Top selling games this year are Call of Duty: Killbox (players take turns spawning inside a kill box and see how many milliseconds they can survive) and Assassin’s Creed: Prehistoric (main character is a pterodactyl that swoops down and slices brontosaurus necks with steel edges wings).

I hop in my Nintendo VR pod. This drops you into a virtual world typically indistinguishable from the real world – aside from the pterodactyls of course!

My friends want me to join them for a round of spawn kills and while I love the thrill of feeling my body riddled with bullets, I have a hankering to play my favorite game – Pokemon. Pokemon Scissors 2 and Pokemon Paper 2 are huge improvements over the original paper and scissor games.

It’s been a while since I played last so I decide to start a new game

After a 6 hour intro explaining what a Pokemon is, I’m off on my journey. Professor Oak hands me a Bulbasaur and sends me off on a journey through the Kanto region. Nothing like 7 Kanto region games in a row! My dad tells me when he was a kid he was actually able to choose his starter but in order to make the game easier for today’s audience you don’t even have to make a choice!

The VR world around me is slightly pixelated – the Pokemon games don’t have the same quality of graphics as most virtual world’s, but compared to last months release, the graphics are definitely marginally improved!

Luckily the graphics and realism aren’t the most important part of a Pokemon adventure. The story and Pokemon I can capture are where the real fun is. Luckily I don’t have to walk for real like most games – in order to simplify the game further, they recently removed the map markers indicating where I should walk and they just push my character in the right direction and I’m free to watch the Pokemon around me.

Luckily the game starts you off with 25 master balls – the exact number you need to catch the 9 new Pokemon this generation added and the 15 special forms of Pikachu. My favorite is Pikachu wearing a meowth costume. I’m not really sure what a meowth is since he was cut from the dex around 15 years ago but the oversized costume is adorable on Pikachu.

Cutting the entire Dex down to 25 Pokemon really allowed the designers to focus on amazing animations for the Pokemon we do get. As I float through the kanto region, Pokemon glide around. My Bulbasaur can’t follow me but even better, I can have a slumber party with him and he has a new animation where he blinks twice instead of once. Sometimes he even falls asleep – his eyes don’t close but z’s float above his head so I know.

Ah! My first rival battle. My rival is my mother, and she cheers me on during the whole battle against her unhatched egg. A lot of people found battling actual Pokemon slightly difficult so most battles are against eggs now. Sometimes that feels a little too easy but gym leaders all have one adorable baby Pokemon to go along with their team of eggs. I love wondering what their eggs would hatch into if they were able to have real Pokemon. With such an amazing roster of Pokemon it’s almost impossible to guess which Pikachu form might hatch.

I managed to beat my mom! Now one of my favorite parts – a 24 hour cut scenes where she walks me through the entire game! She even battled the elite 4 for me! I love Lance’s dragon costume Pikachu!