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 readingPokémon
I 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 readingI Want to Be the Very Best
Today marks the very first day of my new life’s work. I’ve decided to follow in the footsteps of many great trainers before me and abandon any attempt at being a productive member of society. Instead, I am going to wander through the wild parts of the world, capture creatures with funny names and huge powers, and then train them to battle other, similar creatures owned by people like me. All of my money will be earned by robbing the people I defeat, I’ll sleep in the woods, and I’ll rely on free healthcare to keep my captured monsters in peak fighting condition at all time. I may make friends along the way, I may encounter a friendly or combative person frequently enough to designate them my rival, and I may rise from obscurity to sit at the peak of the monster fighting league so that everyone in the world knows my name. Unfortunately, none of those things are guaranteed, but I know I’ll definitely have a great time along the way, bonding with my new pets and crying when I’m forced to say goodbye to them.
If you haven’t guessed what’s going on, I’m talking about my plan to finally go on the Pokemon Journey reality has always denied me now that Pokemon Go finally introduced trainer-versus-trainer battling. I imagine battling will change significantly as time goes on since it’s clearly in favor of people willing to spend money or who have done nothing but play Pokemon Go and the whole “use a shield to block a charged attack” thing is just plain weird, but I’m glad they finally got something out there. So far, I’ve declared one of my roommates is my rival, battled him a few times (we’re tied for wins and losses right now), and done absolutely nothing else with it because society is demanding I do my day job so I can pay my bills and afford to live in my nice house with my actual pets. Someday, perhaps once the holidays are over, I’ll go on a short Pokemon Journey to test the waters. After I’ve figured out how the battling scene is going, that’ll be it for me. I’ll quit my job, pack up everything I own into a backpack that breaks physics, and head off into the great unknown in order to find new Pokemon, battle new trainers, and become the legend I’ve always dreamed I could be.
I imagine it’ll be difficult to live off the land and spend all my time traveling between major cities, but I think I can manage it. I’m single, have no societal obligations that I’d miss, and am a rather hardy individual. I can walk for long periods of time, assuming my pack isn’t as heavy as a typical Pokemon Trainer’s backpack must be, given that it holds hundreds of pokeballs, healing items, berries, cases, bicycles, and so forth. If it’s a bit more realistic and not able to hold a limitless supply of whatever I want (if it removes the weight of the things I put in it, that would also be pretty cool. I could work with that), then I imagine the first couple weeks would be rough while my feet adjusted to the constant walking. After that, I’d be unstoppable.
Unfortunately for me, I seem destined to become a gimmick trainer. Likely a Hiker with a heavy focus on rock-type Pokemon. I could get behind such a gimmick, of course, but only after becoming the best there ever was. Then I’d go find some mountain path to live on and challenge every trainer who passes through before making my team of Geodudes all use “Self-Destruct.” The trick would be that I have a sixth Pokemon, maybe a Mew or something super cool and rare. It would also use “Self-Destruct.” That would be my gimmick and then I would become a different type of legend. I’d become even more famous than when I toured the world as an unbeatable Pokemon Master and trainers would come from far and wide to see if they could beat my team. Unfortunately for them, all my Geodudes would be immune to one hit knock-outs and the final Pokemon would change on occasion so they’d never be able to defeat me. Every match will end in a draw and I will establish myself as an unbeatable Pokemon Trainer. It will be glorious!
I will have to wait, though. Pokemon Go is still in its infancy and we’ve yet to see if it will truly last the tests of time. There’s also no move in Pokemon Go that functions like “Self-Destruct,” though I remain hopeful that they will either eventually add more game-like features to Pokemon Go or replace it entirely by creating Virtual Reality Pokemon. I would be all about that. Nothing quite like immersive games in virtual reality to make you feel like you’re not stumbling around your home while waving your arms dangerously close to every precious and fragile object you own. Heck, maybe they’ll figure out how to make Pokemon robots and then we can go on Pokemon adventures in theme parks. That’d be super cool.
