Pew pew pews

Podcasts are not a thing I typically do. It’s hard for me to justify spending up to an hour and a half just listening to people ramble on about stuff, and it’s nearly impossible to really absorb the content of a podcast while doing something else. At least, that’s how it is for me. I have found that work is a great time to listen to podcasts, because my job is mostly numbers, and it’s easy to listen to what the people are saying in my ear while I muck around on my spreadsheets or whatever.

Obviously, the bus rides to and from work are a great time for this as well.

I have made a point to listen to the new Retronauts every week, because I really like the three regular hosts, and I think they do a very good job of covering a lot of video game-related topics that I’m already pretty interested in, or will interest me enough to hear people ramble about them for so long.

Last week’s episode was about fan translations, and while I’ve already played a few of the games that they highlighted on the show, I did take it upon myself to try out a few that I hadn’t already touched. I’m not trying to hock video games today, though. What was really important about this show was the guest stars: Chris Antista and Brett Elston

These dudes run another podcast called Laser Time (well, Brett guests on Laser Time, and hosts VGMpire), which I decided to look into for no real reason at all other than I was kinda interested in listening to another podcast. I hit the damn jackpot here too, because I ended up loving Laser Time.

Apparently a lot of people involved work in the video game industry, but the podcast isn’t about video games all the time. Or even most of the time maybe? I’ve listened to five episodes so far, and four of those have been about movies. In fact, I’d wager to say that it’s more about retro stuff and pop-culture in general than video games. This is the X-Entertainment podcast that never existed.

I should mention that it’s also pretty consistently funny. And when it’s not funny, it’s educational in a pop-culture sort of way. I love it, and I’m fairly sure that I’m going to have burned through all the back episodes by the end of the year if I keep listening to them at the rate I have been.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, maybe go check that out. I’ve already provided a link to the main podcast page, but if you poke around on the website a bit, you’ll notice that there are a few other podcasts hosted there. Maybe one of those will resonate with you if Laser Time doesn’t.

I know too much about Pokémon

I am very much enjoying this Pokémon X and Y image macro.

dragons

A pokémon’s type is usually pretty obvious just by looking at it. Hell, most of them are even colour-coded for your convenience. Charizard (on the right) may be a dragon in appearance, but it is not actually a dragon-type pokémon. This is because in the first games, Pokémon Red and Blue, dragon-types pretty easily outclassed most other pokémon. As such, there were only three in the game (and all in one evolutionary family, at that). Charizard was the final form of one of the available starter pokémon, Charmander, and it would be more than a little broken if you were given something so overwhelmingly powerful right from the start. As it is, Charmander is typically the starter you choose if you want the early game to be a little more challenging.

Goomy, the little blob on the left, is a new pokémon introduced in Generation VI. He’s a straight-up dragon-type, and eventually evolves into a somewhat dragon-esque thing, but really it looks like some kind of horribly mutated Yoshi. I don’t know, I think it might be this generation’s joke pokémon? Only it doesn’t suck? Who even knows what Game Freak is thinking anymore.

This has been your Pokémon Fact of the Day. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

A Pokémon Halloween

I’m a pokémaniac; we’re all clear on that, right? Good.

So I’ve been enjoying Pokémon Y as much and often as I can, having just finished the main story. Now it’s on me to travel across the land of Kalos, searching far and wide for all the little monsters that I haven’t forced into slave labour caught yet. And there are a lot of them this time around. Generation Six was fairly stingy with the new ones, with the total Gen VI pokémon numbering less than 70. That still brings our total to a rather robust 718. Which is, at the same time, too many and not enough.

Now, the thing you need to know is that pokémon design is a very, very small part of the game. Not even something I think about often. However, I recently read an article that highlighted a few of the “best” designs of this generation. This article, in fact! It’s a pretty good read, and very funny. I also agree with most of his points (Tyrunt/Tyrantrum are amazing), he forgot something, so I stole this DeviantArt picture from a Google Image Search to illustrate the point I have to make.

Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist are my absolute favourite new pokémon of this generation. Combination grass- and ghost-types, they fill a niche in my team that I’ve never really bothered with. I don’t think I’ve ever used a ghost-type pokémon regularly before, and only during the last generation did I start to warm up to any grass-types (Abomasnow and Simisage).

Design-wise, they’re beautiful. Little Pumpkaboo is the most adorable little guy you’ve seen; some sort of ghosty-bat-thing riding around on a jack-o-lantern. Or mabye the jack-o-lantern is its body? Who knows for sure? And who cares? Just look at that cute little frown! You’ve gotta love that! I just wanna give him a big ol’ hug <3 <3 <3

Pumpkaboo, also, has the best name ever. It’s fun to say and write!

Usually when pokémon grows up, they get pretty ugly. Gourgeist, luckily, does not suffer that fate. Gourgeist is pretty darn cute too! A ghost with pants made out of a lack-o-lantern and hands made out of hair. It doesn’t look quite as huggable as Pumpkaboo, but at least Gourgeist can hug back.

The very special trait that Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist have that no other pokémon species have is that they can come in four different sizes: small, average, large, and super. The larger sizes are stronger and have more HP, but the smaller ones have the benefit of a higher speed stat.

The only big drawback to Pumpkaboo is that you have to trade it to make it evolve into Gourgeist. Which means that you have to have a friend who plays Pokémon to get the more powerful monster. Fortunately, all you need to do is trade it. No fancy items or experience levels necessary.

As far as battle goes, my Gourgeist (who hasn’t left my team since I caught him) rocks Leech Seed, Trick-or-Treat, Seed Bomb, and Shadow Ball. Leech Seed is a move that drains an opponents health each turn and then heals Gourgeist. Seed Bomb and Shadow Ball are pretty standard attack moves, of the grass- and ghost-type respectively.

Trick-or-Treat is my favourite move of the bunch though, What it does is give the opposing pokémon the ghost type. This is great because ghost-type pokémon are weak against ghost-type attacks (don’t ask). So using Trick-or-Treat and then Shadow Ball enables Gourgeist to do a huge amount of damage to pretty much any other pokémon. The best part of it all is that Trick-or-Treat’s attack animation is a bunch of ghosts swarming the enemy. It’s pretty great!

Now all I have to do is go back out into the wilds and catch me a lady Pumpkaboo. Then, I’ll be able to start breeding ’em and create my invincible Gourgeist army! Hooray!

A Ninja Turtles Halloween

I wish I could get into Halloween more, I really do. It’s my second-favourite holiay and my first-favourite season, so why don’t I go more crazy over it? Money, mostly. It’s hard to buy up all the mummy-themed candy and pumpkin-shaped decorations when you’re living paycheque to paycheque. But I can still justify spending a few bucks here and there on some cool stuff.

To that end, when the Halloween season begins, I like to make trips down to the square and check out the Shopper’s Drug Mart to see what they’ve got. It’s a bit of a gamble, as the popular stuff it usually marked up like crazy at Shopper’s, but if you’re shopping outside the box you’re fairly likely to find something cool for a decent price.

Like this bag of Ninja Turtles candy, for example. Two dollas for this bag. That is not only decent, but a pretty great price in my book. Plus I bought it mostly because I wanted to take pictures of it, so that’s one more box checked off on the “candy for trick-or-treaters” list*.

The price made me happy, but what made me sad is that this is the only Ninja Turtles candy I’ve seen so far this season. Granted, I haven’t been watching like a hawk, but this is the kind of thing that should stand out to me. I was expecting a little more TMNT love on Halloween, as Nick’s Ninja Turtles have their faces plastered on damn near everything, so why put on the brakes for Halloween candy?

The bag unsurprisingly contained exactly what it claimed: suckers and candy lumps. “Soft center pops” is kind of a weird way to put it, don’t you think? Truthfully, I don’t, but I was trying to come up with something more interesting for this paragraph than complaining about how blurry that picture came out.

