Okay, I Really Can't Stop Thinking About Pokemon

I admit it - ever since it was announced last week, I've had Pokemon on the brain and I just can't help but wonder at just what X & Y are going to offer, even if I might suspect the answer is "Not much".  I made it very clear that I am not expecting much from the newest iteration of the series, but I am not the type who cannot hope and yet remain skeptical at the same time.  I would want nothing more than to learn that X & Y are doing big things for the franchise as a whole, and learning that it does would make me incredibly enthused for the games - I'm just simply not putting any money on that.  I can be happily surprised again, but I'll try to not let myself be bitterly disappointed any longer.  Because that just makes me angry in the end and it still bugs me that I loathe Black/White with the vehemence that I do.  (To the point where I wrote off White/Black 2 completely on announcement and have only now, with a pokemon itch to scratch, considered picking it up)

After thinking about it for literally the last hour, I discovered that it's quite hard to quantify just -what- I expect, what I -desire- out of a Pokemon game, which is a bit confusing to me.  I suppose it's just a judgment call on my part, something that I just know when I'm playing it, but there are a few elements that are kind of given.  Unfortunately, the bulk of them have sort of come up on the "What I wish this had" list rather than "what makes it good" list for the last few versions.  These features are...honestly, more or less what Gold and Silver offered that every version since has managed to neglect which astounds me in ways that similarly astound me.  Just astounded all around here.  You would think, after getting it right (and then remaking those games, consequently still getting it right) that it would be obvious, but no, Game Freak is just concerned with being absolutely confusing.

The biggest thing that Gold/Silver did, without question, was allowing you to go back to Kanto and explore the entire region that the first game was in, as well as offering additional story about not only Gold/Silver but the aftermath of Red/Blue.  Even that's not -perfect- by any means since you can just blow through towns/gyms in mere minutes without having much of a reason to -not- do that, but goddamn if that wasn't brilliant back then, and not being part of every game going forward is insanity, pure and simple.  There are ways that you can do this, shut up, I don't care okay.  It was 'easy' in Gold/Silver because Kanto is literally right next to Johto and they're connected at the Indigo Plateau or something, but there was also a train.  Trains go long distances.  I'm sure Pokemon worlds are far enough technology-wise that airplanes are also a thing that exist since we literally have machines that do long-distance teleportation of organic creatures.  Or, you know, they could just do human teleporters too, but I suppose that would just be silly.

The other stuff Gold/Silver did, Day-specific events, special pokeballs from resources you could gather, Day/Night Cycle is all stuff that has been in some of the games since (though not all of them which is also confusing) and it helps tug you into the 'world' which is a nice thing.  Really, it would be nice if they amped those up a little, giving you a little more to do in post-game.  Because let's be honest, Post-Game has not been as good since Gold/Silver and that's something that needs to be rectified.  Even when you were done with Gold/Silver's post-game (hitting all the gyms, some events, challenging Red), there wasn't really anything else major or even close to do and that's kind of a common issue.  Get over that Animal Crossing hump of only giving about half an hours worth of content after you've climbed to the top of the mountain - keep the game engaging even beyond the end of it.  I would -kill- for that in a pokemon game.

I mean, I, like a lot of people I'm sure, spend the post-game getting together an finalizing a 'team' that I like and trying to fill up the rest of the Poke'dex.  What this equates to is playing a meta game with yourself for how long you can stomach getting into pokemon battles over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until you're just done.  For no other purpose than meta-goals.  The game has, for all intents and purposes, simply left you to your own machinations with the equivalent of a Jack-in-the-Box.  In all actuality, most games do this, it's just that most games are also a little more clever with their use of the afore mentioned Jack-in-the-Box, so I would like to see Pokemon make this leap.  Hide the obvious behind a different wall or something.  Mini-Quests or trainers that actually move around the map zones and re-challenge your or -something- that gives you something in the short-term that helps you get toward your long-term so your long-term isn't just doing the same thing for twenty hours.

