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tymime · 5 years ago

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I generally consider Gen IV the last good generation of the Pokémon franchise, but really only up to a certain point. I’ve played a bit of Platinum, and it’s... okay. Doesn’t inspire me with wonder like Gens I and II do. And I pretty much gave up entirely on the anime after the Battle Frontier arc.

And looking at the Pokémon introduced then, I really only like Bidoof/Bibarel, Buizel/Floatzel and Riolu/Lucario. Buneary/Lopunny is pretty good, and Gible etc. is okay, but almost all of the rest of them I can’t stand their designs at all.

Of course, I really like HeartGold and SoulSilver, but I guess I’m biased.

Back when I was growing up, the anime was the most important to me, and it still is. I hardly ever played the TCG, as I was more of a collector, and I didn’t even play the games that much because I was so bad at it (although I did complete Silver). I remember that when it came to Pokémon, the online fandom in the early 2000s was mostly concerned with the anime as well, whereas you mostly heard about the glitches and rumors in the games and schools banning the cards. The main reason I preferred the anime was because of the characters. Ash, Brock, and Misty made a great trio, and Jesse, James, and Meowth are among the greatest sympathetic villain characters of all time, imo. Nowadays you hardly ever hear anybody discuss the anime.

But ultimately the reason anybody becomes a fan of Pokémon is because of the cool monsters. I think sometimes fans forget this, incredibly- too much focus is given to gameplay mechanics and metagaming and competitive gaming, which I really couldn’t care less about. I remember one of my first interactions with a Pokémon fan, way back in 1999 or so, was when somebody asked what my favorite Pokémon was. I told him it was Charmander. And why not? He’s a cute, fire-breathing dragon-lizard thing! His reaction was “But Charmander is weak!”, and all I could do was stare at him incredulously. I didn’t care if he was “weak”, which is an exaggeration anyway. Must I quote Karen?

That’s actually the entire point of Pokémon. Lots of PETA-types didn’t understand this: We’re not forcing them to fight as slaves, we’re making friends with all these creatures. The early episodes of the anime especially emphasized this, culminating in the movie Mewtwo Strikes Back, and it’s message of peace, sacrifice, and love still makes me misty-eyed to this day.

The anime started going downhill as soon as Ash left Kanto for the Orange Islands. We all remember how incredibly dull and pointless Tracy was, and how repetitive and formulaic the Johto episodes were. This was despite how amazingly good the G/S/C games were. It was around this time that the fandom was diminishing, and people who weren’t all that in love with it in the first place started sneering at it and saying it was “for little kids” and “uncool”. I remember Digimon fans were especially obnoxious about it. Here’s the thing: It might sound a bit shallow, but I don’t think I would’ve become interested in Pokémon if the monsters didn’t look cute or cool. I’m very keenly aware of what kind of character designs I like, and if I don’t like the way a cartoon looks, there’s absolutely no way I can get into it. Lots of people are gonna hate me for this, but I find the vast majority of Digimon to be downright butt-ugly. They’re mostly wrinkled and lumpy and look as though they’re made up of leftover puppet parts. There’s a tiny amount of them that I actually think look decent, but not nearly enough to make me want to watch the show.

But that ties into what happened next- when the Gen III games were coming out, I was looking forward to it, but I was disappointed in how unappealing some of the Pokémon designs were, especially the legendaries. I thought they looked more like Digimon. I don’t see anybody else who has this view. Sure, occasionally I see someone complain “They don’t look like Pokémon anymore!” but they’re always shot down with the rationalization “Who says what Pokémon look like is set in stone?” It’s not a good idea to slowly drift the art direction of an ongoing franchise with an established look and continuity. It’s what makes for a TV series suffer from Early Installment Weirdness and Seasonal Rot, among other things. Things like Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes can get away with this because they don’t have an established canon, but a series like Pokémon shouldn’t start looking weirder and weirder. I remember having high hopes for the Hoenn episodes of the anime, hoping that the fresher, more sophisticated animation would bring the series out of its doldrums and return to the more heartwarming, personality-driven stories of it’s golden age. For a while it seemed like this would be the case- Ash seemed wiser and more experienced at first and the Pokémon were showing more personality. But it slowly but surely entered a long string of indistinguishable contests for May to compete in. Another thing I wish there was more of in the anime is the Pokémon themselves having more personality. Too often they’re just used as battling tools and have few chances to show emotion or interact with the other characters. The Hoenn episodes also made one thing clear: Ash was going to replace his battling team pretty much every region from now on.

This trend flies in the face of the early franchise’s message of friendship. Ash’s Pokémon from yesteryear are hardly ever seen again once they get sent to Prof. Oak or to some other place.

I suspect this new attitude towards the Pokémon is why they’re becoming uglier and uglier. It doesn’t matter what they look like, you just want to train something NEW, right? Something with good stats and EVs?

I've never seen anybody who shares my view about the Pokémon designs from Gen IV and onward. There was a brief period when older fans were saying the new Pokémon were dumb ideas- ice cream cones and garbage bags and key rings aren’t my idea of a cool concept. But then came the whole “Genwunner” backlash. “But Gen I has inanimate objects too! Dont’cha think Voltorb and Grimer are dumb??” people would say. My answer is this: A living Pokéball and a pile of toxic sludge are cooler than keys and garbage. And just because Gen I had a dumb idea like a bunch of eggs doesn’t mean you should repeat it. And of course there’s an excess of foxes, cats, bats, small electric rodents, and cutesy legendaries that look vaguely like Mew. When the Pokémon aren’t stupid or ugly, they’re redundant. And now it seems like older fans are almost entirely silent about their opinions.

I don’t understand why this isn’t a more common opinion. A Pokémon’s visual appeal is absolutely crucial and yet they still continue to look inorganic, cluttered, and awkward looking with every new generation. There’s only a handful of recent Pokémon that ever get fanart, and 100% of the time the fanart is better drawn than the official version.

This seemingly coincided with the American dubbers having the brilliant idea of replacing the entire voice cast of the anime to “celebrate” the tenth anniversary. It was difficult watching the anime after that, and I only stuck around because they were revisiting Kanto. After that, I stopped watching it entirely. It got worse, of course- Ash was redesigned and looked almost entirely different. The eyes are the windows to the soul- if you ask me, by changing Ash’s windows, they changed his soul.

The Pokémon franchise was dead to me by then. As far as I’m concerned the whole series is a shambling zombie, a shell of its former self. And with the anime using retconning flashbacks and remaking the first episode and Mewtwo Strikes Back, the anime has split into two different continuities anyhow. And yet people still try to defend it, even older fans, which boggles my mind.

#pokemon #unpopular opinion #ash ketchum #bidoof #lucario #buizel

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artpharos · 5 years ago

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I think there are several things that often gets my goat when people who don’t play competitive vgc comment about competitive vgc

1) ‘VGC HAS ALL SORTS OF HORRIBLE BAN LISTS MADE BY ELITISTS’

VGC’s rulesets are dictated not by the playerbase. Sure, their rulesets make no goddamn sense and have no sense of balance, but their rules are set by the goddamn Pokemon Company, who set rulesets based off very arbitrary factors like ‘MONS ONLY CAUGHT IN THIS REGION’, or ‘NO EVENT LEGENDARY POKEMON LOL’

If you do want to play a metagame where there is an emphasis on balance and overall skill rather than ‘shit that Snorlax set up to +6 again time to forfeit’, Smogon is the competitive community that everyone loves to hate, but champions a system where the top players decide what mons are completely destroying a metagame’s balance (making it unfun for people to play, making it more luck based rather than skill) and try to build a metagame where your skill level in the game will ultimately reward you for your efforts. They also have lots of tiers- OU for the overused mons, UU for the underused mons, RU for the rarely used, etc. That’s not to say that this is a tiering system; you’re completely welcome to use the ‘lower tiered’ pokemon in the higher ranks for example, but basically these ‘tiers’ exist so that all Pokemon are viable in a format where they can truly showcase their true strength. And yes, Little Cup probably exists too.

2) ‘EVERYONE JUST USES THE STANDARD META MONS AND NOTHING EVER CHANGES’

While there are always mons that are mainstays in a metagame simply because they’re easy to build around, the very nature of a metagame means that things are always changing. Within two weeks, people might be using Mandibuzz, and two weeks later, it completely drops off to be replaced by stuff like Alolan Persian. A metagame evolves because people know what are the strong mons, and they will build teams to stop said strong mons. And when people find unique mons that fill a niche that they need to stop the 'strong mon of the week’, they will use them, forcing said strong mon usage to drop off. With exceptions like mons that are super good (like Incineroar), usage stats can wax and wane, and especially in vgc, unique choices are hardly looked down upon- provided they work.

But then again, you’ll never hear of people celebrating that one guy that used Mega Medicham to take 2nd place at North American Regionals 2019 (Amadee Graham of Australia) because he’s not using some cute mascot Pokemon.

3) ‘KAREN SAYS YOU SHOULD USE THE POKEMON YOU LIKE BEST AND STRONG/WEAK POKEMON ARE DETERMINED ONLY BY SKILLESS TRAINERS’

Okay. First off. Many of my friends would probably disagree with me on this, but I actually agree with Karen.

To be completely honest, there are as many teams in VGC as there are Pokemon. There is never only one objectively ‘good’ team. How well you do in VGC is determined by a lot of things: Your team, sure, but how you play factors in as well, and how well you can read the metagame and change your team/plays accordingly. There are many, many debates within the vgc community on which team, which mon, is the strongest and which ones are bad. Sure, there are some that are objectively bad- teams that are poorly built, for example.

But if a team has a strong gameplan, good synergy, and works well in the hand of the player who uses them, doesn’t that make a good team? Of course, you could take the very same team and give them to someone else and they’d completely fail at it because that team just doesn’t synergise with their playstyle, but isn’t that the very definition of ‘choosing the pokemon you like best’?

And trust me, VGC players will take any excuse they can to use the mons they like best, be it an Ultra Necrozma, or a friggin Magikarp and Cosmog (both who have gained championship points by placing well in tournaments, by the way)

At the same time, some the very best VGC players have told me, “You can play literally anything in VGC.” The caveat, of course, is whether you can build a team to support it. So I always find it kinda baffling when people throw this argument at us as if we’re somehow guilty of only using some vaguely defined group of ‘strong’ pokemon.

Which also leads me to...

4) ‘YOU ONLY USE LEGENDARIES YOU CHEATERS’

ngl someone actually told me this to my face once

you wanna know what was the most popular pokemon in VGC 17 (Alola Dex only)?

Arcanine.

you wanna know what’s the one pokemon that has appeared in consistently more than 80% of all teams since VGC 18, lasting even into the current year when we have an Ubers metagame?

Incineroar

you also wanna know what is the most feared pokemon in the VGC community?

Smeargle.

Fact is, if you’re truly playing competitive pokemon- playing pokemon to compete with others, you want to use the best pokemon you can for whatever strategy you want to pull. Sure, legendaries have always been a mainstay in VGC simply because of their stats/typing/movepool/ability being good and very easy to fit into teams for specific niches (special callout to Landorus-Therian). But you’re just as likely to see all sorts of random Pokemon that you wouldn’t normally consider able to go toe to toe with Legendary pokemon if you view Legends simply as a tier.

For example, the lowly Amoonguss is commonly used to shut down Xerneas, of all things. Smeargle has spread terror through the VGC community for its ability to learn (almost) EVERY attack, making it unpredictable as hell and a dangerous foe especially when it can put your mons to sleep with Spore. Add that to its actual ability of sometimes boosting its Evasion and you’ve got a mon that can completely turn the tide of battle with a flip of a coin.

Incineroar, too, has become irreplaceable to many VGC players. Not because it hits hard, but because it’s typing and ability (Intimidate) allows it to sponge many attacks and provide useful utility to its team with support moves like Fake Out, Roar, Snarl, and Knock Off/U-turn (a bit sorta).

You know what Pokemon are rarely used?

Articuno. Moltres. Mewtwo. Zygarde. Mesprit. Azelf. Uxie.

Personally, I find that viewing legendary Pokemon solely as a tier higher than everything else, disregarding their actual function and use in a team and in a metagame is a completely nonsensical view when you’re talking about competitive Pokemon. Like sure, you can use Uxie, but that choice is no more different than if you were using Bronzong, factoring in the difference in ability, typing, movepool, etc. None of these pokemon will annihilate opposing teams; in fact, if you play long enough, you realize you can play around most (if not all) of them.

And before you dismiss this all as some deranged rambling from somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, I’ll admit this: I may not know competitive pokemon as well as some of the pros, but I did well enough to qualify for the VGC World Championships 3 times, and got ranked in two of them. I was the first person in my region to qualify for Worlds, way back in 2013, through the Last Chance Qualifiers, a grueling 7-round, best-of-3-games, single-elimination tournament. So yeah. I think I’m. semi-qualified. to talk about this.

VGC is important to me. It’s been a part of my life that i can’t cut out even though I’ve tried. But it’s a part of my life that’s brought me great joy and helped me form friendships all across the world, that got me to travel for Pokemon before Pokemon Go. So it always pains me when people talk down on the thing I love like we’re the mindless masses who just want to ruin the game. We just have a different way of enjoying Pokemon, and you know what? That’s okay.

I wouldn’t begrudge you for liking Comfey, or Slurpuff, or hell, if you’re one of the few people in the world that remembers that Carnivine exists and love it to death. I also don’t care if you really want to make your Roserade a sweeper, but I do feel like it’s within your best interest for me to point out the fallacies of your strategy so that you can work around them.

But using the above arguments as a strawman to show how VGC players are bad is just a showcase of your lack of understanding for what you are actually decrying.

#pokemon #competitive #arty's vgc ramblings #long post #sorry this just #means a lot to me #*lies down*

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years ago

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BILLIE EILISH - BAD GUY

[6.93]

The Jukebox has thoughts on Billie Eilish? Well, duh.

Andy Hutchins: Nothing clicked for me with Billie Eilish until "Bad Guy." I understood the appeal intellectually, because it has sometimes been my wheelhouse: "Prodigy-cast makes off-kilter pop music from a perspective with more than a little precociousness and possibly a feminine spin that serves to disrupt rather than reify" is my jam for months at a time, sometimes. But some combination of prodigy and precociousness sometimes striking me as preciousness -- something that I've occasionally found issue with in the work of Sky Ferreira and Solange and Lorde and Cher Lloyd and fka twigs and Haim and Kacey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey and so many women who have occupied this same treacherous lane where deviating from delivering what is expected from a young woman making pop music can offend the sensibilities (or engage the biases) of even someone who has strained to stave off the stupidity of dismissing music made by young women and largely intended for young women -- and what I read as a deliberately dark and standoffish aesthetic put me off of Eilish, whose stuff just didn't compel me. Everything clicks for me with Billie Eilish now that I've heard "Bad Guy," which I reckon is pathetic on my part, because so much of the DNA of "Bad Guy" is in other work she's done that the things that differentiate it as The Hit and The Breakthrough come down to tempo and a kooky synth run in the hook that every third YouTube commenter thinks is stolen from Plants vs. Zombies. But "Bad Guy" is also an unassailable pop song and has come along at a time when bulletproof ones are not occupying the charts -- the closest competition in the current top 40 by my sight is, like, a Katy Perry song whose verses let down its magnificent hook, a bunch of drowsy-to-dire Khalid and Halsey tunes, a C- effort from Taylor Swift, and a microwaved Lizzo track that I've known of for a while and don't consider her best stuff -- and so it stands out even more from the pop metagame than the larger Eilish oeuvre does from a host of less realized tunes. And I'm a sucker for an unassailable pop song, especially one with a vocal initially delivered so low that it demands attention to the dial in the car but that is by turns brightly funny ("...duh!") and world-weary and campy to the hilt (the titular phrase being stretched to a titanium crocodile's rasp), a relentless bass line that sounds like a monster's heartbeat echoing in a cave, and lyrics that constitute a semi-sincere embrace of some Lolita tropes and a more powerful sarcastic destruction of them while somehow also being fully ready for Instagram captions and Twitter display names and ... well, no one's on Tumblr anymore. But that's hardly Billie's fault, and I'm not docking points for only barely failing to raise the dead with a virtuosic song that makes me this glad to be alive. [10]

Alfred Soto: There's a reason this song has become the breakout hit besides its insidious keyboard hook: Billie Eilish sings not mumbles the gender bending hook. Otherwise a ditty that the top 40 could use more of; its quietness is a tonic. [8]

Joshua Copperman: Sounds great, looks great (if possibly plagarized), memes great. The deadpan anti-sexuality of "might-seduce-your-dad type" is "Guys My Age" done right. The delivery of "my soul, so cynical" like even that is too earnest of a statement. The only weak part is the ending switch-up. But you knew all that already. Duh. Besides the cries of "industry plant!" there's also the ongoing sense that Eilish is a music writers' idea of what a 17-year-old Tumblr-born pop star would sound like. And sure, she's a young music writers' dream; I have a byline at Billboard because of her. But also, it's genuinely smart music that is mostly set to age well, even if it's hard to tell if it m a t t e r s. Who knows what 17-year-olds of any predilection towards seducing dads are actually listening to; I'm 21 and finding that out is only getting more difficult, if maybe not more necessary. If teens still control popular culture, if anyone does, who knows if this really does reflect them, or if its bottomless angst is mocked like Limp Bizkit? Is "Bad Guy" just "Heathens" for the late-2010s? Does this really represent the next generation? And which next generation; the shit-talking saviors, or the ones just like their parents and the radicalized alt-right kids? There's no easy answer to any of these, no "duh" to shrug them off. But there is Eilish and co. applying the daily grind of apocalyptic dread to smaller-scale topics. Processing death on "Bury a Friend," processing one's own body image on "idontwannabeyouanymore," processing changing gender roles here. Finding your place in 2019 is a lot for anyone. No one is getting it right. What Eilish does instead is turn that uncertainty to playfulness, confidently existing within the mess instead of trying to find her spot. [8]

Leah Isobel: I was on Tumblr in 2011, so "might seduce your dad type" doesn't feel as provocative as she might intend. (Also, Halsey did the exact same thing.) Besides, pop is a space for fantasy and role-playing, and she's not the first 16-year old bad girl to make adults freak out a little. What gets me is that the song itself is a brilliant production piece in search of an equally compelling melody; the biggest hooks here are an audible eye-roll and a Tim Burton rip. I love the idea of Billie as a goth-teen-pop star, and the choice to swerve into a spooky outro instead of a more traditional structure is genuinely a lot of fun, but this all feels like so much posturing -- normal for a teenager, but not that compelling to listen to on its own. [6]

Katherine St Asaph: If Billie Eilish is the Gen Z Fiona Apple, which I've heard from about three separate people even before the Discourse started, then "Bad Guy" is her "Criminal," down to it being creep flypaper. Everyone quotes that one dad line a bit too eagerly, like they're subconsciously thinking that if they have the pithiest take they just might get to be the dad. (It isn't even the most suggestive line.) There's a strong case for the dad being the bad guy, if only because he's, well, the guy. But "Bad Guy" lives in the world of teenage politics, where the guys just are and the girls get their badness thrust upon them, and their choices are to shrink away or play along. Duh. ("Bad Guy" : "duh" :: "Your Love Is My Drug" : "I like your beard.") But all this is pretty serious analysis for a fundamentally trolly song: half-mumbling the melody to a beat I'm pretty sure I made in a high school to go with a video project; rhyming bad/mad/sad/dad like a Mavis Beacon keyboarding tutorial (or whatever the kids have now; maybe they're just born typing); crooning an exceedingly Lana Del Rey-ish "I'm only good at being bad" then immediately cutting that crap for a bassy, fuck-off breakdown; filling only about 60% of the song with, like, song. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Not the most impressive or cohesive Billie Eilish song, but it is the one most likely to remind you of how fun her music can be (that she included the Invisalign skit in the video helps). The coda is fine, but the best reversal is found elsewhere: the nonchalant cries of duh followed by a cartoonish synth melody, underlining just how playful the song's darker elements are. [6]

Josh Langhoff: Eilish sometimes sounds like the Cardigans if they only did Black Sabbath covers, "evil" squeezed between an extra set of scare quotes, and sometimes she's Nellie McKay on downers, ennui shaped like wit but without the laughs. Sometimes she's good and sometimes she sings ballads. And somehow that combination produced "Bad Guy," the elusive Somehow Perfect Pop Song That Sounds Like Nothing Else On The Radio. I can't say I love it, but all her murmuring and posturing makes Top 40 radio seem, after too many years, like a playground of endless possibility. What'd we do to deserve this and "Old Town Road"? [8]

Jessica Doyle: Yes. Some are red, and some are blue. Some are old, and some are new. Some are sad, and some are glad, and some are very, very bad. Why are they sad and glad and bad? I do not know. Go ask why that menacing bass and Eilish's whisper didn't deserve better lyrics. [4]

Tobi Tella: Billie Eilish's artistic direction and style of music makes it seem almost impossible for her to make a legitimate banger, but this fits in perfectly with the rest of her album tone-wise and also completely slaps. The simplicity of the production, literally created in a bedroom just adds to the perfect low-key vibe. The lyrics do make Billie sound a little like a teenager who will cringe reading them in 10 years, but as an 18 year old, sometimes doing stupid stuff you know is destructive and immature is FUN, and this completely captures that feeling. [8]

Will Adams: I love love love the idea of this shifty, close mic'd oddball dancepop song being as big of a mainstream hit as it is, even if it's one of the more slight offerings from the album. Extra point for the coda, where Billie drops the coy and reminds you how quick she is to put her foot on your neck. [7]

Pedro João Santos: The coda lamentably inverts the light heart of "Bad Guy": the colourful, whispered titillation conjugated with what's left unsaid, a sort of puerile pleasure dutifully translated by the Theremin-esque synths; not the heady, overlong consummation that it unfolds onto by the end. I must say I'm exhilarated that someone knew how to ape "Las de La Intuición" nearly 15 years on, although startled by the fact that it was Billie Eilish the one to do it. [7]

Scott Mildenhall: Done well, it's enjoyable to hear a musician having such fun, but especially so when one unexpected element of a song comes in to underline just how much fun they're having. In this case, it's the gloopy searchlight noise, playing out like the theme tune to a 1970s cop show set in space, in a way that cannot be anything but gleefully goofy. Such bold and playful invention is something pop music would suffer without. Extra points for the consideration to leave a gap before the outro so that radio stations can cut it out. [8]

Iris Xie: I still think this song should've been cut off at the 2:14 mark, because it said everything it needed to say. [5]

Katie Gill: That purposefully obnoxious "duh" sums up what Eilish wants to say more than the rest of the song combined (and is currently in the running for my favorite 2 seconds of 2019 pop music). This image of her as the bad guy isn't serious. It's bratty and playful, more her creating something she can have fun with instead of taking herself seriously. Unfortunately, that something interesting here is buried in a three minute piece that somehow manages to be three completely different songs which never actually coheres to a single whole. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Billie Eilish #pop #music #music review #writing

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valanthius-xiv · 7 years ago

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(ooc) in Memory

OOC: Once upon a time there were five friends who had a concept. They were young, they were creative, and they each brought something special with their friendship. I’ve roleplayed Revarik for a long, long time and he was originally developed amongst four others to share in a whole. Those that know Revarik’s story know of Inspirah. Cysi roleplayed the cunning mistress that has spanned several years and universes.

Just as I got ready to head to bed I got a message of urgency. Her brother had shared the news that she had passed away in her sleep. She was a good friend and though we did not talk as much these last few years we only had good things to say to each other. Little stories to tell about what we were doing and how life had become so different for both of us since we originally made those characters.

A part of me feels a bit alone because I am the one that remains out of that circle. I have my wife, I have my kids, my family, and my friends. Though, Cysi, Deps, Krys, and Jamie were a little special in their own way. It is hard to put it into words the different feeling they gave me, but they helped shaped me and my writing. I guess in a way they were like my brothers and sisters in a literary sense. So I write this to honor their memory and to shed light on the joys they inspired.

At the time, a few of us were new at the scene. Some of us had roleplay experience in the past, but we didn’t have a place or a group of people we could really connect with. At first, it was Cysi and I. Then along came Deps and Jamie, and finally Krys. Some people you just click with and they were those people. We had got to a point where we just wanted to have fun, screw what anyone else thought, and kick back and have a good time. This was where the fundamentals of my current perspective to RP reside.

We developed our version of the 4 Horsemen with a little twist. The Rider on a Pale Horse, the Wielder of the Red Sword, the Decay of the Swarm, and the Plague of Wakening. They were each bound by seals (or the tattoos) that each of them had been inscribed by the Serpent of the First Breathe. It was a biblical and comic book-spin that was incorporated in a manner that prevented us from being metagame, but allowed us to act socially should we want to. It also helped us span and adapt our characters across other verses to let us continue to interact with each other.

I had the Wielder of the Red Sword or War, or as most know him as, Revarik. Deps played the Rider on a Pale Horse or Death, or Depthalos. The inverse of Revarik if you can imagine a character with black hair, white tattoos on the opposite side, and all of that. We had a laugh when Darksiders came out. Jamie had the Decay of the Swarm, Famine, or Staryallis. (She got a lot of flack for it cause ‘Horsemen’, but our group didn’t care. It was our interpretation and she made Famine look fierce. She had an Egyptian aesthetic, dark skin, enchantress kind of vibe with runes on her arms and across her chest. Then, we had our comic relief which was the Plague of Wakening, Pestilence, or Peitre. This was the hobo of our little band of misfits. Undead, only a handful of teeth, and was the type of character that had poor personal bubble manners.

As for the Serpent of the First Breathe, Eve, or as most have discovered Inspirah, she was the unity amongst them. The first story has Inspirah drawing them forth from the four corners of the known world and preparing them for the ultimate task of world domination, to cover the world in darkness, and let it rebuild itself anew and in her vision. Her agenda was to discover them, uncover their seals, and unlock their alternative persona/potential.

Cheesy, I know, but it was ours and as much nonsense as we got into there was hardly a day where I couldn’t wait to get home from work, to sign in, and go find out what kind of trouble they were stirring up. Then, life happened. It does what it always does. It starts taking people away. Jamie passed away a few months into our story and it all but killed our drive to RP. It was hard to look at our characters without thinking of her. So, we moved on after holding a little ceremony to close out our characters.

Krys tried to keep us all in check. We did well for a little while, but it wasn’t the same. Just when we got our groove back into the swing of things we got the news of them departing this world. It was another blow, but Cysi found a way to make it better. Just as we honored our friends, we honored their characters to in a way that helped us believe that somewhere, in another life, that Krys and Jamie were cutting up and their characters were doing the same.

Cysi had a big major change and she decided to leave roleplay to focus more on life. She got married, had a handsome little guy, and despite no longer RPing we still chatted. Deps was in a downward spiral though. Spent many of nights on the headset listening to them try to mellow out, but alcohol ended up being stronger in the end. Cysi and I connected a little more after that. We shot music back and forth, talked about how different Australia was from the US, and about our families.

A month ago I got word about her health and there was hope that she’d pull through. She asked me a question. Do you think they are still waiting for them? At first, I didn’t know what that meant, but the more she talked about the past the more I understood. Then, I got the news this morning and all I can picture now is the four of them gathered around some big game table talking the usual trash and causing the usual trouble. I can even picture each of their characters behind them, but they are missing one character.

I miss them. I miss them a lot and I know it is selfish of me to want them here on this plane to tell them what they meant to me. I want to thank them for the memories they gave me, for the encouragement they offered me, for the strength they provided me, and the courage to do what I want to do despite what eyes are on me. Each one of them was amazing in their own right. I owe them a great deal for what they’ve shared with me and taught me over the course of my roleplay career. May their rolls be godly, their rest be peaceful, and their eternity beyond blessed with happiness.

Thank you. Thank you for being my inspiration and guidance.

I love each of you and will miss you dearly.

- Rev

#ooc #loss #in memory #rip #myhearthurtsosmuchrightnow #i miss yall so much

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queernuck · 7 years ago

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Reviving the XFL

With the proliferation of early-2000s aesthetics in net art, and the more general reterritorialization of the turn between the Nineties and the Noughties through fashion houses mimicking (or effectively upscale thrifting) the aesthetics of skate culture, Nü Metal, Halo, Screamo, Limewire, Metalcore, it was perhaps but a matter of time until the rumors of an XFL revival came into being. And over the past week we have seen just that, a series of discovered trademarks, denials that function as affirmations, innuendos that seem to indicate the return of the XFL on the horizon. There is a certain nostalgia for the XFL, born out of the same kind of libidinal pooling that one finds in the more general realization of wrestling as “Sports Entertainment” on a level equivalent to the metagame of Fantasy Football, the creation of a fiction developed out of the hyperreal, the two related to their supposed-origins in a remarkably similar fashion. That the initial excitement about the XFL has generated a great deal of attention, but a more careful look at the situation indicates that the league will hold little of what is fondly remembered from the XFL, and will instead replicate its worst failures.

This is not the first wave of trademarks related to the XFL to appear recently, as multiple XFL-related trademarks were reconstructed in simulacrum for ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary on the league. Looking back, the marketing of the XFL is hopelessly dated, specifically because of the NFL of the present day. A sort of naïvete surrounds any look back at the XFL, as the broken bones and separated shoulders healed over time, while the realization of the prevalence of CTE among former NFL players is presenting the immediate question of what the future of football can hold. This is a discussion which I will continue later, one central to my larger discussion of the XFL’s place in late capitalist identity: first I wish to discuss the structure of the nostalgic remove that is being employed to look back at the first half of the last decade.

The year 2000, in a way, has become a sort of year of innocence, a year that stands in relief of 9/11 as impossibly purified, as the year in which the initial structuring of a decade that would mimic the implosion of the Twin Towers would occur. The XFL ties into this, certainly, but more generally it is a singular point within a larger structure of postironic critique: the way that it begins creating the environment from which we received artists such as Gucci Mane, Lil Peep, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, the way that the Cocaine of the 80s and the Ecstasy of the 90s are soothed by the Xanax and Oxycodone of the years since is absolutely all contained within the development of drug scenes, music scenes, illegal gun clubs and ill-founded militias. The spectre of the terrorist and the school shooter, the ways in which identification with contradiction and offering “critical support” against American imperialism have been part of the most basic acts of navigating identity within these times all must be taken into account when discussing the field of music, sports, fashion, and schizoanalytic development within the virtual. Vince Carter’s “Le Dunk De La Mort” at the 2000 Summer Games is part of defining the space we find ourselves in now: in a single moment, an American known as “Air Canada” ended the NBA career of a Frenchman drafted to play in New York City. The Virtual has never been more fully realized, the augmentation of reality through the digital is so clumsy and yet so ubiquitous not because technology lags, but because it makes clear that the digital is already present within the Virtual without the augmentation. The way in which the digital structures the intensities of the Virtual means of exchange we find so vital to postmodern life is too uncomfortably clear in the augmentation of reality: its influence is too Real.

The perception of a certain sort of Real in spaces such as wrestling, the creation of “sports entertainment” and the gleeful acceptance of hyperreality by wrestlers and athletes alike is vitally tied to this. The greatest Face-Heel turn of the 21st Century was likely that of LeBron James, eventually undoing the terms on which he had originally departed in his return to Cleveland, the King being the defining star of the NBA in a way only Kobe and Jordan can rival. The schizophrenic final days of Brett Favre, playing a surprisingly substantial stint with the Minnesota Vikings before spiraling off into irrelevance with the Jets, only to eventually re-emerge as a Packers Legend, and nothing more. The defection of Ilya Kovalchuk to the KHL from the NHL, a complete reversal of the defections that so deeply defined the NHL only a decade and a half before. In the space of the Virtual, where an athlete must create a personae for themselves, must maintain the kayfabe of the sport, they often look to the sorts of acts found in aesthetic definition in wrestling for inspiration.

Conversely, wrestling has placed a great deal more emphasis on the way in which it can mimic the unpredictability, the storyline, the technicality of sport: it is performance, but performance upon the body, it is a specific means through which the body is traumatized toward the viewer in order to create an effect more genuine than the intentional, conspicuous trauma of UFC matches. In many ways, the WWE feels more “real” as it follows the expectations of the body as projection, the Oedipal dramas of the squared circle played out upon it rather than being realized in the direct confrontation that MMA requires. MMA itself is a sport realized in the hyperreal, as a sort of nondenominational violence which eventually ends in either brilliance or profound disappointment. The WWE relies on the same sort of thrill as a dunk contest, or even more appropriately a Home Run Derby: there is a specifically agreed-upon terms on which the characters-at-hand meet, and through that one is treated to a spectacle which is not meant to be competition, but to be more than it, which presents itself as more real than it.

Of course, this is not without its toll. Wrestling profoundly breaks the body, over time re-inflicting so many sorts of trauma that the window for many wrestlers to “get over” and make the WWE is incredibly short. Similarly, the NFL is based in replaceability, in the knowledge that a player is, no matter how good, merely one of 1,700 and that there are hundreds to thousands more willing to step in at any given time. This is true with any professional sports league, but the way in which the XFL is poised to revive that is itself rather worrying.

Vince McMahon’s original XFL was supposed to be a development of football as theatrical violence, the thrilling body-breaking of the WWE coming to the gridiron in an incredible release of the libidinal flows around the game, the sort of game where one could admit to “watching for the crashes” or reveling in trauma. That this comes in a year where his friend, President Donald Trump, has criticized the NFL for players protesting on the grounds of racial injustice and police brutality, is hardly surprising. However, that it has been echoed by Trump himself that there is a shift in the NFL, one away from the “proper” play of the game and toward supposedly-pointless penalties, the football of the future mentioned before, is important.

Questioning what football will look like in the future required John Bois to imagine a postcapitalist world of empty signification, of free-floating semiotics and nanobots that prevent accidental slapstick humor. In 17776, Bois touches on this, at the same time mentioning other things such as the uncertainty of a “catch” as contentious issues in the NFL. The ending to Steelers-Patriots on December 17th, 2017 where an NFL-supported ruling of an incomplete pass overturned what would have likely been a game-winning touchdown for the Steelers is perhaps the best example, in that the test of the “catch” has become an unanswerable one. The Virtual is overcoded by the digital, the incredible detail with which a catch can be determined has made it impossible to meaningfully observe, the standard of doubt, burden of proof, has been made infinitely interpretable. The ball still is in play, and always will remain in play. The NFL must ground itself at once in a sort of codification of formalist rules of interpretation, and the incredible potential for deconstructive reading presented by these rules. When Trump discussed the beauty of an unspecified tackle, and how it was ruined by the interference of a 15 yard penalty he felt undeserved, he opened up the space for McMahon to step in.

Given our current understanding of CTE, and more generally of trauma in football, the XFL would not bill itself as an amplification of violence, but rather as a return to the game as it “should be” absent the radical disparities that it can make clear. Instead, it would function as an apparatus to accept the racialized violence the positionality of the sport so readily structures, and in turn to draw a certain kind of appeal from that. In short, a fascist football league. The artfulness of the NFL is beyond compare, only the NBA can mirror the ways that the NFL shows the potential, the incredible artistic valance of the body. The vocabularies used to describe players like Odell Beckham Jr., Marshawn Lynch, Todd Gurley, even choreographers like Aaron Rodgers on the field or Sean McVay on the sidelines, the dramatic downfall of Johnny Manziel or the sudden brilliance of Carson Wentz; these men are described best in the language of avant-garde theatre and dance rather than conventional, prescriptivist concepts of sport as an empty, uninspired, singular sort of activity. McMahon’s league is unlikely to attract many NFL players, and while the even field-of-play could allow for the occasional spectacular play, the quality will be similar to NCAA football with lower stakes and a lesser entry fee.

Thus, we reach a point where we realize, just as Linkin Park cannot release another Meteroia, just as the PS2 will never enjoy the feeling of a new release in the way it once did, the shadow of two no-towers will forever loom over us, the revival of the XFL will rely on fascism to assert itself rather than a meaningful realization of what made the notion so exciting. It will be bad football, and one can only hope a handful of those playing it will eventually move to the NFL.

#XFL #NFL #Vince McMahon #17776 #football

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notspoondere · 7 years ago

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The End of an Era - September 2017 Banlist

Longform analysis of the previous format and banlist under the cut. I haven’t read any other analyses of the banlist prior to writing this, so the material underneath is all original. It’s also my first impressions, so bear with me if I forgot a few details here and there.

The past few formats of the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG have been extremely diverse and creative, with a great number of decks competing for the #1 spot... of being the second best deck after Zoodiacs, who, according to Yugiohtopdecks, are now the most represented deck of all time in terms of topping tournaments. It would not be an understatement to say that it is possibly the strongest non-FTK deck ever created, and by far the most consistent. In case you missed that somehow, here's a list of just some of the ways Zoodiacs have impacted the metagame (Take a shot every time I mention a unique support card for an entirely different archetype if you want to get wasted really quickly):

It was figured out fairly quickly that any Rank 3 engine would be able to summon any Zoodiac from the deck through M-X-Saber Invoker. There are a few good 1-card Rank 3 engines in the game right now, but all of the unlimited generic ones use a normal summon--because the only one that didn't, Speedroid Terrortop, got limited as a result of its use in this deck. (Note that Speedroid Taketomborg, the monster which Terrortop searches to make a rank 3, is not a “Garnet” in the sense that the entire engine fails if you draw it. Drawing both still makes the Rank 3 without eating your normal summon.)

In addition, Fire Fromation - Tenki could search any monster in the deck, since Zoodiacs were also all level 4 Beast-Warriors. This got the card briefly Limited in the OCG. (Note that the deck already had three copies of Ratpier and three copies of Barrage, which could pop itself to summon Ratpier from the deck, so in effect, the deck ended up with 12 cards that searched or summoned Ratpier before Ratpier was Semi-Limited on the next list after the archetype’s release.)

Upon release, a Rank 8 spam variant was discovered with Coach Captain Bearman. Zoodiacs had access to an 8-axis and it turned out to be suboptimal. Keep in mind the once-per-turn 1-material summon for each of the Zoodiac Extra Deck monsters does not mention Level; it only has to be a Zoodiac monster.

Elder Entity Norden was used in most decks (including Zoo for a time) as an Instant Fusion target to make a quick Rank 4. Later variants after Chakanine's release used Zoodiac Broadbull to search Lunalight Black Sheep, which you could discard to search Fusion Substitute and repeatedly Fusion Summon Elder Entity Norden in order to repeatedly make Daigusto Emeral, which, in so many words, allowed Zoodiacs to draw 5 cards off of one Speedroid Terrortop (or plus similarly hard off of Barrage), which would surely include powerful hand traps like Maxx “C”/Ash Blossom/Ghost Ogre/etc. This was finally the tipping point for Norden in the TCG, as he was Forbidden on the June 2017 emergency banlist soon after. Note that the OCG had already banned him by the time Zoodiacs were released. (Also note that this would not stop players from griping about drawing Speedroid Taketomborg.)

Even after Norden was banned, the deck was by far the most powerful deck in the format. Paleozoics had a decent matchup, but fell by the wayside as True Draco appeared, towering over Zoodiacs in terms of raw power but not in terms of consistency (and eventually a hybrid of both took first at the NAWCQ). Forgotten cards like Shuffle Reborn and My Body as a Shield saw serious play in preparation for the Zoodiac mirror, while cards like Dimensional Barrier and Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit fell off and quickly reappeared once people figured out the deck wasn’t going anywhere. Targeted destruction was considered powercrept until this deck appeared. They even started appearing as engines in rogue top decks like Lightsworn and Pendulum Magicians. Even after getting banlisted twice, even after people started maindecking Droll & Lock Bird, and even after Links, the deck prevailed. (In the OCG, it still managed to appear after Barrage and Drident got banned and Ratpier got Limited by abusing the card advantage off of Broadbull to work as a stun deck. Or so I heard.) Eventually, and without question, Zoodiacs created a Tier 0 format.

Until today, that is. Took them long enough! Let’s get into the cards.

Forbidden:

Dinomight Knight, the True Dracofighter

I’ll mention this alongside Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior since they both have similar effects, although the latter was Limited. This is a fairly straightforward hit to the True Draco deck’s access to quick and cheap card advantage on the opponent’s turn. Ignis and Dinomight were not the strongest cards in the deck, but they added a lot to the deck’s consistency.

Grandsoil The Elemental Lord

This card creates a bunch of FTKs off of Firewall Dragon and is played in virtually no other decks. Dino FTK got Top 32 at YCS Toronto recently, and Konami has never been kind to FTK decks ever since they let Frog Burn win worlds. Ugh.

True King Lithosagym, The Disaster

The True Kings were not exactly the new-age Dragon Rulers people expected them to be. In fact, they (mostly Lithosagym) only saw play in one deck: True King Yang Zing Dinosaurs, which eventually won Worlds this year. And we all know how Konami feels about decks that manage to win Worlds.

There was a pretty long combo that let you consistently pop two Babycerasaurus to summon this thing, letting you banish cards from your opponent’s Extra Deck for doing something you would have happily done already. It also made up half of the materials for True King of All Calamities, a boss monster that actually has no hand trap counter short of Psy-Framegear Gamma, which saw play for partially this reason (and for other handtraps, but...). I’m glad to see this gone.

Denglong, First of the Yang Zing

Denglong was usually the other part of True King of All Calamities, since you could change his level to 9 by dumping any of the True Kings into your Graveyard. He also led to a 1-card double Quasar negate combo off of one Souleating Oviraptor (or Fossil Dig, or basically any way to summon Oviraptor). I really doubt Yang Zings will be playable after this, but Yang Zing Dinos needed to get hit for sure and I guess this is one way to do it.

Daigusto Emeral

Wait, what the fuck?

...

Seriously? Gusto have a banned card now? Who thought they had it in them.

The Gusto archetype has never made much of a splash competetively, but they eventually got a generic Rank 4 (that they can barely use) in the form of Daigusto Emeral, which was a key part of the Zoodiac Fusion Substitute combo... which was totally wiped out last banlist. The deck still ran two copies for a while after, but eventually once Link Summoning came around, the space just wasn’t there. Few decks run it at all nowadays.

Which makes its appearance here all the more confusing. Seriously, Konami, what the fuck?

Zoodiac Broadbull/Zoodiac Drident

The era is over. Broadbull was a free +1 and Drident added another threat to any board. The best cards in the best deck ever are gone. Or so we hope.

Limited:

Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior

See Dinomight Knight.

Miscellaneousaurus

A monster that gives Dinos protection during the Main Phase, recursion from grave, a free engine to summon a level 1 Tuner from deck, and an easy way to build up a huge Tyranno Infinity when needed. Miscellaneousaurus did all this and more. The OCG hit Oviraptor instead, so I’m surprised this got hit, but either one hurts the deck a lot (although I think Oviraptor is the stronger of the two).

Zoodiac Ratpier

A card that summons itself as an engine was just a great idea, wasn’t it? Now the material effect is completely unusable, so Ratpier is just an archetypal Foolish Burial on legs. How the mighty have fallen.

Dark Hole/Interrupted Kaiju Slumber

This is an interesting one. Slumber was obvious because it was another two copies of Dark Hole that synergized with the Kaijus that everyone would have run regardless, but Dark Hole at 2 has been a thing for a while. For what it’s worth, getting hit by this hurt a lot if your board consisted of the only Link Monsters your deck had the space for, but if that was that huge of a concern, they’d have hit Raigeki too. Hmm.

Gateway of the Six

Six Samurai managed to top at a Portland regional some time last year. I don’t know how, but the guy who did is an absolute hero. Otherwise, the deck has done nothing for years, and this card is at 3 in the OCG and Six Sams are doing nothing there.

True King’s Return

Archetypal Monster Reborn on a deck that seriously didn’t deserve it.

Semi-Limited:

BLS Envoy of the Beginning

It is weird to say that this card is now completely irrelevant, but here we are. BLS Envoy has been power crept. What a game. (It’s probably still fun to play around with, though.)

Luster Pendulum, the Dracoslayer

Luster Pendulum was a free reoccurring +1 after a Pendulum Summon, but that hardly matters now that Extra Deck Pendulum Summons are restricted by the new format. He’ll probably still turn up in Pendulum decks, though; do not take this to mean that the card is bad now.

Mathematician/El Shaddoll Fusion

This got limited because of Shaddolls a long time ago, and that deck has been dead since they hit Construct.

Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier

I have literally only seen this card played in Mermails since its errata. It’s doing nothing at 1 and will do nothing at 2.

T.G. Hyper Librarian

Synchro spam is also more-or-less dead, so this is probably fine coming back as well. Level Eater is still creeping in the distance, however...

Brain Control

Same story as Brionac, has seen no play since its errata.

Burial From a Different Dimension

This has been at 1 for a long time, hasn’t it? I think it was hit because of Zombies or DAD or something.

Keep in mind that Zombies are still quite good right now. This is flirting with danger, Konami... I say as I order two copies for Zombiesworn.

Preparation of Rites

Nekroz hype? That’s the deck that got this limited, and they’re almost playable now that nearly every other deck has been nerfed. We’ll see.

EDIT: This is for Vendreads, don’t know how I didn’t realize this immediately.

EDIT 2: Vendreads don’t use this card, what am I saying. This is for other decks.

Unlimited:

Debris Dragon/Dragon Ravine

Remnants from the Dragon Rulers banlist. These haven’t seen play in a while at 2, probably won’t at 3.

Honest

This used to be quite the hand trap, but battle hand traps, much like battle traps other than Mirror Force, have fallen by the wayside.

It’s still worth considering for the surprise factor, IMO. Who still runs Honest in 2017!?

Rescue Cat/Witch of the Black Forest

More cards that have seen no play since their erratas.

Rescue Rabbit

Holy shit.

This card is still way too good.

I think this is supposed to tell us to go buy World Chalice, but this is the nuttiest way to go about doing that I could possibly imagine.

Konami, are you feeling alright?

Summoner Monk

Rank 4 spam card that’s seen less and less play lately.

Charge of the Light Brigade

This has been Semi-Limited for a long time due to its use as a mill engine with Lumina/Raiden. Putting it at 3 helps Lightsworns, obviously, but it also helps Infernoids, too. Not significantly enough for either of them to become tier 1 again (probably), but still, it’s appreciated.

Wavering Eyes

Hardly relevant, since Pendulum mirrors don’t happen much and decks aren’t so focused on popping their own scales. Back in the day, though, Konami made a huge mistake printing this as a common.

EDIT: I could not possibly have been more wrong. This card should not have been unhit, holy shit. Pendulum mirrors are actually everywhere since the deck’s only expensive card is Duelist Alliance and this card is too fucking good.

EXTRA: Cards That Did Not Get Hit, Somehow

Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King

The True Draco boss monster, often cited for his poor design, is still obscenely powerful.

Dragonic Diagram

The True Draco Field Spell, which let you pop a card in hand or on field to search a True Draco spell/trap once per turn and gives Tribute Summoned True Draco monsters battle protection once per turn. This card seriously does too much.

Did you know that Diagram dropped to $20 per copy in anticipation that it would get hit by the banlist? It used to be $60.

EDIT: There is currently a listing for a $1 copy of this card, but you have to buy a $420 Ghost Beef in order to get it. Now that’s value.

Maxx “C”

This card is the sackiest card in the game right now. It singlehandedly wins games going second, and has done so so many times in high-level tournament play that I was sure it’d get hit. Even the OCG put it to 2. It looks like it’s still around, but who knows for how long.

Card of Demise

A key draw card of some Chain Burn and some True Draco variants, Card of Demise is a nearly free +2 for any deck that doesn’t Special Summon during their turn, or any deck with a lot of backrow. Many players, myself included, are frustrated with this card’s design and the playstyle it promotes, but Konami didn’t hit it at all here.

Trickstar Reincarnation

Independent of any synergies with the rest of the archetype, comboing this with Droll & Lock Bird makes your opponent banish their entire hand and draw nothing in return. This is still legal; Konami has decided that this is totally okay.

Kill me.

EDIT: Extra 2: Cards That Did Not Get Unhit, Somehow

Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk

Please, Konami, my family is dying. This deck’s opening combo is a hard draw of two cards and it only goes +2.

El Shaddoll Construct

#FreeHim

Evilswarm Exciton Knight

Why did you even reprint this if you weren’t going to unban it?

Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz

Hahaha just kidding. Fuck this card.

That about wraps it up. This next format is going to be crazy. Or maybe it’ll just be True Draco again, who knows.

The next set, Circuit Break, comes out in the TCG on October 20th (Sneak Peek on 14th/15th), and the next banlist comes in November at the soonest. If True Draco doesn’t come back from this, it will be an interesting month until SPYRALs take over the meta entirely (as is likely to happen, given their results in the OCG.)

Until next time.

#yugioh #yu-gi-oh #yugioh tcg

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afniel · 6 years ago

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This puts me in mind of a guy I once played with (not for long, mind you) who wouldn't even tell you what race he was, let alone class out anything.

"So he's an elf?"

"Well, he's about five feet tall and has pointed ears..."

"So, he's an elf."

"I never said that, and you wouldn't know for sure anyway, because lots of people have pointed ears, and..."

It got worse, because he wouldn't even tell you what he had equipped, he'd just describe it in meticulous detail until you got tired of guessing. Absolutely no out of character knowledge at all, hardly any in character, he would literally freak out if you even saw any of his die rolls (which were always on a new, blank sheet of paper, every session, and no you were not allowed to touch the dice or the paper under any circumstances ever), and half of the game was just him writing notes to the DM because it would be metagaming if he did ANY ACTION OUT LOUD AT ALL.

He was, even after all that, not the most annoying player character in the campaign. I fucked out of there pretty fast...

“Just let people play whatever character classes they want!” is a fine sentiment, but some people take it so far as to talk like being concerned about party composition is strictly opposed to good roleplaying. Do y'all think bad party comp is something that wouldn’t be obvious from an in-character perspective? Like, have you never been involved in a group project, taken a look at the personalities and skill-sets involved, and gone “well, we’re doomed”?

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donmonkartek-blog · 8 years ago

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HeroesCon 2016

I might hardly call this official, but this evening, Blizzard briefly posted a folder on its public Heroes of the Storm press page known as Valeera screenshots” with the date of 1/24/2017. (Appearing just as briefly was the Lunar New 12 months folder, but for the reason that recreation hosted a Lunar Competition last yr, it does not surprise us that there would be one other one developing.) Although there were never any information in the folder, it does hint at Valeera being the following hero headed our means. With Zul'jin launched this week, which means we're solely three or 4 weeks from the following new hero, with no official phrase on who it will likely be. The Tour of Heroes covers the core fundamentals of Angular. We'll use constructed-in directives to point out/disguise parts and display lists of hero information. We'll create a component to display hero particulars and another to show an array of heroes. We'll use one-way knowledge binding for learn-only data. We'll add editable fields to replace a mannequin with two-approach data binding. We'll bind element strategies to consumer occasions like key strokes and clicks. We'll learn to pick out a hero from a master list and edit that hero within the particulars view. We'll format knowledge with pipes. We'll create a shared service to assemble our heroes. And we'll use routing to navigate among completely different views and their parts. Pharah's capacity to get rid of opponents from above, and do so by dispensing an honest dollop of injury, makes her a really stable pick if you're on the proper map. Her amazing vertical mobility allows her to scout the situation from above earlier than making her deadly moves, and then deal with probably the most problematic threats on your teammates to deal with. A handful of re-balancing updates after the sport's launch have made her bit extra susceptible than she was originally and as a result she does not rank fairly as excessive as she did in the game's earliest months. Relating to character design and abilities, Lucio has been one in all our favorite Heroes in Overwatch, proper from beta by way of to the present day. In stable palms he can shine as brightly in a random workforce as he does in really collaborative pre-made efforts, and though he doesn't have a huge amount of health to play with - and his weapon projectiles are quite wobbly to ship - his distinctive versatility, flexibility and skill to maintain his teammates and rush them again into motion makes him a prime tier pick for any group. His speed enhance was nerfed pretty hard in a current patch, however we predict it may take much more than this to knock Lucio out of the best bracket. Ana was a relatively recent hero to be added to Overwatch, and although she definitely adds a bit further flavour to the standard team choose, she initially did not have the sort of important impact on the metagame that you would possibly wish to see from a totally new character. That's modified a bit following the newest spherical of re-balancing from the Overwatch developers, and she's now a pretty sturdy alternative of healer.

#hag #heroes and generals #heroes and generals cheat

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radramblog · 3 years ago

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Every Mono-Black Commander, Part 2- The Kamigawa Zone

Last week when I was doing this, we had to go through a massive pile of Homelands cards and Portal Three Kingdoms cards- this time we’re going to have to do similar but with the three Kamigawa sets. See, WoTC decided that the best way to do “Legendary set” was to make every rare creature legendary (and some uncommons), so there are a fair few to talk about! In fact, I’m extending the length of this post just so I don’t have to be talking about spirits for two weeks, because much as I love Kamigawa and it’s Kami, that’s a lot.

There’s a few things to get to before that though, so.

Volrath the Fallen (78 decks, 52nd most played)

Volrath is once again an older character that eventually got a newer better different card to represent them, but unlike with Greven this one isn’t completely awful. Now, it is 6 mana with no protection and evasion, but it is not particularly hard to kill someone with that ability- to be fair, though, there’s only one card the deck can run that lets him hit 21 without double strike (it would be 2, but Emrakul is banned, so Draco it is). By the looks, most people are giving the deck an Eldrazi Reanimator backup plan, which makes a lot of sense- if you can’t kill them with a giant commander, why not try a giant space monster? Volrath is far from the top echelons of commander, but he’s an interesting and solid enough pick to build a deck around- a far cry from most of what came before him.

Greel, Mind Raker (17 decks, 81st most played)

Greel, on the other hand, is a bit more painfully mediocre. I’m not going to act like Mind Twist isn’t a powerful effect, but it’s not as broken in commander when there’s 2 other opponents to deal with, and card advantage effects are more plentiful, and it costs an additional 5 mana and an extra card, and it’s attached to a 3/3 with no other rules text. Man, Prophecy really wasn’t a good set, huh. Art kinda kicks ass, though.

Cabal Patriarch (9 decks, 96th most played)

This is as good a time as ever to note that despite Braids, Cabal Minion being banned, she’s still got more decks than this guy. He doesn’t even have a name! He’s also a 6 mana card with two abilities that are barely worth it, they don’t kill nearly anything in this format, and for 3 mana and another resource? It’s kinda pathetic. At least at this point, all the legends have actual rules text, but on the other hand, I’d like their rules text to look a bit more interesting.

Chainer, Dementia Master (423 decks, 16th most played)

Oh shit, there we go! The first card on this list to breach 100 decks, and by a country mile, Chainer is just a badass card. BBB: Reanimate something is just kinda nutty, and the downside is easy to mitigate with black’s myriad sacrifice outlets. Let alone the loops you can get into with stuff like Phyrexian Altar, K’rrik, or Pitiless Plunderer.

Ultimately, though Chainer only really does One Thing. He does happen to be very very good at that One Thing, but it is his One Thing. Considering his contemporary competition, though, I’d say that is far from holding him back. I’ve only played with Chainer once (borrowing a mate’s deck), and I accidentally won the game with Gary. And if that’s not how I want to be playing magic then I don’t know what is.

Balthor, the Defiled (112 decks, 40th most played)

On the other hand, I’m actually kind of shocked how many decks Balthor has. He’s got an incredibly powerful effect, but not only is it pseudo-symmetrical but it includes a colour you could not possibly have, making it even more likely you’re benefitting not just yourself. Missing out on big colourless creatures is also a pain.

As well, looking at the cards most played in Balthor decks, I’m kind of shocked at how little non-symmetrical graveyard hate is being packed in here. That does seem like the best plan, stocking your graveyard and removing theirs so you get all the value from a big reanimate. At the same time, I genuinely respect living on the edge like people are apparently doing. Fucking go for it queens.

Visara the Dreadful (11 decks, 91st most played)

Visara is Shauku but less interesting. She’s a murder things commander that will largely have to choose between doing Her Thing and actually attacking, which isn’t particularly great. She can at least kill just about anything, but at the cost of having not much else to do most of the time. Probably give her a pass.

Also, though, what the fuck is she? Like apparently she’s a Gorgon, but she has wings and those look a lot more like giant fuckoff horns than snakes. She must have incredible neck strength to keep that propped up all the time.

Phage, the Untouchable (267 decks, 23rd most played)

Ah, Phage. The original Big Dick Energy commander, because nothing says baller like a Commander that tries to kill you for daring to cast her. The number of ways to not die to Phage has slowly gone up, although more and more of them are in colours that Phage doesn’t get to run in the zone (White, mostly), but there’s enough there that she’s more than playable.

And what a payoff. I feel like if you get killed by Phage, you don’t get to be mad about that. Like, that’s just hats off at that point. Such a feat deserves nothing but respect. She’s the original and the best “player deathtouch” card, before deathtouch even existed. Can’t even argue.

Also you can’t do it with her in the zone but Fractured Identity targeting Phage is a very funny way to win a game of Commander.

He Who Hungers (13 decks, 89th most played)

Oh fuck, it’s the KAMIGAWA ZONE. We’ve finally made it. Surprisingly, this is the only Mono-black commander with Soulshift, so I’m not going to bother explaining it.

I’m just going to say off the bat- I love Spirit tribal, and all the Kamigawa spirits are glorious in their gorgeous surreal art and bizzarro effects, and there are actually a lot of things that say Spirit on them even in Mono-Black. With that in mind, just about every Mono-B spirit is draft chaff and the deck will not be good. But you don’t come to He Who Hungers for good, though I suppose Thoughtseizing repeatedly isn’t that bad an effect. He Who Hungers is probably really solid in WB+ where you have plenty of token effects to fuel him, but there really isn’t enough production in Mono-B to support him. Perhaps a shame.

Horobi, Death’s Wail (257 decks, 24th most played)

Horobi is one I’ve actually considered building, considering their incredibly unique effect. It’s one of those fun commanders that just gets to play a bunch of otherwise really bad cards, and take advantage of them like no other deck can. It’s such a ruthless form of board control, that can often shred through entire swathes just as easily as it does individual threats.

The thing is, though, that dealing with creatures isn’t really something Black needs help with- and that’s all Horobi really helps you do. However, I suppose that does free the deck up for more slots that can deal with more concerning permanent types. Horobi is just kind of a really good control commander, particularly when you’re looking at a low-combo metagame. Would recommend!

Iname, Death Aspect (105 decks, 42nd most played)

I really enjoy the three Iname cards, silly as they kind of are, and Death Aspect isn’t an exception. Aside from being one of the sickest looking creatures I’ve ever seen, Iname DA subverts the problem of Mono-B Spirits being not great by giving you access to literally your entire deck’s worth of them, provided you have a mass reanimation effect handy. It’s a pretty ballsy play, considering how vulnerable you will then be to graveyard hate after casting your six-mana commander, but you gotta make the plays to get the wins, right.