The “candy chews” are about as boring as you’d expect. They’re just that regual old block of coloured sugar with a tiny tire track down the middle. But this time, wrapped in Ninja Turtles! Yes, that’s enough to get me excited about these candies. What can I say? I’m easy.

It’s notable that despite their cheaply-mass-producedness, these sugar lumps are not bad. They aren’t a candy I’d actively seek out, but they’re edible. So when I find one in a surprise bag a dozen years down the line, and when it crumbles to dust as soon as I open the wrapper, I will know that at one point, these candies were pretty decent. And that will be my light in the darkness. Or something.

The suckers are less good, but then again, I have a tendency to hold suckers to a higher standard. The truth of the matter is that I’m poor because my wife and I spend an exorbitant amount of money on gourmet lollipops. That’s also the reason that I have a hard time getting behind cheap little suckers like this, even though they really aren’t bad.

I do really like that picture though. It looks like the suckers are all wearing little capes.

I guess If I have to have any sort of final thought, it’s that I’m pretty disappointed in the candy chews. But of the candy types in the bag come in three different wrappers, but there are only two colours of chew to the three colours of suckers. Also the suckers are all different flavours and both chews taste the same. Tsk tsk.

*Yes, I ate all the candy I opened and fondled. The rest is for trick-or-treaters.

Tactical Disadvantage: Golgorand Execution Site

Over the last couple months, I’ve been slowly playing through Final Fantasy Tactics. The original PS1 version, at that. I’ve never managed to finish this version of the game, and working my way through it, it’s not overly difficult to see why.

What is overly difficult is getting past a few choice battles. The first is near the end of Chapter 2, and places you in a battle that can seem unwinnable for a new player. Up until now, you’ve been in mostly fair fights. You’ll have seen all of the basic classes, and had mostly fair fights. In this fight, you’re pitted against a squad of eight to your five characters, which features three knights, two archers, and two of a new enemy: time mages. There’s also a special “boss” character, but let’s look at the normal guys first.

The archers are going to be fairly benign. Or at least, they’ll seem that way compared to the danger the rest of the enemies pose. They don’t have much in the way of attack power yet, and arrows are generally easier to evade than physical attacks if you’re equipped properly. At least it seems that way to me. They can use some weaker charge attacks, but that charge time gives you an opening to close in on them and attack or prep a healing spell before they actually hit you. You can also cancel the charge attacks by knocking the archers with Dash or Throw Stone, making them even less threatening.

The knights are probably the biggest direct threat. They do huge damage, and have a lot of HP, which generally means that you’re going to have to use a few turns to knock each of them out. That is, assuming that they don’t block your attacks. I find that these knights are especially fond of trying to break your equipment, so be wary of that. Black magic is a decent way to both carve off huge chunks of their HP and circumvent those pesky shields, but if they get close to your mage, he/she is pretty boned.

Compounding this issue are the time mages. While not immediately dangerous, the two time mages here sling Haste and Slow like there’s no tomorrow. Haste is less of an issue, because it only affects one enemy, but when they start Slowing your guys, that means anyone affected will probably take twice as many hits before getting to act. At that rate, they might not even get a chance. The worst part is that the time mages are up on an archway, so you’ve got to climb up there if you’re not targeting them with magic, basically guaranteeing them time to inflict Slow on you. That and they aren’t nearly as squishy as they should be.

The biggest hurdle in this battle, however, is Gafgarion. A Dark Knight, he’s got a tidy bundle of HP and high attack power. More importantly, he’s got a special attack called Shadowblade that hits hard and actually heals him for as much damage as he caused. This is a huge problem, as it’s hard to deal enough damage to him to overcome the healing he gets from it each turn.

Taking out Gafgarion should always be first priority. The other units are numerous and troublesome, but none of them can heal themselves as efficiently as Gafgarion. My personal favourite strategy is to have a white mage with Regenerator as a reaction ability and Holy. Stick her under the arch, and right off the bat cast Holy on Gafgarion, which should be able to go off before anyone can hit her. Holy will take down Gafgarion in one hit, but the white mage’s MP will likely be drained, so I keep a Monk next to her to use Chakra and recover some MP ASAP.