I think my point was that I kind of hope X & Y addresses this type of thing if not the other things I've mentioned in the past about Pokemon that has left it to sort of stagnate.  I really doubt it'll address any of them, of course, which is why I'm going in with expectations so low, but it would be nice, if nothing else.  We can all hope for these kinds of things, at least, since nobody else is going to step up to the plate and produce a competent Pokemon-like game for reasons that are completely beyond my understanding.  Regardless, I imagine I'll enjoy my time with X & Y as I really doubt it can get much worse than Black/White's offerings.  Being the lowest point in the series since Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (which is only redeemed by the stat split which was a damn good idea) makes the bar pretty low, I'd say.

So, I Have Put Time Into Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation

In my frantic attempts to continue getting last-minute play sessions with games that came out last year before the voting for Game of the Year is final (if anyone is wondering (you aren't), I go by the poll that goes around a few forums including the Penny Arcade one where I frequent, hence the absolute lateness) and I have to put these games into an order of some sort.  I will worry about that step when I come to it, because for now, I'm just trying to get a fairly good impression of the games that I have since there are...uh...at least four games that I have that I have not fully played that are eligible and that is going to be a difficult thing to juggle.  Thankfully, AssLib is the only one for the Vita (as I've played the hell out of the rest of the Vita games I currently have), so there's not a lot of swapping.  Of course, with the other three being PS3 games and the depressing discovery that I am completely out of HDD space for the installs for these games, it is....a challenge, to say the least.

Still, I put a good deal of time into AssLib today and I've got a pretty decent first impression of it, I should say.  I'm not quite sure what I was going into the game expecting and as such, I'm not quite sure what I'm walking away with so far, but it's lukewarmly positive at the very least.  Assassin's Creed is always a weird series for me, if that wasn't obvious already, so another iteration of it means that I will invariably find that it does not live up to the expectations I have for such a title, yet I will find its attempt adorable if not enthusiastic and nearing impressive.  So far, that is definitely where I would put AssLib, of course, which definitely puts it head and shoulders above the previous portable ventures which is, of course, like saying three fingers of scotch is heads and shoulders above a glass with orange juice and spit in it.  It is not a good compliment, is what I'm saying, because it is not a difficult task by any means.

AssLib is most certainly an Assassin's Creed game in more than just name and influence, and I daresay that the freerunning in this title is better than it has been in the entirety of the Ezio trilogy.  I'm not quite sure, of course, but so far, I've only accidentally jumped to my death for reasons beyond my comprehension once despite spending quite a good bit of time in the Slave and Assassin personas running around like crazy.  Combat is similar as well, despite having some of the repertoire of abilities dispersed through the different personas as well, subscribing to a whole as the sum of its parts ideal it seems.  And, surprising the ever-loving hell of me is the fact that I can, in fact, swim in this game without being desynched or without a sort of 'time limit' that is both arbitrary and ultimately ruins the fact that you -can- swim in the game.  All the factors, more or less, are there and that alone is pretty astounding.

The negatives of being an Assassin's Creed game in much the same vein as the others are also present with a couple exclusive to this game unfortunately.  The story seems tenuous and shallow, only told in little snippits here and there, as is the custom, which makes it rather easy to forget about and otherwise just not care about it.  The game is fairly notorious already in my mind for not knowing just what the hell it wants in that I've desynched thrice already for killing guards where I was not once told that I could -not- kill guards, and I can only surmise it was because I was detected.  Similarly, in those cases, I was not told that I was to remain undetected which, let's be honest, is a bit of a departure from the rest of the series.  The mini-games that are present, specifically the trade game, is underthought and more of a pain to get to than the Brotherhood missions were, though I suspect it will ultimately feel more rewarding once I really get the hang of it.  Specific to this game, however, is the absolutely terrible audio which has been needlessly compressed and it just sounds awful even with headphones (or perhaps especially with headphones) and really ruins any semblance of mood the game tries for.

Still, it is a rather enjoyable game for what it is, and I'm pretty glad that I'm getting into it.  The multiplayer is a whole other beast and I'll get into that another night, but the single-player is fairly solid so far despite my complaints.  It is, really, -as- solid as Brotherhood and Revelations were to me, which is certainly saying something while also stating that it's a bit of a mixed bag.  With any luck, that won't change for the worse, but I honestly doubt it will - the game is beginning to unfold more and more now as I play it and what I see is things that I like and that I want to see expanded on a little.  At the very least, it is immensely fun to run around in this game, since the engine is different, and I can make myself have some fun with that, as well as working air assassinations into my hit-and-run style.  Because goddamn if that is not fun in this game, then what is?

