This week I have three similes to describe my experience playing Pokemon HeartGold:

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like trying to save for a new car. Your old one isn't good enough, but in order to save enough money for a new one you have to get to your job which you can't do if your car doesn't work so you just have to keep fixing your old car, using up any money you could be saving for a new one. So you just put a few bucks at a time away hoping that one of these days you'll have saved enough for a better car. The game is all about ncremental advantages. It's about inching your way to a better position.

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like going to the gym to lose weight. When you first start going it's painful and embarrassing, tedious and frustrating. But then you start to lose weight. Going to the gym becomes a numbers game. What will the scale say tomorrow? How many more minutes on the treadmill will result in how great a difference on the scale? Watching the numbers change and your body change, too, becomes exhilarating and entices you to keep going to the gym and keep losing more and more weight.

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like knitting a scarf in Florida. The time spent might not actually be productive when you consider the end result, but it feels productive while you're doing it. Knitting a scarf and playing Pokemon require about the same amount of concentration and care - enough to get by, but best done while in the car or in front of the television so you feel like you're multitasking your time-wasting activities. It's something to keep your hands and brain busy and distracted. It's something to do. Plus, there are times when the scarf turns out to be surprisingly beautiful.

Pokemon. The Grind. The Numbers Game. The Mindless Addiction.

I played Pokemon for seven hours and 22 minutes. The first six and a half hours of gameplay was spent just trying to accomplish the goals Ben set out for me. Two revelatory moments made me play another voluntary hour after my mission had been accomplished. The first revelatory moment was when I received that gym badge which I will talk about in a bit. The second revelatory moment entails telling a little story.

I had reached my first gym after a countless number of battles while wandering the streets and grassy paths of Cherrygrove City and adjoining areas. I had learned to trap, trade, and battle Pokemon. I had learned my way around and had spoken to numbers of people who taught me many things about Pokemon. I had played for about three hours and was ready to be finished with this game, though I wasn't exactly sure what more I could say about it that I hadn't already said in my initial impressions review. I survived the many trainer battles in the gym and felt pretty prepared to beat this last trainer and find out my next game assignment. Then a level 14 Pidgeotto crossed my path and I realized that, not only was I NOT leaving this gym with a badge, I wasn't going to be able to get this badge without a lot more work. My Pokemon were ill-matched against these bird Pokemon to begin with and none of them were anywhere near strong enough to go against a level 14 Pokemon of any type. The only useful Pokemon I had was Doggy, the fire Pokemon Ben had traded me, and he had leveled so quickly that he had turned against me and was rudely ignoring my commands!

After I realized that I would not be earning my gym badge anytime soon, I pouted for a while and Ben suggested I buckle down and begin The Grind. By that he meant slowly, patiently, and strategically leveling the Pokemon I had while trapping more Pokemon and then leveling them. All the while I must find the best patches of grass with the strongest enemies to level as efficiently as possible and make sure that I gave my Pokemon the rest they needed even if that meant going back and forth between the tall grasses and the Poke Center. This was going to take some time. With an exaggerated sigh I set back out to wade in the grass and wait for enemies. I collected a bug type I named J.J. and a Pidgey I named Dwight (even though I realized later I should have named him Larry...get it? Larry BIRD? Oh well...maybe the next HootHoot I find). Ben hatched and traded Boozer and D-Wade for my Jameer and Gortat (a good trade, wouldn't you say?!?)

That evening I battled my brains out. Literally. I felt like I had no brains left after all those battles. I called it quits for the night and closed the DS. On my way to turn off the bedroom light while holding the closed DS in my left hand, my right hand collided with the top of the DS and the game popped out! Like any mature adult woman would do, I screamed loudly, “NOOOOO! I HATE video games!” Ben's response was, “You should have saved. That was your fault.” This exchange is very similar to other moments in our household. Like the time I reached into the 400 degree oven with my bare hands to pull out a cookie sheet simply because I hadn't thought about putting on oven mitts first. Typical Jess screech: “Ow! Ow! Ow! I hate ovens and myself!!” Typical Ben response: “Why didn't you put oven mitts on first?”