Of course, FFT offers an endless variety of ways to tackle any battle, but that’s my favourite way to start this one off. Summons would probably have a similar effect, but who even uses summoners anyway?

The rest of the battle will be tricky, but not quite as difficult once the main damage-dealer is gone. I would recommend trying to take out the knights as quickly as possible. If you’re rocking a knight yourself, Weapon Break + Concentrate is a fairly good strategy, as breaking their swords will make them mostly useless. I think they can still use their Break skills with their swords broken, but at the very least, they won’t be doing much in the way of damage anymore. They might even decide to retreat instead of engaging your troops with their bare hands.

The archers should probably be your next priority, but you can ignore them until the end, because they’re dumb and weak. I generally save the time mages for last, despite their buffs being one of the biggest threats in the fight. Really, if they’ve got no teammates to Haste, they aren’t going to be much danger to your well-being.

Agrias is a great teammate to bring into this battle, having just recruited her as a full party member after the previous battle. If you take a little time to earn her another Holy Sword skill or two before you enter this battle, all the better. Saving up the 500 JP for Crush Punch is the best bet, as it has an added benefit of possibly killing the target instantly, but her default Stasis Sword skill has a chance to inflict Stop. It’s not quite as good in the long run, but keeping even one enemy from doing anything for a couple turns amounts to a lot of breathing room in this particular fight. The bonus effects don’t stick often enough to be reliable, but all of her Holy Sword skills do pretty great damage for this point in the game.

It’s worth noting that since Agrias is not a real party member and Mustadio has gone off to do his own thing, this is the first battle where you don’t have a guest character to bump up your number of guys on the field. They’re not always very smart, but at least it’s nice to have that extra lump of HP eating hits, and without the threat of having him/her vanish forever if you take too long to revive them. You can really feel the lack of a guest here.

I also like having a geomancer for this fight. Elemental skills don’t do a ot of damage, but they still aren’t pathetically weak yet. There is a lot of stone here, and that gives you the Carve Model effect, which may petrify an opponent. It may be a little more efficient to just bring an oracle instead and cast the Petrify spell, but oracle is one of those classes that I never really bother to use.

I also always try to have Ramza unlock the ninja class by this point, as the speed boost and innate Two Swords ability are super handy tricks to have up your sleeve. You won’t be able to buy any actual ninja swords yet, which kind of undermines its usefulness, but it’s always a good idea to earn ninja for one or two units ASAP.

Again, FFT lets you play pretty much any way you want, but I always stick to the same patterns when I play it, and the above thoughts describe the way I always try to tackle this fight. Some people have fun doing it in different ways each time, but I’m a creature of habit.

I’ll post some thoughts on other tough battles in the future. Think of Tactical Disadvantage as my own sort of rip-off of Parish’s Anatomy of a Game series, just not quite as in-depth.

(Remember, this is written with the original FFT in mind! There may be some things that don’t align properly if you’re applying it to The War of The Lions port on PSP or iOS!)

Chocolate boos

There isn’t nearly enough Halloween going on here, so have this: a fun picture of spooky chocolate bars. Also pictured: 7-11’s most demanding slogan.

Really, outside of the punny names, they’re nothing special. Even then it’s a 50/50 split. Kit Kat didn’t change at all, it just has a picture of a cat on it. And Scaries doesn’t sound enough like Smarties to constitue as even somewhat clever. Coffin Crisp and scAero are pretty damn great though. I wish they were called that all year long.

I didn’t actually buy any of these, hence the picture taken in 7-11. I don’t really care for Nestle chocolate bars, and I think the only one that’s changed at all are Scaries, which are coloured orange and brown insted of rainbow.

Seriously, how great is scAero? There are very few words that allow you to put a capital letter in the middle of them, and that’s something I really respect. And no, products with a lowercase “i” or “e” tacked on the front of their names do not count.

