As I’m writing this, we’re a week away from the release of the next entry in the main line of the Pokémon franchise and, to mark this release, Splatoon 3 has a new Splatfest where the theme at hand is which Pokémon type makes for the best partner. The three types involved are Water, Fire, and Grass, representing the three starter Pokémon that will be available in the new game. All of which I have incredibly mixed feelings about since my usual option (Grass) is turning into another antropomorphic cat according to the recent leaks. While I know it’s possible that the leaks aren’t actually leaks but clever fakes, everyone I know has been expecting the new grass type to turn into an anthropomorphic cat this entire time (myself included), so I’m having a difficult time convincing myself that there is still hope I can cling to that we’ll get a cool tiger or something instead of ANOTHER ANTRO CAT. There’s so many of those suckers already and that sort of design doesn’t really appeal to me (though I know it appeals to lots of other people) even when it doesn’t feel as played-out as it does in Pokémon.

Anyway, gripes aside, I’m still excited for the new game. At least there’s a cool duck I can pick at first and plenty of new, interesting Pokémon to use instead of the starters if they all turn out as visually unappealing as the leaks suggest they will be (I do want to emphasize that I’m just talking in terms of my personal taste because they do all look friend-shaped and that’s sort of the design ethos for Pokémon, plus I’m sure plenty of people are stoked about the way they look. Everyone has different tastes and I can respect that some people like anthro-cats even if I don’t). I anticipated that the franchise would be moving in this direction after the modeling work down for Sword and Shield and then the overworld work done for Pokémon Legends: Arceius, so I’m excited to see what step they’ve taken beyond Arceius for this next entry in the series. If nothing else, it will provide me with something to do once I beat Dad of Boy 2: Dad and Teen since I’ll be taking the entire week of US Thanksgiving off and will be limiting the amount of work I give myself to do during that week. After all, a vacation isn’t a vacation if I fill all my days with other work instead.

This weekend, following the writing of this post and prior to the posting of this blog entry, I’ll be busy switching between God of War: Ragnarok and Splatoon 3 as I give my new OLED Switch a real test. I’ve so-far not played much Splatoon 3 on it, since I bought it and set it up, though I do feel like I played enough to confirm that the OLED Switch fixed my connection issues. This weekend will show the truth of the matter, though, since I’ll be playing for multiple hours each day and will be doing so during a relatively high-traffic period of time. If all the problems really were just on my end, then I shouldn’t be disconnected any more than other players. If it’s actually the fault of my ISP, then things won’t really change and I’ll probably abandon Splatfest to play more God of War since that’s only frustrating when I totally whiff a parry by accidentally hitting the “aim” button instead of the “block” button.

I hope I don’t have connection issues. I kind of miss playing Splatoon 3. It was a lot of fun when I wasn’t getting disconnected all the time and I felt like I was pretty alright at it. I think this weekend is going to put me through my paces again since I definitely feel super rusty and have also been doing a lot of my action gaming with a PS4 controller. I’ll need some time to readjust but I expect I’ll be back in full swing by the start of the second day. After all, it’s a fairly simply game. I suspect I’ll be finding out how much the balance tweaks they made in one of the recent updates have changed the game since I haven’t played at all since that version was released. I’m a little nervous that my top gear choices will no longer be relevant to my playstyle. I played defensively most of the time, sort of riding the line between full defense and offense so I could back up my allies when they needed it or push forward when there was an opening. Once again proving that I like to fall into the Tank role in every multiplayer game I play.

Regardless of how any of this goes, the Splatfest or the new Pokémon game, I expect I’ll be having fun. I’ve gotten pretty good at moving on to something new or different when I’m no longer having fun with what I’m doing and having all of these options available to me means I’ll be able to skip the occasional bit of listless playing that happens when I don’t know what I want to do instead of what I’m no longer enjoying. After all, I bet I’ll have plenty of God of War to keep playing, even if I break from tradition and push to finish the story of that game before I’ve gotten all the collectibles and beaten all the challenges.