So Ben went to sleep next to me while I seethed in bed for a little while trying to decide if I should sleep, too, or if I should get up and re-level my Pokemon. I was determined to finish up this game as quickly as possible, so I returned to The Grind going to bed more satisfied after Carmelo reached level 16, high enough to probably beat a level 14 Pidgeotto in the morning. I snuggled up with my dog and my blanket and happened to glance over at the baby monitor only to see that it was not on. I knew that Jhonen was teething and, therefore, prone to wake up in the middle of the night crying. I got up and turned the monitor on, then returned to bed. About ten seconds later, as if I were a master of telepathy, I heard Jhonen's wails over the baby monitor. I groaned and heaved myself back out of bed, then turned off the monitor so Jhonen's cries wouldn't wake up Ben. I found my way down the dark hallway to Jhonen's room where he sat up crying in his bed. I pat his back for awhile until he fell back to sleep, then went back to my bed to try and get tired and comfortable. I'm about to fall asleep when I look over and see....you guessed it....the baby monitor was off.

Suddenly I knew what Pokemon was trying to tell me. That Pokemon World is just like our own darn world. These Pokemon are just like us. And the way we play Pokemon games mirrors how we live our own lives. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true.

With that breakthrough in mind, I will now return to my three similes.

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like going to the gym to lose weight. It's that good old Number Game. Life's all about number games. Credit scores. Diminishing car payments. Salary raises. School years. Wedding anniversaries. We mark our lives and measure our successes with numbers, amazingly arbitrary numbers at times, but we don't mind because it's a way to make sense of things. Numbers give us something to look forward to and a way to organize the years and days and seconds. Watching numbers inch towards their goal is exciting and reaching the desired number is even better. In Pokemon, it is ludicrous how exciting it is to watch your Pokemon reach higher and higher levels and you are richly rewarded once you have reached certain ones. Sometimes you have to work hard for those numbers. You have to metaphorically sweat and ache to try to get those numbers on the scale where you want them. Sometimes those numbers creep along at a maddeningly slow pace and then you learn you just spent the last 45 minutes in the wrong patch of grass.

Which brings me to the fact that playing Pokemon Heartgold is also like trying to save for a new car. You can work and work for hours and days and years for small, incremental advantages hoping that, eventually, the hard work pays off and you reach that desired number (or gym badge). Then, in between all this hard work, you're faced with other distractions that slow you down. Pokemon has many of these distractions (in the game, they are called “features”). Throughout the game you're trying to catch Pokemon and level and evolve and breed in order to get to the gyms and earn all the gym badges while also talking with friends and professors and family (your Mom is there to encourage you in the game and save money for you since she doesn't trust you to save for yourself...tell me this isn't like real life). In the midst of all that, though, you have to go shopping at the Poke-Mart. You are forced to make small talk with boring strangers. You get telemarketing style phone calls. Then there are the little obnoxious moments that happen to me all the time in both the game and in my life. These are moments like walking up the stairs, realizing I have left something downstairs, going downstairs, and then having to go back up again. In the game I was constantly walking up a ladder and accidentally pushing down and going back down the ladder. This happens with doors, too. I walk in the door and somehow accidentally end up back out the door. In the game I tried to battle with my friend, Jack, through a wireless connection and we ended up inexplicably disconnecting several times. It was just like playing phone tag or having a bad cell phone signal or losing an important email.

(An Example of Small Talk)


As I mentioned in my final review of Retro Game Challenge, the more obstacles you encounter and the more you have to struggle to attain a goal or to get a win, the greater the reward and the better the feeling of satisfaction. Something happened when I earned that gym badge. I got that gym badge in my hot little hands and realized that I wanted to keep playing! I received rewards I felt that I'd earned. Not only that, I had grown attached to my Pokemon roster. I felt like the coach of an actual basketball team, trying to make all my little Pokemon reach their full potential to make my team the best they could be. I was making plays and training my players. I was pulling players who weren't doing well and substituting better players. I felt actual pride in my Carmelo when he leveled up and evolved.