On Pop-Tarts and sock puppets

I was going to start this post with an “if you’ve been reading this blog for a while” intro, but I feel like I do that a lot. Maybe even too much? Or maybe I don’t and just think that I do? I have no idea!

Anyway, there’s no doubt in my mind that as a person who has spend much of his life being perceived by others as “creative,” I am not nearly creative enough. Oh sure, now and then a spark will ignite and I’ll pop out something that shows a little thought, but mostly I just coast on doing the same thing that the people I see as inspirations do, but with my own half-assed twist.

I thought my Pop-Tarts Review videos were pretty creative, even if there are a dearth of people with the same idea on YouTube. The whole project started because I just needed an outlet for my silliness (God help you if you take those videos seriously), because I find it hard to express directly to other people. I don’t even really like talking to people about the Pop-Tarts videos, because it makes me feel embarassed and weird.

Of course, as time dragged on, I got kind of bored with the whole idea, and felt like it needed a shot in the arm. That’s when I developed Sockstopher.

 
Sockstopher is… not the grand slam I was hoping he’d be. Oh, people like him alright, and that was always the goal, but his video is one of the less popular in the series, as far as the view counter goes. Whether this is because I’m a bad puppeteer or because people are just getting tired of the whole Pop-Tarts Review schtick, I don’t know.

I really like Sockstopher though. I think he’s a fun character to have around, and I’ve been desperately trying to find a way to work him into more stuff. I just haven’t been able to find a good fit for him yet. I do have one plan for him, but it requires a box of Pop-Tarts that I don’t have.

On the whole, the production side of the Pop-Tarts Review series has come to a stall because I have run out of flavours and so far the few people who have claimed that they’d bring me some when they take a trip down to the States have flaked. I’m not offended or anything because I’m asking for handouts here, but I’d be eternally grateful if someone actually followed through.

I do have a few more episodes that just need to be uploaded, if you’re into that sort of thing. Problem is, my internet speed has been unfairly chopped down to a fraction of what it once was, and those 5ish-minute videos now take like two hours each to upload. It’s pretty ridiculous. Hooray for capitalism!

Something about momentum

Last weekend was delicious Thanksgiving long weekend for us Canadians, but the awesome dinners I got three days in a row are actually the least incredible things that happened over the weekend.

Not to downplay those dinners, of course. Many people worked hard to prepare them, and I appreciate all that effort. In fact, you might even say that I give them my thanks for stuffing me so full that I literally rolled out of bed on Tuesday morning.

The big news, as you might be aware, was that Pokémon X and Y launched on Saturday. I was so damn excited about them, in fact, that my youngest brother and I decided to attend the midnight launch at our local used games store. Wifey tagged along for the ride too, but I was not able to convince her to start her own journey with Pokémon. Some day…

We figured it’d be a pretty low-key thing, because I guess neither of us know many Pokémon players in the city. Also, like I said, it’s a little local place. But the turnout was pretty amazing! I’d say that there were at least 60 or 70 people there. Which is low-key compared to the official Nintendo launch event in Toronto, but still way more than we’d expected. There wasn’t much more to the evening than waiting in line for half an hour and then merrily skipping out of the store with games in hand, but it was still a pretty fun experience.

And so that’s what I did all weekend when I wasn’t out Thanksgiving binging.

Except for Monday night, which was just wonderful enough to outshine a new Pokémon game as the best part of my long weekend. Yes, you read that right. And that totally awesome thing was the opportunity to go see Joe Satriani.

I first heard that he would be playing here back in the summer, but there was no way that I could justify dropping enough cash for tickets. I so desperately wanted to go, as I’ve been a Satch fan since the very first time I heard “Surfing With the Alien” and he was easily on my top 5 list of concerts to see. (The rest: Matt Good again, Tom Petty, Tonight Alive, and Go Radio)

A miracle happened though, and my in-laws bought me tickets for my birthday. It was way more than they should have spent, but it is quite possibly the best birthday gift I’ve ever received. At the very least it’s neck-and-neck with Life and an NES.