Since none of that is happening right now, I’m just going to focus on battling my rival, enjoying the new combat feature of Pokemon Go, and trying to remember who half the people are on my Pokemon Go friends list so I can remote battle people without feeling weird about initiating an interaction with someone who is effectively a stranger. The feature was difficult to find and it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense about the way it works, but it’s fun to play. I think the Stardust and Pokemon Candy requires for learning additional moves are egregious, since it’s almost impossible for most players to afford something like that. Only people who play constantly have access to that kind of stardust and enough candies for powerful Pokemon or legendaries. I mean, I spent most of my candies and stardust just powering up Pokemon fairly recently, so I can’t afford to give anyone an extra attack, which means I’ll be vulnerable to anyone who has one since they’re great for countering Pokemon that typically counter whatever Pokemon has the second attack. The fact that you can add extra moves is a huge break from their established methodology, so I’m interested to see where they continue to take.
Whatever they do, though, it’ll be fun. I can’t wait to get out there and start playing again!
NaNoWriMo 2018 Day 18 (11/18)
Yesterday went alright. I got exactly three thousand words write for my National Novel Writing Month project, which was a ton of fun to realize. I hadn’t planned it, but when I went to update my word total on their website at midnight, I discovered I’d written exactly three thousand words. That felt like a good place to stop since I’m not under any particular crunch other than the “I want to catch up before the end of the month” crunch that I’m familiar with. I’m only about six thousand words behind at this point, so a dozen days of five hundred extra words will do it. I know I can handle an extra five hundred words a day, no problem, and I’ve still got thirteen days to go so it should be easily handled. I may try to do more today than I did yesterday, but I’m not going to push it. I’d like to do more, but I definitely need to avoid over committing myself to things like I usually do.
Despite how crazy things have been lately, yesterday was actually pretty calm and normal. I needed that. In fact, my only complaint about yesterday is that I spent most of it with an incredibly sore neck as a result of spending most of my night scrunched up against my headboard. I have no idea why, but that happens sometimes and I always wake up with a headache, sore neck, and stiff shoulders. I should probably look into the ways I sleep and actually get a good mattress, but those are both long-term tasks. Neither of them will be simple solutions since it’s difficult to figure out the physical aspects of my sleep since I’m, you know, asleep for their duration. Getting a good mattress requires a lot of research and some time spent investigating at a mattress store so I can figure out if I prefer more firm or less firm. So far, my mattress buying has been entirely driven by prices and convenience. I’d like to get an actually good mattress just to see if it can help me deal with my various sleep issues. I’ve got enough of them that I’m willing to try just about anything for a while, to see if it helps.
I should probably try “go to bed at a reasonable hour” since I haven’t gone to bed before one in the morning since… I honestly don’t know. It’s definitely been more than a week. I think. A lack of adequate sleep is really bad for your short-term memory so there are something things that have faded from my mind a bit…
I joke. I don’t always check the clock before bed and, without an actual hard number to attach to the thought of going to bed, I lose most of my sense of when it was beyond “late” or “reasonable.” I really should work on not pushing myself below a minimum of six hours a night, since I’ve managed to handle it this past week without too much of a problem but I can’t explain why. Unless, of course, therapy lights help deal with sleep deprivation side effects. Or maybe most of my tiredness from not sleeping enough was tied to my depression and, since the light helps lessen that, my exhaustion levels never got quite as high as they usually do.
Truthfully, it shouldn’t matter. I know I need six hours of sleep a night at a minimum. I shouldn’t be starting these posts at midnight, I should be finished with them and in bed by midnight. I shouldn’t put off my daily NaNoWriMo writing until ten at night, I should be doing it right away when I get home from work. Video games can wait and they’re a bit easier to stop doing. Aside from, you know, that Pathfinder Kingmaker game I’ve been playing that kept me up until three and two in the morning on subsequent nights. That was a really poor choice on my part and I will own up to that. Nowadays, I’m sticking to Pokemon games with a focus on the new one, Pokemon: Let’s Go. It’s pretty fun, but I wouldn’t recommend playing it if you want a new experience. If you want to relive the Kanto region, already own a Nintendo Switch, and can have a realistic reaction to something that resembles something else, in that you don’t immediately hate it because it’s different, you should play Pokemon: Let’s Go. If all of those things are not true, then you probably shouldn’t play it. Especially if the last one is true. No one wants to deal with that, so just avoid the game.
