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 readingPokémon
Pokémon 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 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 readingWatching The Hype Train Pass Me By (Except for Kirby Games, Apparently)
I am not a great follower of video game news. I find hype of all sorts odious when it is manufactured to create a buzz for something that does not yet exist in the hands of the audience, and that seems to be almost the entirety of video game marketing these days. As a result, I’ve grown accustomed to finding out about the release of games I’ve been anticipating in the last week or two before their release. Most of my friends even know not to include me in their hype events or discussions unless there’s something concrete for us to discuss like a release date, an actual gameplay trailer, or a demo. I’ve made my peace with living on my back foot like this, to finding out about games sometimes long after they’ve released, and I feel now that it isn’t a bad way to live.
Continue readingI Needed A Rest
Turns out the last post that went up was my 600th post. It feels very appropo that it was about trains and death metaphors, but I do wish I’d realized before it went up. I’m pretty sure I could have come up with something specific to 600 even as exhausted and foggy as I was last week, and then I’d have had an extra post and a smaller gap between blog posts.
Continue readingNothing Wrong With Being A Casual
I very much dislike that point in an online game where it goes from being a fun chaotic mess where skill doesn’t much matter to being held to a strict tiered meta with only a few ways to win and “skill” means being able to properly apply said meta. It is a small peeve that doesn’t come up much, but it can be incredibly frustrating every time it comes up. Also, that fact that it comes up frequently enough for me to consider swearing off all online games says a lot about this as well.
Continue readingLegendary Moments From My Poképast
I finally got to the point in my replay of Pokémon LeafGreen where I can start catching Legendary Pokémon, and my recent attempts to actually catch them reminded me of some fun moments from my poképast and the strange way games can play out when they rely on random chance. If you don’t really care about Pokémon, or maybe even actively dislike it, then feel free to head out. Everything after this is going to be about Pokémon. Or stick around. I’m not your boss. Do what you want.
Continue readingDo You REALLY Gotta Catch ‘Em All?
I’ve been doing a replay of the Pokémon franchise lately, sort of around everything else I’ve been playing. It is my idle time game. During little breaks from other activities, or while waiting for something to finish (be it laundry or dinner), I’ve been filling that time with Pokémon.
I started playing Pokémon as a child, with Blue Version. I remember standing around the house, playing it on my brand new Game Boy Pocket, and learning the ropes as I experienced the game. My strongest pokemon in that first play through was my Pidgeot, followed closely by my Blastoise. I don’t remember any of the other pokemon I had on my team, but I remember those two. I remember choosing Squirtle because that was what was on the game cartridge and Pidgey because even as a small child I had an affinity for birds.
Continue readingTime to Switch From Skyward Sword to Something New
I finished Skyward Sword last night. Stayed up a little late to finish it and everything. Beat the final boss, collected everything I cared enough to collect, and and then overwrote my save data with a Hero Mode file I’ll play eventually maybe. Probably not for a long while, though, to be honest. The game was fine, story-wise, and there were a lot of improvements that cleared out the worst of Fi’s interruptions, but it is still a rather stiff, clunky game that tries to be expressive without the character model elasticity they need for what they’re doing. It’s a fun game, and while I can’t say I enjoyed the whole replay, I can say that I enjoyed it more than I used to.
Continue readingAging Unreservedly
As I approach 30, I’ve been thinking about all the ways people use the phrase “aging gracefully.” If it’s a person who is conventionally attractive, people usually mean that they’ve managed to somehow stay attractive, either through genetics or through a careful regimine of healthy activities and diet. If they’re not conventionally attractive or some kind of celebrity, people usually mean that they’re not fighting the process or trying to hold on to their passing youth.
As someone whose youth absolutely sucked and who has put a lot of effort into reclaiming any parts of it I want to appreciate, I’m not really sure where I’m going to fall on this spectrum. I have no desire to return to the life I lived as a child but I also have no concept of what youthfulness means outside of this context. At the same time, I still enjoy a lot of things people associate with youth, like Pokémon, cartoons, and the word “butt.” Partly because I didn’t get to enjoy simple pleasures as a kid and partly because fun stuff is fun and I’ve learned to never take myself too seriously.
If you can’t laugh at the word “butt” when it’s used in a non-offensive, humorous way, then I guess I’m sorry? It must suck to be that humorless.
Continue reading