Pokémon – Page 3

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2022

~ Game Over ~

Hachiemon (GBA) – Do you remember Hachiemon? I finally went back and completed it (let’s play videos are on the way). I am bemused by the fact that I wrote an article about it, but had only played the first two stages.

Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen (PC) – Like Hachiemon above, I replayed this for a YouTube series. But also because I’ve been itching to play it again. I think I liked it even more the second time around!

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch) – Definitely in my top three Kirby games. It’s still too fresh to say exactly where it lands on the scale, but it’s a contender, that’s for sure. The migration to 3D worked out great, and the new features are almost all excellent. Such a fun, adorable game!

Ragnarock (Oculus) – There’s no story mode or anything, so it’s not really a “game over” kind of game. Also I don’t usually bother to include rhythm game here, but this is a new one. I really like it.

~ Progress Notes ~

Triangle Strategy (Switch) – Chapter 12

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (PS5) – Terra Tortura

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) – Looking for one Adam Smasher.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: February 2022

~ Game Over ~

Vampire Survivors (PC) – This game is still in Steam Early Access, so it’s likely not really over, but I’ve won a few rounds and unlocked everything, so… yeah. You can read more of my words about it here.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Switch) – A complete revamp like this is exactly what the kinda-sorta stale Pokémon franchise needed. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s still so much fun and I hope that Game Freak makes another one in this style, but with just a little more polish. I was going to write a full review, but then wrote about potatoes instead.

Horror Adventure (PS4) – So bad that my PS5 refused to run it. Quite possibly the worst $2 I’ve spent on an indie horror game, and I feel like that’s saying a lot! The gravest sin it commits is having terrible controls: your character doesn’t always move in the direction you press the stick, and the turning speed is atrociously slow and cannot be changed. At least it only took 20 minutes to play through.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64) – I haven’t played this game since it was released on Xbox 360 back in 2008, and it was nice to re-visit. For the most part, it holds up pretty well, but some camera improvements would be appreciated.

The Sinking City (PS4) – Many words ~~coming soon~~.

Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB) – Perusing my 3DS library after the notice that the 3DS eShop is going to be shut down, I decided to finally play this. It’s the only Donkey Kong game by Rare that I’ve never played before. It sticks a lot closer to DKC2 than Donkey Kong Land did to the original DKC.

~ Progress Notes ~

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) – Side-jobbin’.

Potatoes… but not as you know them

There are a lot of things to say about the newest game in the Pokémon series, Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Alas, those things will likely have to be said by others, because I only want to talk about one very tiny aspect of the game today.

In this game, there is a character named Beni. He runs the Jubilife Village’s restaurant, and apparently makes a mean potato mochi. His potato mochi is so mean, in fact, that every time you complete a task in the story, your character and their friends go to the restaurant to celebrate and stuff themselves with it.

Being an uncultured North American hermit, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of mochi before I started playing this game. I’d heard the word before, and I knew it was something you eat, but I didn’t really know what it was. I didn’t have a clue if it was traditionally made with potato, or if the potato variety was special. It was all a big mystery to me.

The image above is what sweet potato mochi is supposed to look like.

The image below is how my sweet potato mochi ended up looking.

Nintendo 3DS by the Hours

Following yesterday’s remembrances of the Nintendo 3DS, I decided to open up the records app and take a good, long look at all of the games I played on the system throughout its lifetime. I definitely could transcribe the entire list of 254 games, but I settled on just listing any game or app that I used for over ten hours. That’s still 74 different pieces of software!

Sunset of the Dual Screen

For each year that passes, I become more and baffled that this website still exists. Like, I have immense difficulty focusing on anything for more than about 10 minutes at a time, and a list of unfinished projects that could wrap around the Earth. How am I still doing this???

I don’t have an answer to that question. But Nintendo recently asked themselves a similar question, in relation to keeping the ol’ 3DS family of systems relevant. Their response was “We’re not.” and earlier this week, it was announced that the 3DS eShop will be shutting down in March of next year. To be more specific, you’ll no longer be able to make purchases at that point. Presumably, the shop will still exist so that people can still download all the games they’ve paid for. Presumably.

