Pokemon Grand Theft Auto

There are many games out there that tried to emulate the Grand Theft Auto formula over the years, such as Saints Row, Watch Dogs and Just Cause. While some of them came very close to succeeding, others managed to create a ‘genre’ of their own, because the Saints Row obviously descended into madness over the years and refuses to make any sense, in a good kind of way.

Pokemon Grand Theft Auto should tell you everything you need to know about it from the title alone, at least if it actually had anything to do with what goes on in the game. Hence, despite the ‘Pokemon’ tag in the name, there are zero pokemons to catch, see, or run over, which is quite a shame. On the other hand, the streets are littered with flesh-eating zombies, so at least there’s something to occupy your time with.

Zombies may not be the right placeholders for pokemons, but they do make the gameplay rather fun and enjoyable, at least for ten minutes it takes you to see and do everything there is to see and do. Not a lot of work and content went into the game, which is why the free roaming aspect is not as attractive as it would normally be in any other release.

Although you have the option to walk around town on foot, it is rather impossible to avoid the zombies without a vehicle, due to the difficult controls and the sheer number of flesh-eating humans. Cars are available though, which make the experience somewhat more bearable and a bit more fast-paced. You can still die even if you are inside a vehicle, on the other hand, since some zombies dissolve into some sort of acid when they die, which burns through anything, apparently.

As far as the graphics are concerned, the top-down view was a wise choice, because the engine lacks detail and the environments would look quite shameful from any other perspective. It does make it pretty difficult to steer and control the car/character, though, which is why it takes a few minutes to get used to the gameplay and the vehicle handling.

Pokemon Grand Theft Auto does not really provide the users with the promised goods, although maybe it is actually a dark joke about pokemons not being real and the inevitable doomsday that’s just around the corner. You can poke at it with a stick for a few minutes, on the other hand, at least until you see all the available maps and take in everything the game has to offer.