Hey, I Didn't Forget

I am 1 for 2 in terms of New Year's Resolutions.  This is a thing that is official that I've been meaning to bring up, just forgot about it until now.  Seeing as there's something of a weekend lull, and I only made it about ten minutes into Assassin's Creed 3:  Liberation after beating Persona 4 Golden, then this is a perfect time to discuss it, for it is a thing that is to be discussed.  Some of you might have been around last January when I set my second ever New Year's Resolution of making my own game that would be a board game, styled something after Metal Gear Ac!d because goddamn if I don't love those two games and cards.  Cocky off my recent resolution win of doing this blog, I aimed to shoot for the stars and, well, life kind of caught up to me.  So, at this point in time, I'm disappointed to say that I don't have anything close to a prototype of the game to play with, meaning I failed that one.

As a side thing, I always kind of figured that it might not have gotten quite finished, but I expected, at least, to be a little bit into the actual card-making process which is currently still a point off on the horizon.  I have characters and factions drawn up (so to speak) and I have some base mechanics considered, but that's about the bulk of it honestly which is not really indicative of a years-worth of work.  Of course, it's not technically a years-worth of work, since there were entire months where I just couldn't even consider working on it because of the stuff that has cropped up, but I don't aim to excuse it, really.  Not like I have to, really - I wanted to do something and then I didn't.  Big deal.  A good part of the excitement really came from being able to have something to share and that's not gone, so there's not too much of an issue.

In all reality, the only reason I bring it up at all is because I'm just going to be renewing that resolution for this year.  It's a bit lazy and a bit counter to the entire idea, but really, it's just a formality.  Things that people want to do, we do regardless of reason or anything like that - the whole concept of being a Resolution is just an attempt at galvanization towards a certain goal that is generally considered a larger thing than we might ordinarily contest.  So what all this means is that I -still- want to make my game, and that I -hope- to make strides toward that goal through this upcoming year.  With the knowledge gathered last year at just what kind of a task this is that I have at hand, I hope to make some better strides this year, since I -know- which way I'm going, it's just the getting there that's the problem.

The issue with actually sharing this project, I'm realizing, is foresight.  Both in whether I might want to sell this thing in the future and whether I could, were I of a mind to attempt to.  There's not a whole lot of protection in just posting things up on the internet and hoping nobody takes them, after all.  But that's a bridge I'll cross at some later point - I'm sure if I keep -some- of the information back, I'll still have something I can build on, so I'm not too fussed about it.  Whenever I can update it, I promise that I will, but that might be a while in the future here - I'm working on other things and dealing with life as it comes, after all.  I've got the whole of this year to mess around with, though, so I am anticipating -some- progress.  In fact, I'd say it's a little impossible that there won't be any.  So that's a thing!

Silliness

There is silliness afoot.  Silliness that is almost painfully stupid to encounter, and yet so inherently polarizing that it is just one of those things that you will never, ever be able to discuss without a vehemence showing up on at least one side.  It is a stupid argument, it is apparently big news lately, but that is the most I'm going to mention it.  Yes, I realize passive-aggressively talking about it is still talking about it and it's rather self-defeating, but we can't just brush this sort of thing off.  Neither, though, can we let ourselves be taken in and taunted with this obvious bait from folks who just don't know any better, unfortunately.  We can't play into the obvious traps and, at this point, the smart play is simply to express the correct amount of disgust and annoyance and simply move on for now.  As a diversionary tactic (which is what this is), all it requires is that it takes the heat off the point for long enough that everyone just moves on with nothing different because of it.  So, let's just move on.

I'm fairly sleepy tonight because of various things and that certainly doesn't help matters.  Following work, I lay in bed for an inordinate amount of time, worrying that I'm going to catch the thing that is going about.  I snoozed a little, but ultimately woke up once more, eager to actually do something.  Which means I debated whether to play Persona 4 Golden (as I have yet to beat it yet) or pop in Assassin's Creed 3:  Liberation to get a rough approximation of its charms, as Game of the Year voting time is upon us.  I have a couple games that I need to crunch with yet, despite the slight 'cheating' air I feel about it, and AssLib is one of those titles.  At the same time, however, I still really like Persona 4 Golden, and want to finish it, lest I fall out of the groove I've pleasantly run myself into.  I only have a little bit left, so I believe powering through it is what I will do, and hopefully I'll be enjoying stabbing mans before the weekend is up.