I am optimistic about how much I’ll get done today. Yesterday wasn’t amazing, by any means, but it was a solid day. I’m hoping today will be similar. I’ve got Dungeons and Dragons planned for the late afternoon and early evening, so that’ll be fun. It has been a long time since we’ve played, for various reasons. Some of them have been my fault, some of them have been the fault of one or more of the players, but we’re finally ready to play again. We were at a good pausing point since the party returned to their caravan, so it should be a relatively painless restarted. There will be hiccups because there always are, but I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to take up a good chunk of my day, about four hours of running the game and at least two of preparation since I’ll need to refamiliarize myself with all the notes I wrote during previous sessions in addition to planning what we’ll do tomorrow. Rough plans are good enough for most sessions, but I need to have a more solid one since this is our first session in a while. The smoother it goes, the more likely it is that we’ll actually get through this chapter of the campaign by New Year’s Day.
Anyway, I hope your day goes well! I hope you’re all caught up on your goals and that you’ve been enjoying this chance to rest and recharge for another week of writing and, for the people of the US, navigating the difficulty that is the holidays. Whatever the problems are, whatever petty bullshit comes up, just remind yourself that you’ve got a story to tell. Plotting and working through scenes makes for a great distraction from the messily unfolding drama that often shows up during the holidays. I hope your day is great and I wish you the best of luck!
Daily Prompt
What are your protagonists hobbies? What are they interested in? The things that hold our attention and that we care about influence the way we think. I enjoy video games, so I tend to view most of the stories in my head as a cross between a video game and a movie. I can pause and move the camera around to look everywhere, but the story is happening on it’s own so I can miss it if I look away. It influences the way we talk, the metaphors we use, and how we relate to people. How does your protagonist’s interests influence their interactions with other people? Write a scene showing them bonding with someone over a shared interest or perhaps them struggling to connect with people who are disinterested (or maybe even people who dislike) what they care about.
Sharing Inspiration
I’ve been working at this crap for over a year and, let me tell you, believing in yourself will only get you so far. There will be a day when that belief runs out, when you have nothing left to push yourself forward. For those days, I have a few things to remind me that I’m not the only person who believes in me. One is the speech my creative writing professor gave when she awarded me a scholarship for creative writing and fellowship. The other is a birthday card from a good friend filled with heartfelt words. The first I only have in electronic format, but I’ve memorized it so I can recall it at will. The later is pinned above my desk so I all I have to do is look up to be reminded that I’m not working in a vacuum. There are people out there who see how hard I’m working and are excited to see where I’m going to go. Believing in yourself is important and should be your main goal if you’re just getting started. Having someone else who believes in you is super helpful for getting there, though.
Helpful Tips
I know you probably have a place you like to write, with a specific ambiance and location, but you can write at pretty much any time. Bring a notebook if you prefer to write by hand, and take whatever time you have during your day to write down some ideas or make a big of quick progress on your National Novel Writing Month project. If you don’t really care how you take notes or work through things, set up a writing application on your phone and just type it out there. I’ve got Google Drive set up on my phone and most of my writing projects are stored as documents in my Google Drive. Two aren’t, but that’s because they’re so big they cause my browser to crash or hang when it tries to do the whole “dynamic saving” thing that google documents likes to do. It apparently doesn’t like anything that passes one hundred thousand words since that’s when it starts to get buggy. But it’s still great for quick edits, taking notes, or having an easily accessible place to do some five-minute bursts of writing throughout my day. I suggest you check it out to see if it will help you.