It doesn’t really need saying, but the concert was fantastic. I didn’t recognise a lot of the songs because I don’t have the new record (Unstoppable Momentum), but maybe that’s even better, as I got to experience a bunch of material for the first time live. “Satch Boogie” and “Surfing With the Alien” were in the set, and that’s all I could really ask for. And the encore… oh, the encore. Let’s just say that even my wedding day may not have been as emotional a day as the day I was actually in the damn crowd for “Crowd Chant.”

I don’t go to very many concerts, but the ones I go to are so damn good. And now that that’s all said, I have to get back to work. And by “work”, I mean “Pokémon.” Because I totally don’t type these things out at work.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

You’re going to have to bear with me, internet. I want to talk about Monster Hunter again.

Let’s begin with the basics. The Monster Hunter series is all about fighting giant beasts, and is pretty much a game built around hectic, exciting boss battles. Yes, it includes some smaller enemies too, but they’re like the basil on the tomato soup that is the rest of the game: they add a little flavour, but aren’t what you came for. You’re there to bring down huge, fearsome beasts and then turn them into pants. It’s even more fun when you’re doing it with your friends, so much so that it’s the only video game that I actually have a desire to play with people online.

Victory in Monster Hunter requires what I call the Three P’s: preparation, patience, and practice. It’s not a game for people who can’t be arsed to earn their victory. There is no coasting in Monster Hunter, and there is no easy mode. If you’re going to win, you need to make sure you know what you’re doing. Triple-checking your supplies before you head out on a hunt isn’t just helpful, it’s nearly required. You need to study your enemy’s movement and attack patterns to find weaknesses and openings. Familiarity with the terrain in each map is just as important as being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen weapon. Long story short: Monster Hunter requires a huge investment of time and effort on the player’s part, and that’s what I love most about it.

Most games, especially those of the current generation, you can just turn on and play if you’ve got even a basic knowledge of video games. Monster Hunter is not at all like that. If you boot up a Monster Hunter game and expect to get just another action game, you’ll be eating a healthy serving of humble pie in no time. These are complicated games, and you need to take the time to learn them before you’ll get anywhere. Each game starts with a rather lengthy tutorial in your basic survival skills like item gathering, meat cooking, and small monster slaughter before you even get a whiff of a real hunt. While these might seem like boring little subsystems that aren’t so important that they need to be forced on you, it turns out that they are absolutely essential.

Continue reading Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

4 Crazy Chip Flavours!

I guess it’s a Canadian thing, so if you’re a foreign reader you may not have heard of it, but Lay’s currently has a contest running. It is, unsurprisingly, a contest to create a new flavour of chips for them to produce. At current, we’re about a month away from the end of the contest, and the four finalist flavours have been in stores for a while now. Since July, I guess?

Fact of the matter is that since I shun any social media that doesn’t involve me and I don’t spend any time in the chips aisle anymore, I didn’t notice these new flavours until a couple weeks ago. I just happened to randomly stumble upon one of them while out with the wife getting faux Slurpees. I used to be really crazy about trying each and every new potato chip flavour, and since that compulsion still exists deep inside of me, I went absolutely nuts just seeing the first one sitting there by its lonesome.

Now after all that embellishment, try to imagine how I felt when I looked at the back of the bag and saw that there were three more new flavours to hunt down. Suffice to say, I needed a change of pants. It’s not often that I get to enjoy the thrill of the junk food hunt like I used to, and knowing that those flavours were out there somewhere made me feel like my life had a real purpose  At the very least, it took me back to a time when hunting down article fodder was half the fun.

So I guess you’re all writhing in your seat there, wondering which of the new flavours I found first. You don’t care for the anecdotes; you just want the cold, hard, facts. Well tough. The anecdotes are important to my process and to the total word count. They’re never going to go away, so you might as well just learn to enjoy them.

Continue reading 4 Crazy Chip Flavours!