Earthbound and Dune 27.11.16

I'm only hours into Pokemon Moon (3DS) but I can already say its one of the most pleasing things I've played in a long time, perhaps ever. The ingredients were there when I played Pokemon Yellow earlier in the year, some lovely character design, a deeper story than I was expecting and a combat system that I found more enriching the more I played. Sadly with the first of the series it lacked a lot of the things I've come to expect from a video game, such as objectives or at least clarity on what objects do. The latest game now adds a lot of the features, along with some quality of life things like making Pokeball's easier to navigate to on the menu and pointers to which attacks are stronger against the current opponent and it just feels really good to play. I didn't have any issue going through a very similar opening few hours. Pick a starter monster from an adorable lineup of a clown seal, fire cat or dapper owl, I went with the seal who becomes a lot less adorable when he/she evolves for the first time. Then standard catching of 'em all, the world seems much more littered with variety of catches and they mostly are lovely to look at. I'm taking a lot more care in building a team, or at least treating it all a lot more seriously, building a group which is balanced to a variety of types, meaning I've sacrificed some Pokemon I really like, like the Wingull and Diglett but the additions to the game being as charming as Pikipek and Mudbray so far its been a lot more fun selecting the monsters to take with me. Combat is now a lot more pleasing to the eye with animations which makes the game seem much more alive. On the subject of the look of the game, as with most 3DS titles its only when I'm playing it that I really appreciate how nice it looks, as i've gone with Moon over Sun the evening setting of most of the game has a sheen to it not unlike the Twilight Princess on the Wii. As a large proportion of my time in video games this year has been playing Pokemon games I really appreciate that generation 1 creatures all make the same noises after all this time, the sound of a Drowzee appearing frustrates me so much as I show no remorse beating them to a pulp. On top of everything I'm liking about this game is theres a Pokemon Snap variation added, various beasts to ride about on and so far the progression has been expanded from the standard beat trainers at a gym of the first game. 

I'm still relatively new to these games, and I'm not planning to tackle any of the other games any time soon but this is everything i've ever wanted from a Pokemon game, to the hundreds of wonderfully designed pocket monsters its now added a video game which is a ton of fun to play.  

Earthbound and 21.11.16

Pokemon Go (iOs) Ran a Halloween event a few weeks back which got me more involved in it than I've been in recent weeks. By increasing the currency earn't from the few things you do in the game (walk and throw balls) it was a small window of time to bulk up on precious candies, which can evolve all the pocket monsters. I resisted the temptation of evolving all the Pokemon I had on the cusp of evolution and went for the big one. I started off with a Charmander with 11 candies, and through a lot of waking I now have a Charmeleon with 97 candies, another way of quantifying this is in just over a week I've walked 130.7 kilometres with my Pokemon. Especially during the event, which ended middle of last week, I was planning my commute so that I could walk further, lunchbreaks would forgo eating and instead I'd focus on distance I could cover. The downside to all this is that the themed Pokemon dispersed around the environment were mostly bats, ghosts and cats so the variety wasn't great.  Since the return to normality in the game the selection of pocket monsters in the world has been freshened up a bit with different types appearing and I've now reached a point where I've got Pocket monsters evolving regularly and I can almost see an end to this first round of collecting them. I've mentioned that there isn't much to the game and its certainly not for everyone but I find it really appealing, more as an attachment to tracking my footsteps. I don't do any of the gyms or fighting so the reality is i'm walking for miles and throwing balls purely to get an image of a monster and the satisfaction of knowing it resides in my phone. 

I tied up all the loose ends in Life is Strange (PS4) and got to the games conclusion. Which, without spoiling anything, I found really satisfying. The end to the penultimate chapter is really strong and provided a twist I genuinely didn't see coming. In fact I'd say the only downside to a game I loved was that the final part wasn't as strong as the part it followed, a problem a lot of TV shows have these days too. In the fourth part the choices became much more dramatic and to see a real consequence to my messing with time start to creep into the game (and by the end be drastic) wasn't something I was expecting. A character I had rooted for throughout the game stood up near the end and became heroic which made my play-through seem customized to my choices and despite an awful stealth sequence very close to the stories close I was gripped until the dramatic last choice of the game. The story is the real reason to play the game, hence why I'm being so ambiguous with details, I would have been just as if not more happy to play the game without any of the searching about for clues or stealth and just be presented with the choices, saying that the games relatively short and never outstays its welcome. 

Finally I got my NES Classic and played fleeting games of most of the games on there to fall back to Punch Out, which is still great. Excitebike which remains pretty awesome and Techmo Super Bowl which I'd never played but is pretty cool, really hard and took some getting used to purely because I'd played so much NFL Blitz lately. The console itself is a really nice looking thing, I'm not so bothered about the length of the cables on the controllers as much as I am the weight of the machine, its impossibly light and feels more plasticky for it, if they'd just put some sand or something to make it a bit more weighty that would have pleased me.