Let’s Talk About Pokemon Go’s Newest Adaptation
There’s a new Pokemon game coming out for the Nintendo Switch, called “Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee!” If you aren’t aware, it’s basically a remake of the original Pokemon games with a few changes. The biggest ones have to do with wild Pokemon and the player’s interactions with them. In previous iterations of the standard style, you would wander around in the grass until you spawned a random encounter with a Pokemon from wherever the grass is located. Then you fought the Pokemon until it was weak enough to be captured or you defeated it. Now, you actually see the Pokemon walking around and can pick which ones you encounter. Additionally, you catch them like you do in Pokemon Go. You use a berry if you want to, select your ball, wait for the circle to be the right size, and then attempt to throw the pokeball so it lands inside the circle. Then you either catch it or you don’t. There’s no battling involved, except with the occasional trainer.
This was one of the first things we learned about the new game and it upset a lot of people. More so even than the fact that it was a third remake of the first generation of Pokemon games. The change is a pretty big departure from the core games. Battling wild Pokemon in order to gain XP and level up is such a core element of the game that felt like spending money on this game would be a waste. Wandering around, training Pokemon, and collecting XP has always been a core aspect of the games for me because I use them primarily as a way of shutting my mind down for a few hours or as a way of quieting my mind when I can’t sleep. That’s going to be a lot harder to do when I actually need to look at the game and employ motion controls with any degree of accuracy since you only get XP if you catch the Pokemon. How am I supposed to just cruise through the game with an overpowered team if I can’t dedicate a few mindless hours of battling wild Pokemon to each area between cities or gyms so my Pokemon stay above the curve by five to ten levels?
Thinking about it like that, it made it clear that this wasn’t a game for me. News that has come out since then, about other things that will be different about Pokemon: Let’s Go has made it clear that this game wasn’t meant for me or anyone like me. This game was meant for people getting into Pokemon for the first time. Children who have had to try to pick up the games that are always at least partially targeted toward older audiences, casual gamers who want a quiet couch game that doesn’t involve a lot of meta-analysis, or people who haven’t really played many games before but have started now that Pokemon Go has proven so popular and accessible. It’s a reintroduction to the series that somewhat mirrors the way the first game was simpler than all the ones since then.
For instance, Let’s Go won’t have eggs or breeding. All of the highly competitive aspects of the game that stem from that won’t be present either. There will be no breeding for natures, IVs, or EVs. Egg moves, secret abilities, TM/HMs won’t get passed down through generations to create the perfect Pokemon after a dozen hours of breeding, walking, and hatching. Now you need to catch the Pokemon or send them over from Pokemon Go if you want to try for a specific nature and all of that is more or less random. Sure, there are elements the game has that the originals did not, but it’s stuff like playing little mini games with your Pokemon to make it like you more or handing over surplus Pokemon for candies that boost your Pokemon’s stats (which actually maps pretty well to IV/EV stuff and the various stat-boosting items you could get when you inevitably wound up with more money than you knew what to do with). Everything they’ve added fits within the relatively simple and less competitive framework of the original game. Your only real competition are the friends you battle against using the system link or the game itself, most of which is pretty optional.
In order to entice the older, more competitive audience as well–and I’m willing to admit that this idea has gotten me interested in buying the game again–they’re adding “Master Trainers” to the game. These trainers are the specific master trainer of one type of Pokemon and you will have to battle them with that specific Pokemon as well. Your Charizard will have to battle their Charizard, and it’ll actually be a tough fight since their Pokemon will allegedly be specifically geared toward fighting its own species. Gyarados has been able to learn thunderbolt for a long time, but trying to beat one that knows that with another Gyarados? That sounds like an incredibly tough challenge that would require me to not only level up my Pokemon, but maximize its potential stats and find a way to give it an unbeatable set of moves. Which is exactly what most of the super-competitive Pokemon players where saying this set of games lacked. I’m not that competitive, but the idea of being declared a Pokemon Master after all these years sounds incredibly tempting, especially for my favorite Pokemon.
I’m still curious about how the game’s going to go once it comes out, but the twin powers of nostalgia and disposable income have convinced me it’s worth buying. I doubt I’ll try to get anyone else to buy it and just make up for the lack of a trading partner with Pokemon Go, but I expect it’ll be a good time now that I’ve started looking at it the right way. This isn’t a remake, it’s a reintroduction, and I think that’s a great thing. I hope more people online start to see it for what it is as well.