Children love Pokémon. This is an undeniable fact fueled by the amount of Pokémon-branded backpacks, pastas, soaps, and clothing available. More conservative people want to call the phenomenon evil, but in reality, Nintendo simply constructed a direct feed into the minds of kids who like adventure and cute, plushy mascots.
What children don't love is reading. A good portion of the Pokémon fanbase is well under the age of seven and typically don't have the skills required to process role-playing games. This puts Nintendo in a bit of a pickle, since the main installments of the Pokémon series are fairly text-heavy. How can they simplify this universe so a more inexperienced audience can enjoy their products? Since the Mystery Dungeon and Pokémon Ranger games don't depart from their RPG roots, Nintendo had to come up with another, non-puzzle-based, option.
Enter PokéPark: Pikachu's Adventure. If the standard RPG titles are a direct feed for adventure, this game is the digitized crack moving through it. In lieu of stodgy Pokémon professors and trainers, the player takes direct control over Pikachu as he tries to rescue the adorable and fun-loving inhabitants of the park from themselves. What you'll actually be doing is head-butting a lot of skittering, prancing, and flapping creatures and somehow makings friends with them.
Pikachu's Adventure does have an actual story, but after legendary Pokémon Mew's urgent exposition it simply falls flat as you start guiding Pikachu through the saccrine world. After dashing around and making a few Poké-friends, it is instantly apparent what this game really is: a thinly veiled collection of mini-games.
That's such an unfortunate turn for what starts off as a promising adventure. Every area of the PokéPark has a series of attractions that Pikachu and friends can play. At any given moment, you can waggle the Wii Remote to run faster in a race or waggle it some more to swing on vines.
Any semblance of adventure and story completely fell away once I started besting challenge after waggle-controlled challenge. Then I started noticing how easily all the text in the game could be skipped until you got to the gigantic yes and no buttons that triggered each mini-game. Clearly that dialogue is just filler for players like me who want to know why all these Pokémon are despairing over not playing attractions freely.
This is that non-puzzle-based option directed at the younger Pokémon fans. The story in Pikachu's Adventure is completely secondary to the number of attractions and characters available to interact with. Unfortunately, that's a complete letdown for older players expecting more from the core gameplay.
Pikachu's Adventure is solidly adorable, perfect if you want to chase other Pokémon, but it fails to entertain for more than an hour if you're looking for something more in-depth. Coupled with very stiff Wii remote-only controls, it's difficult to recommend this game to anyone over 10.
