Pokémon Rumble was launched on WiiWare in 2009 and apparently did well enough to justify a retail appearance. Pokémon Rumble Blast is the mildly anticipated sequel and first official Pokémon game to come to the Nintendo 3DS -- not counting the Pokédex that was offered as a free download earlier this year.
One would assume that the legendary franchise's first appearance on a Nintendo system would be a red carpet affair. It is not.
Pokémon Rumble Blast (Nintendo 3DS)
Developer: Ambrella
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: October 24, 2011
MSRP: $39.99
Pokémon Rumble Blast changes little from its WiiWare predecessor. Taking place in a world where Pokémon toys are living creatures in their own right (because of reasons), it's a top-down dungeon crawling affair that shares quite a few things in common with mindless arcade titles like Smash TV and hack n' slash RPGs such as Diablo, only simplified to a rudimentary degree.
Simple perhaps doesn't begin to explain exactly how bereft of complication Rumble Blast is, because it's as basic as basic gets. The thrust of the game is in mashing one or two buttons to perform singular attacks against marauding Pokémon who are ostensibly doing the game thing. Each Pokémon has a power level to determine its general combat strength, as well as its own set of moves -- and by "set" I mean up to two because no monster can have more. When defeated, there's a chance that enemies will remain on the field as collectible toys which can be collected to grant the player control of that particular monster. This achieves the "gotta catch 'em all" philosophy of the Pokémon games, albeit in an incredibly shallow way. More than usual, at any rate.
Once collected, a Pokémon cannot be leveled up at all, so the only way to improve one's chances of beating tougher opponents is to collect new Pokémon. While this ensures that players are constantly switching their characters, it also means that there's no point getting attached to a single creature. One can use in-game coins to buy new moves for their Pokémon, there's no point because you'll rarely be keeping a roster of characters for more than one dungeon.
Speaking of moves, some Pokémon will remain worthless regardless of power level thanks to whatever attacks they randomly possess. A staggering amount of attacks are horrible, forcing Pokémon into lengthy animations that often send them directly into the path of enemy assaults. It soon becomes apparent that projectile-based attacks are the most useful since they don't place player characters in danger, which ultimately turns Rumble Blast into one of the slowest shooters on the planet. It doesn't help that the vague auto-targeting is slightly off, so attacks miss as often as they hit.
The brainless button mashing is certainly not the most unpleasant of experiences, but it's thoroughly pointless. This is hammered home by the fact that there is almost zero variety to be had, with a dreary formula that plays out repeatedly during the course of the game. You visit a dungeon, hit the same button over and over again across several floors, then fight a large boss. This happens over and over again until you fulfill some arbitrary requirement to take on a Battle Royale. In a Battle Royale, you fight against yet another swarm of Pokémon with a time limit in place. Once you win a Battle Royale, the game acts like a broken record and skips back to the beginning, expecting players to do it all over again on a slightly different map.
The only other battle variant is the "Team Battle" which lets you choose two CPU-controlled allies from your roster and progress through a sequence of rooms. It's still exactly the same type of combat, exactly the same type of formula, just with two idiot Pokémon getting themselves killed all the time.
The only thing driving the player forward is some inane story about healing "Glowdrops" being stolen from fountains. I'll be honest, I did not will myself to draw this story out to its conclusion, but I will bet real money that the story ends by having our randomly collected heroes traipse their way through a dungeon that looks fairly similar to the dozens of other dungeons before fighting a boss and recovering the Glowdrops. For bonus points I'll bet the bad guy was good at heart.
Every now and then, the bitter cycle of vapid combat is broken up by some random inanity, such as "Charge" sequences. In a charge, you gather your whole collection of Pokémon and use them to bust through enemy defenses by hammering a single button and watching the canned animation repeat itself several times. There's also a Street Pass feature in which other 3DS owners can visit your game and give money, or provide new Pokémon to battle. It's a neat little extra, but nothing astounding. Later in the game, you can also fill a meter that temporarily allows you to mash three Pokémon together. In this state, they'll recharge health and do more damage, though the boost isn't significant enough to be anything special.
That's pretty much what Pokémon Rumble Blast is from beginning to end -- nothing special. It looks fairly pretty and the game is decently put together, but it's barely even a videogame when you truly consider what it offers. With a combat system that's hollow even by brawler standards and a structure so blatantly circular that even gullible children would soon detect the pattern, Rumble Blast is a game that not even ardent fans should bother with. In a world crammed full of lackadaisical Pokémon cash-in products, this is up there with the laziest and I struggle to summon up any feelings for the experience outside of cold indifference.
Going to sleep is a more interesting prospect than playing this exercise in insignificance.
Contest:
5:00 PM on 10.24.2011 | 
main series ftw
Whew! What a load off!
