Page 3 – Burning the midnight oil at noon

Have you played PokeDoku yet?

Since sometime around Xmas last year, I’ve been playing a little online game (almost) every single day. That game is PokeDoku – something of a twist on sudoku, where you fill in a grid with pokémon instead of numbers. It’s also only a 3×3 grid instead of sudoku’s traditional 9×9. It’s perfect for poop breaks!

How it works is along the top and left sides are six conditions. You have to select a pokémon for each cell that matches the two conditions that intersect on that cell. For example, in the top-left corner of the screenshot below, you’d need to choose a pokémon that is ice-type and can learn the move earthquake. Avalugg was an easy choice there: it’s obviously ice-type and is a big behemoth so it was a pretty safe bet that it could learn earthquake. Galarian Mr. Mime in the top-right corner, on the other hand, was a lucky guess since I knew it’s an ice-type but wasn’t sure if it has a secondary typing (it is in fact ice/psychic).

The screenshot above is actually a perfect example because it uses one of almost every kind of condition; though there are also conditions for each region, as well as starters, mega evolutions, and gigantamax forms. Technically you could also say it doesn’t show “mythical” or “ultra beast” or “paradox” either, but let’s be honest: those are all just different ways of saying “legendary.”

Loop Track: A TE Film Review

I happened to catch a glimpse of a very distressing illustration while clearing my Facebook notifications the other day. But like, distressing in a good way. In the way that, when I learned that said image was inspired by a film called Loop Track, I immediately looked up the most convenient way to watch it (Tubi). And then I proceeded to watch it that very same evening.

Loop Track is a horror/suspense movie about a weird, little guy that goes on a hike through a New Zealand forest. New Zealish? New Zealandian? I don’t know. It’s irrelevant and this bit works better in VO. Anyway, off the bat, we learn that this guy is very on edge and isn’t terribly interested in any sort of human interaction. He’s also poorly equipped for the expedition: he starts off the hike in a sweatshirt and jeans, and is visibly winded once he reaches the first trail marker, which is only 10 minutes from the parking lot. In fairness, he does at least have a big ol’ pack of supplies with him and apparently the nights get very cold, but still… I can’t help but think that you’d be so much better off without that sweatshirt, man.

After barely managing to avoid coming into contact with a couple other hikers on the trail twice, our hero is accosted by an excessively friendly man named Nicky. Nicky seems like a nice enough dude, but completely fails to catch the hint that our main character would rather hike alone and insists that they continue on together. At this point, about 20 minutes in, we finally learn that the main character’s name is Ian.

Super Mario’s Land

You may have seen this already, but this one’s live on Rumble now, and watching it there will (potentially) give me money. So… do the thing??

Jumping Ship (for fun and profit)

For reasons, I’ve begun to re-upload some of my video content over on Rumble. Apparently it’s all monetizable from the get-go there, so while I don’t really expect to make any money from this venture, it would be great if you’d go over there and just like… set one of my videos on repeat for a while? Please?

Here’s the first episode of Ryan’s Pop-Tarts Review. ‘Member the first episode?

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: June 2024

~ Game Over ~

Cookie Cutter (PC) – Got this one in a bundle, and it’s definitely been one of those games that came out of left field and is awesome. A metroidvania with excellent 2D artwork and a very fun brawler-like combat system. Too bad the game is bugged in a way that makes 100% completion impossible!

Mega Man (GB) – All the Game Boy Mega Man games got dumped onto Nintendo Switch Online recently, so I played them all! This one is incredibly basic and there’s not much to say about it other than hey owned this as a kid!

Mega Man II (GB) – My friend owned this when we were little kids, and it was the first Mega Man game I ever beat. That should be a good indication of how surprisingly easy it is. An absolute cakewalk, and not all that fun.

Return of the Video

I don’t know if you follow my YouTube channel at all -and if you don’t, that’s fine- but I took a couple months off from posting anything in April and May. Mostly because I was starting to lose the passion for “creating” video “content.” Putting all those hours into editing just wasn’t feeling worth it for the pithy amount of views I get. But I’m back now! For how long? Nobody can truly say, but I do have videos lined up to at least midway through August, so there will be new stuff going up over there for at least that long.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been going on at TE-Video throughout June:

A Thing That I Did

It’s been a while!

Nintendo Direct 6.18.2024

Honestly, I kinda lost interest in doing these Nintendo Direct play-by-plays a while ago, but this is very likely the last one where the Switch will be the main focus. In that case, I figured why not? Let’s a go!

Mario & Luigi: Brothership – Sweet! I know some people were predicting a remake, and I certainly wasn’t expecting an entirely new game! It seems to have a pretty wide variety of original characters and enemies, which is great! And the series’ art style looks wonderful in true 3D!

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition – I’m just really not into this. It’s interesting, yes, but I’d honestly rather just play the actual games instead of the parceled-out challenges.

Fairy Tail 2 – Anime nonsense that I don’t care about.

History of TE: 2004

Did you know that June 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Mega Man Battle Network 4? Well I did. Or at least, I had a hunch, since for whatever reason my brain has been laser-focused on memories of playing that particular game – despite the fact that I didn’t really like it.

But I’m not here to type a retrospective about MMBN4. No, sir. I already did that almost a decade ago, and haven’t revisited the game since.

Today I want to just rattle off a few interesting points about 2004. It was a big year for me! Lots happened! Firstly, there was the MMBN4 release. That was big, but not for the reason you think! See, I played the Japanese ROM for a while before the NA version came out (there was a six-month delay), and because it’s an RPG, the fact that I couldn’t read Japanese was kind of a big deal. So I started trying to tech myself katakana. It obviously didn’t really take, but I was able to learn enough to read some text in the game, and I still remember a handful of the characters to this day! I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that the best part of MMBN4 is that it made me engage in self-improvement, in some tiny way.

Tunic Rocks, Give it a Chance!

Probably the only thing that I universally dislike about Dark Souls and the plethora of copycats that followed in its tracks is the difficulty level. And I don’t even dislike that they’re (generally) hard games, rather I have a problem with why they’re hard games. I don’t have great reaction speed, which is a problem because the combat in these games almost always revolves around nailing split-second timing to dodge enemy attacks. It gets even worse when enemies have several attacks with similar tells-most of which are only several frames long-and you have to guess which one it’s going to be and respond in kind.

It’s frustrating! I don’t like it and wish that action RPG developers would come up with a way to make the same combat system a little more player-friendly..

Oh, wait, that already exists, and it’s called The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (Or Tears of the Kingdom, if you’d prefer.)

Anyway, a very long blog post about this exact thing is why I ignored Tunic for a very long time. But then my youngest brother played it and could not stop praising it, which made me wonder if maybe I’d made the wrong call. And then Tunic was offered up as one of PS+’s free games for May 2024, so I decided to give it a spin. Nothing to lose when something’s free, right?