2021 Reflections: Part 4: The Runners-up.

“But Ryan!” you shout, incredulously “Where was Part 3??”

I’ll tell you where Part 3 is. It’s here. I just didn’t add it to the post title, because I didn’t want to. There you go. There’s no lost chapter or anything. Just me being silly and inconsistent.

Anyway, just for kicks, here is the list of video games that I had considered for my 2021 Top 10 list, but didn’t quite make the cut. I think that these are all great games, but they just didn’t affect me the same way that the winners did. I would absolutely recommend any game from this list.

Downfall (PC)
Ys Origin (Switch)
Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen (PC)
Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ The Final Chapter (PC)
Power Wash Simulator (PC)
Deltarune: Chapter II (PC)
Alisa (PC)
Kathy Rain: The Director’s Cut (PC)

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: January 2022

~ Game Over ~

Kathy Rain: the Director’s Cut (PC) – Probably my favourite point-and-click adventure game of all time, and there’s some tough competition! Features a good story, great characters, very good voice acting, and a complete lack of nonsense puzzle solutions. I think it says a lot that I had watched an LP of this one, yet still felt it necessary to play it myself.

Mega Man X (SNES) – Tradition demands it!

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PS4) – This is a Very Good Action RPG. It builds on the foundation laid by SEVEN and Memories of Celceta, and really did a great job of refining what made those games good. It also adds a number of quality-of-life features, a player-controlled camera, and a fishing mini-game! My only major beef is that the broken equipment that powers up for every so many monsters you kill was nerfed in this one.

Pokémon Shining Pearl (Switch) – Pokédex completed.

~ Progress Notes ~

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) – *shrug emoticon*

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Switch) – Unlocked third area.

Sinnoh woes

I’ve been playing a lot of Pokémon Shining Pearl lately, in an effort to complete the game’s Pokédex. Because going through all that trouble once for the original game just wasn’t enough for me, I suppose. Gotta do it all again!

And as I sat on my couch a few nights ago, grinding away countless hours to complete my checklist of digital creatures, it dawned on me that Sinnoh is not the worst region in the Pokémon series because of its HMs, or its confusing and inconvenient map. No, Sinnoh is a pain in the butt because it has, by volume, the highest number of stupid gimmicks for finding pokémon.

2021 Reflections: Part 1 of what will surely be many

I like that Nintendo sends out little summaries of your gaming statistics at the end of each year now. Well, I don’t like seeing the actual figure of hours I’ve wasted on video games, but I’m a big fan of data! Unfortunately, their 2021 website is a little less printscreen-friendly than it was in 2020, so you only get to see the highlights:

Keeping in mind that this is only effective as of December 14, so we can probably add another 10 hours of Breath of the Wild on there (nice).

Otherwise… shocking revelations! 48 hours of Fitness Boxing 2 is fine, but it should have been double that, in my opinion. I’ve really been slacking off as far as exercise goes, but it’s just so hard to care, you know? 47 hours in Monster Hunter Rise is nigh unbelievable to me. I typically log between 200-300 hours in any given MH game, and for my money, Rise is the most fun game in the series to date. So what gives? Probably too much Zelda.

The January spike would have been due mostly to Picross S4. March was when Monster Hunter hit, but I also spent what felt like forever playing Pixel Puzzle Makeout League. April was all about Ys Origin and Picross S5. August saw high numbers thanks to the plodding The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I spent a lot of time in October playing all of the games in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, and it’s safe to say that November and December were split between Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Shining Pearl.

How many of those would I have remembered if not for my handy-dandy month end posts? Fewer than you might think!

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2021

~ Game Over ~

Ys Seven (PC) – I wrote about how I was struggling a bit near the halfway point, but the difficulty of Nightmare mode kind of cleared up after that. At least until the final bosses, which required a heck of a lot of grinding to beat. Still a very good game, just not one you should play on the hardest difficulty setting.

The Room (PC) – Having no relation to the infamous movie of the same name, this is a game about solving a series of puzzle boxes. It was a lot of fun, though the puzzles were maybe a little bit on the easy side. Took less than two hours to complete all five chapters, and I look forward to playing the sequels.