(Jim I am sorry you go through all of this, you deserve that Skyrim review.)
What kind of reviewer does that?
Loads of them. And your not taking me seriously is your business.
@Jim
32BitSin has a valid point. What, because you're honest about not finishing your fucking games it makes you look better, or something? You saying that "loads" of other people review their games without finishing them doesn't make it right.
Pokemon Rumble was kinda rubbish, and this game is also rubbish. It should have stayed digital.
The Pokemon Company (who controls Pokemon now, not Nintendo themselves) are a bunch of idiots. Ruining Pokemons good name with this half assed drivel, every game they've made outside of the main series is failure.
New Pokemon Snap or GTFO. I remember back with Pokemon spinoffs were amazing.
If I do enjoy a game, it's my personal policy to finish it before reviewing, but every reviewer is different. If you don't like it, there will be 30 other reviews on Metacritic in a few days.
I'm sorry, but have you seen the number of fucking video games that comes out in a month, let alone the fall season? If you're volunteering to play to completion every single one of those games and write a detailed review about them, then by all means do so. Then you can earn the right to call everyone else lazy.
You can take him seriously because well hell, look at the game. Obvious shovelware. People of all ages play pokemon games, but only little kids would bother with this and most other spin offs (Only an inconsiderable percentage of uber fans with lots of time and money would otherwise bother).
Seriously, how can I take a person seriously that doesn't understand that playing that game for however long he did was enough. Not like Pikachu dies at the end and says rosebud or something.
Many reviewers don't finish the games they review not because of irresponsible apathy, but because they either don't have enough time or have enough information on the game that it would a waste of time to finish the game. Plus even if the game had an incredible ending, another thing I keep hearing people bitch about are opinions being strewn into reviews so..Do you really think the score would be any different?
/troll
I've been watching you comment on multiple Jim posts lately and all I have to say is bravo at consistently calling Jim out on his bull shit!
Woah there man! Oh, I see what you did there.
They should've thought of putting more time and money into a real main series installment instead.
Anyways, good review.
OUCH.
And what magical mystery GOTY mechanic do you think is hidden in the last 10 minutes of the game? If I spend 10 hours playing a meh game, and the last hour is good, that doesn't magically make it a good game. If anything, that further proves how bad the game is by having inconsistent mechanics and a terrible plot/game flow. Yes, it would be lovely to live in a world where people had enough time to play every single game to full completion before weighing judgement, but you wont find that world here. If you spend half the game having a terrible time and not enjoying it at all, the chances of you seeing the game through to the end are incredibly slim, and the same can be said of many consumers who are looking to buy games.
What fantasy world do you live in? Maybe I should make an interactive game where you use the stylus to scrape a nail on a chalkboard for 5 1/2 hours. I can expect you to play it fully because doing otherwise would be lazy and not courteous, right? You never know, in a later level you might be able to use a hammer to bang on it instead.
This industry is an industry of business. We as consumers are trying to buy products for our entertainment, and (most) developers and publishers are looking to create something to entertain us, thus making us provide them with profit in return. It is no different from someone passing on a game based on a released demo of the game: if you aren't going to be interested in the mechanics for the first part of the game, why should you expect them to magically get better the next half?
A stick of shit doesn't taste any sweeter on the last bite, mate.
By that logic a reviewer would have to 100% complete every game they ever played. You could say a review of Crackdown 2 wasn't valid due to the fact that the reviewer decided against collecting all Billion hidden orbs and whatnot. If the game was not even interesting enough for Jim to finish it that really does say a lot about the game, especially considering Jim's love of Pokemon.
This does seem like a horrible spin-off to Pokemon though, I'll just throw in on the tip with Pokepark and Dask and Trozei.
Unfortunately quite a few hardcore 'Pokeies' have taken a liking to this sub series.
Good luck reviewing any MMO, I guess every review of WoW and FFXIV is invalid. Hey that means FFXIV wasn't a humongous turd on release! LOGIC
Yes, in fact, I have seen the amount of games that come out in the Fall season! It's ridiculous! Last time I checked, though, Jim isn't the only one playing and reviewing games around here. I'd just like reviewers to actually FINISH THE GAMES THEY'RE REVIEWING. If you don't finish it, why bother posting a fucking score? I've seen a few sites, including this one, refraining from scoring a game they didn't finish.
You saying that there's "too many games" coming out to play to completion is a ridiculous excuse. THIS IS WHAT THEY DO FOR A LIVING. I'm sorry, did I miss the part where professional reviewers stopped completing games?
Dale - Demon's Souls.
But that's because Demon's Souls was one of the biggest action games ever made. Dale didn't make it very far in a game that literally offers around 80+ hours of unique content. This is more akin to a mini-game: Jim got the gist.
Also, Dale isn't Jim: it's up to the reviewer to make that call.