I briefly considered sharing a couple new songs I've been listening to as of late, but that will be a thing for another night.  For now, I'm simply going to enjoy said songs while looking over my notes for a short story I'm writing.

Oh, right.  I didn't mention that.  I am writing a thing.  It is probably going to be pretty good.  Depending on how it turns out, I might turn a few excerpts into posts here to share, but that too is a thing for another night.  This night is for the wonderful sounds of foreign pop music and yawning, apparently.  Because goddamn if I am not really still tired.

Wake-Up Club Finally Detailed....is Actually Interesting

So, whether it's seeing whether you can throw a rock higher or farther than your buddy, challenging yourself to perform a tedious task in the shortest amount of time possible or trying to think of as many comparisons as possible before moving on, we as a people can generally turn anything into a 'game' of sorts.  That is kind of a given and it's a pretty neat thing all told.  However, no matter how creative you are, or how out-there your ideas might be sometimes, there are certain things you just never assume will work as a game.  Like, let's just say for the sake of argument because clearly I am not getting to this in any sort of fashion, waking up.  How in the world could you turn the everyday occurrence of waking up in the morning (or afternoon) into a game?  The answer, it turns out, is challenging yourself to wake up at the same time as 11 other people.

The latest free App for the Playstation Vita, announced waaaaay back last year in April, is called Wake-Up Club and it turns the task of waking up into a thing that you get points for and that is kind of amazing in a silly way.  The app allows you to turn your Vita into an Alarm Clock on top of everything else and that is pretty much where the little meta-game of waking up begins.  You set your alarm, the alarm tone, choose a song to wake up to (the App comes with some and will actually offer more tunes later down the road in the form of DLC) and then go to sleep.  I....I don't have to explain how an alarm clock works, right?  I am pretty sure we all have a pretty firm grasp on this as a concept.  I'm just kind of reaching here, I realize, but that aspect of this whole thing is kind of self-explanatory.

The part -after- the alarm clock bit is the important part as it is where the Wake-Up Club begins.  At some point, I'm not quite sure if it's when you set your alarm, or during the night while you slumber, the App matches you up with 11 other people that have their alarm set for the same time and puts you all into a Wake-Up Club.  (Hence the name!)  When the alarm goes off, your Vita will wake up and I'm not sure if it bypasses the Lock Screen entirely or you still have to deal with that, but regardless, the alarm goes off and then you get back into the Wake-Up Club app somehow to see that your Avatar is bouncing around, taunting you in your newly awakened (or still half-asleep) state to touch it which will confirm to the rest of the club that you are awake.  All 12 avatars will be displayed in a manner much like the one you see above, with a clear indication as to who is a light sleeper and who is a long-term dozer.  The Playstation Blog post that details the app states that you can tap sleeping players Avatars to 'cheer' them into waking up, but I'm not sure what that means - perhaps it means a sound effect will add to the tone and tune, or perhaps it means absolutely nothing.

These 11 other people who are tenuously linked to you by virtue of wanting to be awake at the same point in time (I assume it adjusts for Time Zones, btw, so East Coast 9 AM would be West Coast 6 AM, allowing for easier matches at the expense of not being the same 'time' but the same 'moment') aren't just nameless, faceless placeholders, of course.  By clicking on anyone's avatar, you'll be able to check out some information on them, perhaps while you're waiting for them to wake up.  Things like their profile, basic stuff like that, but also their individual Wake-Up Club stats, like say, if they actually wake up on time, how long it usually takes to wake up, and the amount of times they've actually woken up relatively on time.  Of course, if you're just so swept up in this inseparable bond that you have forged with someone that you want to send them a Friend Request, you can do that as well, with all of this really going the distance to reaffirm why this is called a 'Social' app.

