Igot to try
out was Pokemon Refresh, which allows you
to interact with your Pokemon. You can pet
them with the 3DS stylus and feed them "Poke
Beans" which increase their affection towards
you, among other features I have yet to explore.
After battles you sometimes have the option of
using the feature to clean up your Pokemon,
be it by blow drying or brushing, which also
increases their affection. This is similar to the
"Pokemon Amie" feature introduced in X and

NINTENDR3DS

Photo [Outlay ometemio

Y, which was very similar minus the additional
grooming options present here.
Visual

There is only so much I can say
about my excitement without using profanity,
so let me just say that this game looks
amazing for a handheld Pokemon game. In
fact, I can say without a doubt that it is the
most visually appealing handheld Pokemon
game to date. Those who played the recent
"Animal Crossing: New Leaf" may find
the game's visuals somewhat reminiscent
thereof, featuring lush 3D landscapes and
nice touches such as actual moving water and
rather detailed walkways (including tile and
hardwood floors). You'll also find characters
with mostly human proportions (no giant
heads on small bodies here, folks). This allows
for notably better representation of physical
motion, among other things. The most
amazing thing to me upon starting the game,
however, was the starrfilled night sky, which

admittedly had me staring for a good couple
of minutes, and provided awonderful sense of
immersion. In terms ofbattles, each Pokemon
present on the field isn't given its own little
"area" anymore, instead occupying apart ofthe
field. For comparison, in previous Pokemon
games, during a battle, every Pokemon was
surrounded by a small circular area, but in
some ways that always made a minor dent in
my immersion, so Im glad that GameFreak
made the change. Icould go on for a long time
on all of the little visual nuances present in
"Sun" and "Moon," but this should give a bit
of an idea Keep in mind that this game was
made with the New 3DS in mind, so while
it does look great, if you're an original 3DS
player like me, then you may notice abit oflag
here and there, especially when more than two
Pokemon are on the field at once.

Look up screenshots, demo the
game: I don't care what you do to gather a
visual, just prepare to be impressed. No, it
doesn't look like a PlayStation 4 game, but
were you expecting it to? Without further ado,
onto the gameplay.

Sound

As usual for Pokemon, the
background music is solid. This time there's
a more tropical vibe, because the game takes
place in the more tropical Alola region, which,
as noted, is meant to be modeled somewhat
after Hawaii. Because of this the game has a
more leisurely feel, making the experience
both relaxing and engaging. A few sound
effects have been changed, such as the "item
received" sound, affecting a more tropical vibe
as well. Other than that there isn't too much to
say about the sound; things can only get better.
Final Thoughts

Im very much looking forward to
getting deeper into this new Pokemon entry
and amveryglad itwas my first midnightgame
release. Also, as this is more of an overview
including my initial thoughts, Im not going to
assign a score to this game. However, it looks
very promising and I'm excited to try out all
the features that I either briefly touched on
here or have yet to learn about at all. The only
thing I would advise to anyone looking to buy
the game: you may want to consider getting a
New 3DS ifyou own the original handheld like
I do, because like more recent games such as
"Super Smash Bros. 3DS”, you may see slightly
more lag and every time you quit the game, the
whole device will require a reboot presumably
due to having to run in a higher power mode.
There is some good news, though, ifyou were
looking into eventually getting the New 3DS, as
Nintendo is releasing a $100 version for Black
Friday, which will be sold at retail stores like
GameStop. If you're willing to risk potentially
being uncomfortably close to other customers,
this is as good a time as any. Now, excuse me
while Igo back to staring at my 3DS screen and
pressing buttons with my thumbs.

Note: Currently, you can receive a
Muchlax over the game's Mystery Gift which
has special attacks and comes with Snorlium
Z (an item that allows a Snorlax, evolved from
Muchlax, to use a Z move), and ifyou played
the demo of the game, you can transfer the
Greninja you acquire in it to the main game.

Frost in their Mortar: A short story

Soren Spicknall
COPY EDITOR

The site was originally composed
of a series of untouched prermountainous
hills, land as fertile as it was formidable.
Measuring 79 kilometers along each side, the
square plan for the massive complex called for
leveling those rolling banks of soil, creating
a flat plinth to underpin the largest single
development in human history. Leftover earth
from the levelling process was used to create
an imperceptible gradient leading from the
site’s easternmost edge, lying in grasslands,
up to where the nowrdemolished hills tumed
rocky at the base of the great mountain range
to the west. For a decade now, construction
crews had worked nonstop to transform the
landscapes natural chaos into an orderly and

uniform mass, carrying out a vision devised
in offices whose occupants would likely never
find themselves in the foothills ofnortheastern
Wyoming.

Rising from the carefully
constructed ground was a new kind of city.
Really, though, it wasn’t a city at all; Henning
would have to find a few alternate words
to use in the final version of his report. In
some ways, it was a utopian community: the
engineers he had spoken with told him that
the plan dictated that the land be divided into
1,444 square subsets, each two kilometers
in length, which were further divided into
grids of 40 by 40 private home plots, each
populated with a squat Califomia bungalow at
its center. In the middle of each multirhome
grid was amasculine concrete tower (based on
a scaledrup version ofa littlerknown Brutalist

design for a religious museum in northern
Michigan, he was informed) containing
public services and amenities for each
community. The word “utopian," however,
implied some form of luxury, and since luxury
was defined on a relative scale, it was hard
to form a frame of reference within the all
encompassing boundaries of the grid, where
every community took on the same shape.
After accounting for the space needed for
roads and for the towers at the center of each
of the grids subsets, the number of homes in
each community totaled to 1,596. Overall,
taking into consideration reserved space for
two massive threerkilometerrwide strips of
unused land which divided the whole site into
quadrants, the development would contain
2,304,624 households upon completion.

The press had already exhaustively

documented the crews that for years worked
to carve out the giant square which carried
the compound. In fact, a team from Henning’s
own publication had made repeated trips
from Seattle to document every step in the
process, retuming each time with increasingly
outlandish stories about the sheer scale of the
project Henning himself was only sent here
because of the unique nature of the report
his editors now wanted written: an inrdepth
look at the technology which enabled the
construction and maintenance of so many
dwellings with minimal human support

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