It sounds stupid, but I was talking to a friend who casually plays this game, too. I told her that it took me a while to get into this game and she said, “me too, but then I earned that first gym badge and I was hooked.” For some reason, I had the same exact experience. With the gym badge comes lots of money, lots of experience points, and your traded Pokemon stop disobeying you. Rewards like this work on people in real life, too. I don't see Ben for a good portion of the year because he has to help get Madden NFL football games on store shelves by a certain date. Every year is hard and annoying and then the game gets out and he gets time off and bonuses and sometimes raises and promotions and the rewards help to make up for the hardships...mostly....

Not only does the game reflect life, but I noticed that the way I play this game as opposed to how Ben plays this game says a lot about who we are as people, too! I mentioned before how Ben told me I couldn't be mad at the game because I forgot to save. He later told me that he saves after every battle. What?? That seems crazy to me, but it doesn't surprise me that it doesn't seem crazy to him. While I'm reaching into the oven barehanded, Ben avoids reaching into the oven, period. He will drive a mile out of his way so as not to have to make a left-hand turn. If he feels like he's getting the sniffles he will gulp down two gallons of orange juice. He is careful, almost to a fault. He is methodical. He doesn't get lost. He doesn't stress out about what to name each Pokemon. He just names them all Doggy which he finds both efficient and amusing. He'll play in whatever way is most sensible or whatever is most funny. This is how he plays Pokemon and it is how he is in his day to day life.

I, on the other hand, plunge along trying my hardest to do everything right, getting impatient when I do something wrong, but not wanting to quit because I set a goal for myself and I want to see it through. Keeping my Pokemon happy is of utmost importance to me and watching them do well keeps me going in the slow times. I loved learning about the different types of Pokemon and traveling around the cities just like I love to meet different types of people and travel all over the world. I enjoyed the art style and the aesthetics of Pokemon. I couldn't wait to see what new type of Pokemon I'd have to battle next. It was fun to explore that world.

I mean, it may seem sort of obvious that whatever we do will somehow reflect who we are. This game struck me as particularly reminiscent of life in a way that completely surprised me because, on the surface, it seems like a silly “kid” game. Just like we are who we are and we play Pokemon like we play Pokeon, we also like what we like. Playing Pokemon is like knitting. It is something that fills the time. In my last review of this game, I spoke about all my gaming prejudices and why I feel like some games are a waste of time and some aren't. After playing this game, I think it all comes down to liking what you like. Some people think running marathons is amazing. I think it sounds like torture. Some people want to be comedians. I think standing up in front of people and trying to make them laugh sounds like the most terrifying thing you could ever try to do. Some people like Halo and some people like Guitar Hero and some people like Barbie's Horse Adventures and some very odd people like all three. I like puzzle games and music games. We like what we like and we fill the time we're given however we think best to fill it.

We have a certain amount of time here in Our World and we spend it in purposeful, beautiful, heart-shattering, earth-improving moments and we spent it on Facebook and on the toilet and in bed and going up and down stairs and we spend it knitting and learning guitar and playing Pokemon. We train, we travel, we meet new people, we set goals, we watch the hours pass, we evolve, we level up. Sometimes we fail and sometimes we're rewarded for our success. This sounds lofty for a Pokemon game, but I think the game desires to be lofty. To quote the game intro, “On your travels, we hope that you will meet countless people and, through them, achieve personal growth. This is the most important objective of this adventure.”

I hope that for myself, too, and for all of you.


(Go, Old Kurt! Go! You gotta love Old Kurt.)

Will I play this game again? I think so! I'm not addicted to it. I have lots of other “knitting” to do: writing these reviews, taking care of my own little-boy-Pokemon, cooking dinners for my family, and teaching kids about art at the museum. But I wouldn't mind traveling to Pokemon World now and then. Like the game says, there's a world of people to meet.

I might even bump into myself while I'm there.

Or maybe I'll bump into a boy and his blob! My next game assignment is to play three hours of a game called a boy and his blob, my first Wii game. The box art promises a cute white blob friend who will help me "battle baddies and bosses through 40 puzzle-packed levels" in "a tale of friends, heroes and...jelly beans?" Stay tuned! It could be delicious.