Wake-Up Club is definitely something of a weird thing as a concept, but weird does not exclude it from also being neat and/or useful.  At the very worst, this might end up as a sort of novelty that nobody keeps up with, but at its best, it could be something that is really helpful to a few people.  I'm a heavy sleeper myself and I know that I've had problems with alarms in the past, but I also sleep with my Vita off to the side of my bed, hooked up to the charging cable which means that I could, by all means, attempt using this.  I'm not convinced it'll work better, but I'm more than willing to give it a shot, because if it'll help me wake up when I actually want to wake up as opposed to an hour or so later, all the better.  As a free app, there's absolutely nothing you stand to lose by picking this up when it comes out next week, so if you're interested at all, go for it.  Who knows who you'll Wake-Up with?

wait, that sounds kind of creepy actually

Nvidia Announces 'Shield' Confuses Literally Everybody

So, there is honestly a little bit of an inordinate amount of news going on these days, and a big contributor to that is the International Consumer Electronics Show which has an inherent skew into gaming, though not a whole lot tends to come out of it if memory serves.  However, at least two big pieces of news, in a sense, have come out and the one that came out first was the announcement of Project Shield from Nvidia, you know, the graphic processor guys.  When you make graphics processors for PCs, the clear and obvious next step is Handheld Mobile Gaming and that is exactly what Nvidia has thrown down into.  I mean, it's so obvious.  Nvidia and I are truly of a like mind in this, a matter that makes absolutely every bit of sense as you would expect a big decision like this to have.

Lack of sense aside, this is still a rather big deal, ill-fated from the beginning or not.  This is being billed as a Handheld Gaming Device, meaning it is stepping directly in line with the 3DS, the Vita and the other "wow, why are you even..." handheld devices that have cropped up.  Much like those, this is going to be running Android, which seems to be on everything that doesn't come from Apple, Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, and also much like those, it doesn't seem to realize that the Android market is apparently undersized compared to iOS despite it being on every mobile thing (and the Ouya, remember that?  No?) that isn't an iDevice, Windows Phone, 3DS or Vita.  Still, perhaps devices like this will change that in the whole run of things, since, well, it's apparently an increasingly bright idea out there.

As for what this Shield is exactly, it's basically a big little controller that also happens to have a Five-inch screen that I am guessing is intended to clamshell on the controller bit itself, but I don't see that being a good idea.  The controller itself is styled after a regular controller, a little more 360 controller than anything (which makes sense, since the Microsoft 'official' PC controller is a 360 one) and has all the usual buttons you might expect, two sticks, plus a handful of strange other buttons (and Start/Select) where the clamshell screen is supposed to fold down at.  Again, perhaps not the greatest idea one could hope to have.  Whether this screen is going to be a touch screen or not is surprisingly up-in-the-air from what I can tell, as it certainly doesn't look like one and isn't in a great place to be one, but at the same time, running Android, you would think it -would- be, right?  Aside from that, it has all the other bells and whistles you could assume, and while it seems based on streaming, I assume it also has storage, but numbers aren't mentioned.

Streaming, as I said, seems to be a big deal with this device, tapping into the Remote Play technology that's been around for a while to allow you to play PC games on this, presumably in much the same way as the PSP/Vita allows as well as the Wii U, though hopefully from a further distance than the Wii U allows.  That much is fairly impressive if it works as flawlessly as one could hope - being able to take advantage of a PC's full power in visuals and such for a PC game on a handheld is something that we're not quite at yet, so even though this is sort of a 'mock' version of it, it's close enough to be a little excited about I think.  Though, I'm not sure just how much streaming will actually hamper what you get on the Shield, so it might be a bit early to consider the possibilities.  Still, mobile Far Cry 3, mobile Assassin's Creed (if you're not into Assassin's Creed 3:  Liberation for some stupid reason that is also dumb) and so on and so forth is a tantalizing prospect, provided the streaming works with -all- PC games, ones that are on Steam, Origin or otherwise, and not just some.

