This series is being played on Wii U backwards compatibility, using OBS and a capture card to get screenshots. It will contain the game’s main campaign and postgame, and we will go out of our way to do a lot of side quests.
Hey all! Welcome to PokéPark 2: Wonders Beyond! This was one of my favorite games as a kid, even though I wasn’t able to play it very often, so I’m excited to present it to you all in this blog. I’ve searched a lot, and there isn’t really much good coverage of it. There’s a few retrospectives, but I’ve mostly ignored them because of how short they were, and the one I actually had seen glosses over a lot. So I’m hoping that this series will shed some light on this oft-overlooked game.
My history with this game is unique compared to pretty much all the other games I’ve played. When I was little, I checked it out from the library a few times and played it to mostly completion. It was really fun, so I was sad when I found out the library had lost its copy.
By that point, it was already the Wii U era, and copies of the game sold for much more than I would have wanted. Back then, I didn’t think $50 was a reasonable price to pay for a game. I’d check how much it was every once in a while, but it never went all that much down. Time went by, my Wiimotes’ nunchuk ports became virtually unusable, and I forgot the controls of the game.
Flash forward to about a year ago—I won a sweepstakes from my college’s dining services for $50. For whatever, reason the first thing that comes to my mind is that I should see whether it would still be enough for PokéPark 2. Amazon, obviously, only had it for much more, but lo and behold, there were multiple sellers on eBay that had it for around the price. I did a bit of research and find the game doesn’t even support nunchuk. Terrific, it’s playable. I ordered the game, and eagerly awaited the game’s arrival.
Now, there’s no way it could have held up to how I liked it in my childhood, but would it still hold up as a good game? That was the question on my mind when it arrived and I unwrapped the box. It was time to find out. I put the disc in my Wii U, boot up the game, and start playing.
The first things we see once we start the game are two legendary Pokémon Zekrom and Reshiram. From their planes of thunder and fire, they discuss how the two worlds’ demise is imminent, but that they see a light of hope growing deep within the smothering darkness.
In the next scene, we take control of Pikachu, and are greeted by our friend Piplup, who teaches us how to play in the game. We then meet Timburr for a friendship tutorial, and proceed into PokéPark proper. There’s a cutscene of bird Pokémon flying around the world, which is filled with life. It’s just a taste of what’s to come.
So far, I was pretty impressed with this games presentation. I remembered the story was good but I hadn’t remembered that it had started getting serious this early on. In that regard, this game was doing well. However, the controls sucked. There’s no strafing because of the D-pad navigation, and Pikachu changes speed from slow to fast automatically at a point that I can never get used to. On top of that, there’s no way of controlling the camera except to center it. I still wanted to continue because it was still the first few minutes, and my nostalgia for the game gave me motivation. But the fact of the matter was that it was unfun to play.
At this point, we overhear a crowd gathering around a pair of Pokémon, and we go to join them. Krokorok and Sandile are telling everyone about a special area called Wish Park, that is supposedly even more fun than the regular Poképark. We get intrigued, so we head on over to where they say the entrane is.
Along the way, we are stopped by Oshawott, a local detective who has been investigating the disappearances of some Pokémon. After he confirms that we are not sus, he lets us go. We meet up again with Krokorok, and he sends us through the poster portal to Wish Park.
We emerge on the other side in a mysterious land floating in a purple void. Everything in our immediate vicinity is made out of desserts. An attendant greets us and directs us to the park’s attraction. We see that it is very addicting, as somebody at the entrance has played it 23 times in a row and already wants to go back for more. The attraction’s manager, Cofagrigus, brings us in and has us play.
It’s a fun minigame that’s basically just whack-a-mole that we play with by pointing the Wiimote. If the game’s movement controls are bad, it’s nice that at least it has good motion controls.
After the game, we are about to eat our victory cake, when somebody warns us that everyone who has eaten the cake has been acting oddly. We see everyone else gorging themselves on cake, and then Cofagrigus shows up and force feeds the dude who warned us a cake, brainwashing him. He’s about to do the same to us, but Oshawott flips in from behind and stuns him. Cofagrigus explains that he only wishes for his subjects’ happiness, and then sicks his guards on us, whom we easily dispatch.
A mysterious voice from the sky tells Cofagrigus he has failed, and we are chased out of the park by giant hands made of shadow. As we are about to reach the exit portal, Piplup trips, and the hands keep us from getting out. Piplup shoves us through, and us and Oshawott manage to escape.
Afterwards, we head to Samurott, the leader of the area of PokéPark we started in, and Oshawott tells him of what he found in his investigation. Samurott tells Oshawott to let us help him from here on out, and after a battle to prove our worth, we join the team.
Oshawott is now playable, and at least he felt nice to move. The control and camera issues still remained, though now that I was more used to them, I didn’t mind them as much as before. But Oshawott’s movement itself was much better. He started his fast movement much faster, and his turns were more controllable. At this point, it seemed like the game might end up still being playable.
We found out from a Pokémon that Krokorok and Sandile are currently in Cove Town, and we go through the lighthouse to find tools to hep Timburr repair the bridge to go there. And so we end today’s session.
Now, since the experiences I described were all from a year ago, you might be wondering how it ultimately turned out. Well, I didn’t choose this game for my blog because it was bad. The issues that seemed so bad at the beginning all get at least a little better, especially once you unlock Snivy. Plus, coming back to it after a shorter amount of time, I’m still more used to how it feels, so I don’t mind the jank as much.
That said, if there’s one thing you should nail when making your games, it’s the movement. In all likelihood, it’s going to be the first thing the player will notice, and thus the first thing the player will judge the game on. First impressions are important, so movement feel will have an outsize impact on whether a player chooses to keep playing.
Video of the Week: To this day I still remember the lyrics to this song: