As much as I enjoy playing various games on the Switch in handheld mode, since it means I’m not chained to my couch and a particular sitting orientation, I’ve always struggled with how I can’t do that with any kind of action game. When it comes to any of those types of games, I quickly grow frustrated and annoyed. The reasons vary, but the result is always the same. I’m worse at any kind of game that requires precision or quick responses when I’m playing it on the Switch in handheld mode. After dealing with this for almost five years, I finally figured out why when I went to play Pokémon Legends: Arceus in handheld mode.
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On A Mission From (Poké) God
Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been a blast. I may be a bit biased since all I really want out of a Pokémon game is the opportunity to catch more Pokémon and explore a newish world, but this game definitely delivers both of those things and more. The game’s basic plot is that you’ve fallen through a warp in space and time to the Hisui region, a place that would eventually become known as Sinnoh (where the Diamond and Pearl games take place), and are charged by Pokémon God with discovering all of the Pokémon in the region. You’re set up with an exploratory team meant to research the local Pokémon and protect the people who wish to live in the region from the aggressive local Pokémon, and you prove yourself as not only capable but highly skilled to the locals who treat the idea of encountering wild Pokémon with trepidation and fear.
Continue readingClosing Thoughts On Death’s Door
I finished Death’s Door. I have officially completed 100% of the game on the switch, experienced all the game has to offer (unless there’s more secret stuff I have somehow missed), and am thoroughly satisfied. I have a lot of notes about how it could have been better, but honestly it’s like taking notes on how a pizza could be better to the granular level of “there were only 9 pieces of pepperoni on this slice, 1.7 pieces lower than the average per-slice pepperoni count.” A lot of it has to do with the ease of commenting on something already made than making something better from inside it. It wasn’t one of my top 10 games, it wasn’t something that hit me hard like Celeste, and it isn’t something I’ll replay for years like Breath of the Wild. It was a very fun, enjoyable game that I looked forward to playing, even after I completed the main story beats and was working on the fiddly, specific collection and secret-finding phase. Given how many games fail at being this thoroughly and consistently good, I feel like this should be taken as enthusiastic praise.
Continue readingPokémon Type Changes in the Series Mean Pokémon Professors Suck at Their Jobs
A new Pokémon game came out today (as of writing this post, not when it goes up). I’ll probably write specifically about it once I’ve had some time to play it, but today I’m going to write about Pokémon types and the progression and change of that system over the past couple decades. There are plenty of posts and articles out there about why the types are effective or ineffective against each other, how type matchups play out, the balance of types, and all that mechanical crunchiness, so I’m going to mostly focus on the experience of watching that change happen.
Continue readingMaking Mental Maps and 3D Spatial Awareness
One of my most-valued skills is my spatial awareness and reasoning. I’ve always enjoyed that I can walk around a place and quickly learn how to navigate through it. It has been incredibly useful that I never get lost in any city, the woods, or even in 3D environments. And while I am not so exact that I wouldn’t use a tape measure to double check, I’ve very good at visually estimating the size of things in a space that I’ve spent time getting to know. I rarely use that last skill anymore, but it was incredibly useful in my theater days when I could judge just by looking at something if it was even possible for it to get through any given door or opening. Now, it only comes in handy when I am moving homes or rearranging my house and I can tell just from a glance that my bookshelves will fit perfectly in a specific location.
Continue readingDeath’s Door is a Delightful Adventure
One of the games I picked up as a result of skimming “Top Games of 2021” lists is a small game called “Death’s Door.” It’s a cute, delightful adventure game featuring a Crow playing the part of a reaper of souls who travels through doors to various places to collect said souls. At the start of the game, you get sent to collect a cartain soul, defeat the monster whose soul it is, and then go off on a crazy adventure in order to finally collect this soul so your assigned door can be properly closed and you can return to being immortal. Armed with a dodge roll, a magic bow, and a sword (also an umbrella you can find pretty early and few other weapons you find throughout), you battle the various monstrous creatures that inhabit the worlds you pass through and use their soul energy to make yourself stronger for the challenges ahead.
Continue readingDorfromantik Is The Most Relaxing Game I’ve Ever Played
I don’t know if you have ever noticed, dear reader, but I have a difficult time cultivating peace. I am pretty much constantly stressed all the time and live most of my days in a state of (generally controlled) anxiety that keeps me on my grind and goal-oriented. Rare are the times when I can actually relax or unwind. Usually all I can manage is an adjustment of the tension that’s on me, not a decrease. There are a lot of reasons this is the case, many of which have to do with the difficulty of my life in general and the last three years especially, but I’ve also never really been good at it. I have a few things I can turn to for relaxation, depending on the scenario and how I’m feeling (puzzles, video games, and music), but they all typically wear out their welcome eventually.
Continue readingBaldur’s Gate 3 is Better But Still Not Worth Full Price for Early Access
I finally managed to get through a significant chunk of the Baldur’s Gate 3 early access game. There’s clearly still a lot more to go, based on the number of objectives that still remain in my to-do list, but I will admit that some of the fun I had while playing the game has vanished now that I’ve reached the maximum level for this early access version of the game and my power can’t grow ever greater. It’s not that I need to be more powerful to continue playing the game or to get through specific bits of content since I’ve absolutely wrecked every fight I’ve come across by abusing mechanics or stockpiling potions, I just want to keep accumulating experience points and right now I can’t. They just pop up on screen and then vanish into the ether.
Continue readingI’ve Never Actually Played 100% of a Pokémon Game
There is one activity is all of the recent (main version series) Pokémon games that I’ve never successfully done. The Battle Tower. It was introduced in the second generation of Pokémon games, in the Crystal version game, and has been a part of every game since. In some of the games, the name of the activity changed, but it was still largely the same thing. There have been changes over the years as the meta of Pokémon has shifted and evolved, but I only know this stuff because I looked it up to write this post. I’ve never actually participated.
Continue readingThe Value of Video Games
I have long sought to develop a metric to determine whether or not a video game was “worth it” other than the extremely subjective “it felt worth it” scale. A lot of proposed scales use things like “dollars per hour” using the average hours to completion for the game. Other metrics try to tie it to replayability or how many times per week you play the game. One metric proposed by Brian David Gilbert when he still worked for Polygon involved creating his own units and figuring out what was the best game of the year because it had the highest score after being run through his incredibly complex equation. All of these are certainly useful metrics to some people or at least funny to try applying, but I am beginning to think that it might be impossible to actually come up with a true metric for if a game was worth the price in cases where it isn’t clear one way or the other.
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