The big issues here are pretty simple:  reliability and price.  Make no mistake about it - this is going to be a powerful handheld, but powerful things, especially electronics and especially especially when related to things of a PC nature have a propensity towards unreliability, and this certainly tips the scales more than that I would say.  Still, maybe that's not so much an issue as the actual form factor of the device seems like it might be built to accommodate power at the expense of comfort.  Price is the sticking point, however as I doubt "being able to play your PC games for 5 hours* on a handheld" is going to translate directly into a rather high price point, though from everything you see here, that's precisely what you would expect.  What I expect, at least, as I just can't come up with a figure in my head that makes this cheap.  It's scheduled to release in the latter half of this year, so I imagine we'll get details before then, but by the time we do, I'm also imagining we'll have completely forgotten about this.  I will, most certainly.

Pokemon X & Y - Because Colors Are Last Gen

So, there was a -thing- this morning that I personally had no idea about, but it was like a Nintendo Direct thing, but specifically for Pokemon.  Everyone had anticipated some kind of big Pokemon announcement and would you believe it?  They got one.  The oddly named Pokemon X and Y were announced for the 3DS, slated for release this October worldwide.  Worldwide meaning everyone gets it in the same month, if not the same date which is honestly a little wild, especially for Nintendo and especially especially for a big release like this.  Still, it's a nice change of pace that I'm sure we won't be getting used to, simply a nicety for Pokemon fans all around.

The thing to state right off the bat is that X/Y is the next iteration of the Pokemon franchise, if that much wasn't clear enough.  So in the stable of Red and Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl and finally Black and White, we have X and Y as the next step, showing that there just really isn't too much of a pattern and I think Game Freak just points at something whenever they need a new name.  Featured in the video through this Joystiq link is the announcement trailer which includes some footage of the game itself as well as the first looks at the threw new Starter Pokemon for this go at it.  They are Chespin, the leaf starter which is supposed to be....some kind of furry little animal I'm sure, Fennekin the fire starter which is also a Fox and I am not going to make a firefox joke and finally Froakie, the water starter that is a frog.  So, tick one box for the Pokemon Formula.

Also shown off in the trailer were two obvious Legendary pokemon of which I honestly don't give a shit.  Tick off another box.  Our protagonists come in boy and girl variations as per normal and appear, well, young, so tick off another box.  Also, it generally looks like you're confined to 'Routes' and cities as per any other game, despite the new-found third dimension as it were, so one more box. What I'm getting at here, if it wasn't obvious, is that I'm less and less impressed with the trailer as I watch it because it really does just adhere to the Pokemon Formula as it were, just with a shiny new coat of 3D paint.  The world paint, not the 'ooo it's like it's jumping out of the screen' paint, despite it ultimately having that as well because 3DS.  That new coat of paint and a plethora of even newer than new pokemon isn't going to make this any better than previous incarnations if they're still going to adhere to staunchly to the Formula.

There are a few things about the trailer that -do- instill hope, however.  Hope that perhaps they're going to shake things up a little more than usual, which is to say really shake things up at -all-.  The first is something admittedly a little small, but it's fairly obvious at one point that the MC is skating around on roller blades.  In fact, it's not really visible in the above image, but it's that scene.  Another form of transport is a small thing, I mentioned and it will probably be something that sidesteps things (probably simply take place of the Running Shoes item and get out-classed by the bicycle) but it's -something-.  The other thing which is arguably bigger is also something visible in the picture above, in the background.  That's very clearly a Pokemon version of the Eiffel Tower and indeed, the rest of the visages seem to have a very European flavor to them which suggests something of a slightly different setting.  Obviously every pokemon game has areas that are just kind of....I don't want to say Generic, but simply not attached to any particular areas, so being a little more ambitious in locales is a good sign if nothing else.

I've made it obvious many times in the past that I really, really think what Pokemon needs, as a franchise, is a growth that is hasn't seen since Gold/Silver (being that R/S/E actually took a step -back- and everything has run off that since).  I go into every game expecting that growth and walking away a little more disappointed when it's simply not present.  I get the why, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating since Pokemon is honestly a unique experience that nobody has managed to replicate properly despite it being a very obvious thing to replicate.  When you see something like that stagnate the way Pokemon has, you can't do much else besides just give it up or cling on to the small hope that somebody is going to get the damn picture eventually, and even though Black/White and Black/White 2 were things that happened, I'm clinging on to that.  I mean, I'm getting a 3DS eventually anyway for Harvest Moon games and Animal Crossing, might as well get my Pokemon fix as well, right?