Iname is also a great enabler for things like Mortal Combat that care about number of creatures in the ‘yard, because they just dump so many in there. Also I’m pretty sure if you have Syr Konrad out with Iname you…just win? Anyway.

Kiku, Night’s Flower (29 decks, 71st most played)

In an odd reversal of Shauku/Visara, Kiku costs significantly less but her ability costs significantly more. This does make her probably worse, unfortunately, since 4 mana is a lot to be burning every turn and it’s a lot worse with repeat untap effects like Thousand-Year Elixir. The nature of her ability is brilliantly flavourful, but unfortunately makes it kill a lot less things as well. She’s really neat, but neat doesn’t equal playable, unfortunately.

Kokusho, the Evening Star (134 decks, 35th most played)

Oh, how the mighty has fallen. Wait, no, Ryusei was the Falling Star, right?

For the unaware, Kokusho used to be banned in this format, and I’m not particularly sure why- like you could gain a shitload of life and deal a bunch of damage with them, but I would hardly call that oppressive. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never seen them in action outside of my own 5C spirits deck. It does scale really nicely into multiplayer, I suppose.

So what does Kokusho do? Kokusho just needs to find a way to die over and over to drain your opponents out and gain a shittonne of life. This will have gotten a lot easier with the recent advent of Supernatural Stamina and related effects, as well as last year’s rules change to death triggers. Aside from that, well, they’re big dragon and they can hit you I guess. That seems less efficient than having them die, so probably just do that instead.

Also can someone explain to me why this card is still so expensive, it’s the only one of the cycle I don’t have the original print of but it’s like 30 bucks and I ain’t paying that, please………

Kuro, Pitlord (7 decks, 99th most played)

Shoutouts to my boy Braden for running this guy for a bit. Kuro is…well it’s 9 mana plus another 4 every single turn. That’s enough of a turnoff for most people, I think. It does basically just kill everything with that ability, but at 9 you’re probably not at a particularly monstrous life total so it’s a real cost to start dropping 4/4s left and right. I’m not opposed to reanimating this, I guess, but prooobably leave it out of the zone.

Marrow-Gnawer (1618 decks, 3rd most played)

I am actually kind of shocked this is as high as it is. I probably shouldn’t be, it’s the de facto Rats commander considering it’s basically Rat Krenko but they also get evasion, but I didn’t expect Rats to be as popular as this.

The recent reprints probably helped.

Marrow-Gnawer is a devastatingly efficient swarm commander, as it starts almost doubling your board over and over. The comparison to Krenko is obviously very deliberate, but paying an extra mana to get Fear on the team as well is pretty worth it in my eyes. Requiring a sacrifice makes it a bit softer to removal, but like, no way are they killing some random Rat when they see this guy in the zone. And Rats are pretty replaceable- I mean, just look at Relentless Rats/Rat Colony.

It’s still kind of astonishing that Marrow-Gnawer is this popular, to me at least. I mean, the other Rat options are a bit more mediocre (as we’ll see shortly!), but really? I guess that’s probably why it’s so big, as while there are decently spread options for other black tribes (zombies, vampires, demons etc.), Rats doesn’t really have anything better than this. So here it is, third best. Fucking go off king. Er, Lord, I guess.

Myojin of Night’s Reach (6 decks, 103rd most played)

Hey wait Myojin is a badass card, sure it’s 8 mana (tied for the cheapest of the Myojin, lmao), but it’s effect is nuts! Just get rid of all of their hands, fuckin get em! Why is no one playing this?

Oh, you only get the counter if you cast it from your hand? Well, fuck, I guess. Moving on.

Seizan, Perverter of Truth (188 decks, 29th most played)

I actually designed a Seizan deck and proxied it up at some point, and it was pretty fun. Not good, but fun. Seizan is honestly pretty decent as a more open-ended option, being funnily enough viable both for Group Hug or Group Slug, or some perverted hybrid of both (heh). It’s also just a big beefy idiot, and therefore if you slap some evasion (and like, one more power) on it not a bad wincon for either deck. It’s kind of a shame that they help your opponent draw into an answer for your deck, but that’s the game you play with a card like this. As long as you aren’t at the table where people kill Howling Mine on sight, Seizan probably has a seat waiting for it. I genuinely really like it, and would consider rebuilding it if I didn’t already have, you know, 2.5 mono-black decks already.

Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni (48 decks, 58th most played)

One of the two Other Rat Commanders, and only really because it’s the only other legendary Rat (excluding changelings). She’s also a Ninja which is neato I suppose. I mean, let’s not beat around the bush, Ink-Eyes looks and plays absolutely sick as hell, red mist streaming from her eyes and an effect that ganks some absolutely silly creatures off your opponents. Unfortunately, you can’t activate Ninjutsu from the Command Zone (fuck off Yuriko no one asked), so she’s kind of just stuck trying to pitch in on her own. And she’s not super effective at it. I suspect she’s another 99-er, though she has more decks than most things I’d put in that category, so eh.

Kyoki, Sanity’s Eclipse (23 decks, 76th most played)

Aside from having easily one of the edgiest (and thereby coolest) names I’ve ever seen, Kyoki doesn’t have a whole lot going for it. For the cost of putting literally Craw Wurm in the zone, you get to exile one card every time you cast a Spirit/Arcane spell. And there aren’t that many good ones of those you get access to. Now don’t get me wrong, I do play Kyoki in my O-Kagachi deck, and everyone tries to kill it on sight in that, so maybe it’s better than I’m giving it credit for. But I wouldn’t put it in the zone.

Holy shit though look at that flavour text, motherfucker almost has as many epithets as it does power.

Patron of the Nezumi (34 decks, 64th most played)

I’ve actually (briefly) discussed Patron of the Nezumi on this blog before, and spoilers, it isn’t great. Rat Offering is…fine… but they really could have made the other trigger affect your own stuff and maybe the card would actually have been fine. Like, none of the Patrons are spectacular, but this just doesn’t do enough at all. At least most of the rest of them have interesting effects- ironically the one with the best tribe, Patron of the Akki, somehow has the most boring effect. ZZZZ.

Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker (970 decks, 7th most played)

Another card that gets to run a bunch of fun nonsense, Shirei has been a fun and popular commander for a very long time at this point. There are a surprisingly huge number of 1/Xs with powerful effects available to loop in mono-black, and it isn’t that hard to protect Shirei long enough to get them off. Add in a relatively recent reprint at uncommon, making them not only affordable, but considering how many of its key pieces are common/uncommon and you’ve got an excellent budget list.

Seriously though, looking at it’s “High Synergy Cards” and “Top Cards” on EDHREC has literally 3 cards over a dollar, and you really don’t need Ashnod’s Altar for this deck to be good. If you told me I had to build a commander deck for 10 bucks, Shirei is one place I’d be heading right for. You get to run Basal Thrull! Everyone loves Basal Thrull.

Toshiro Umezawa (515 decks, 13th most played)

Okay look I’m going to be biased here obviously because I am literally building this deck, but Toshiro is cool as fuck. It’s spellslinger without Red or Blue, and it gets to do fun stuff like playing the MDFC instants as lands from the graveyard. It’s another unexpected cards commander, and there’s a bunch of fun stuff like False Cure that you can cheekily slide in to really catch people off guard.

Not only is it spellslinger, but he also gets to play mostly at instant speed, which is obviously always a boon. And yeah, it does just get to kill everything and chain Doom Blades if you really want. He’s unfortunately reliant on your opponents having creatures, but that’ll happen, things die in this format. Just a fun commander, shame he was overshadowed by his bloody sidearm.

Yukora, the Prisoner (7 decks, 98th most played)

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Juzam Djinn but with an arguably worse downside is not a particularly popular commander. I’d be interested in trying them with those “one creature matters” cards from AVR/DTK, but there are much much better things to stack those onto.

It’s probably not that bad in draft, though? If you aren’t running many creatures? Idk.

Akuta, Born of Ash (10 decks, 93rd most played)

So this is a mediocre creature, that you can reanimate if you have the most cards in hand out of everyone, at the cost of setting yourself back a lot of tempo. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Infernal Kirin (18 decks, 80th most played)

Kay so this one is actually powerful. In O-Kagachi. Like, this can just rip hands apart if you’re doing it right. Unfortunately, locking yourself into Black only with Spirit/Arcane spells is again way too restrictive to work with still, and as a result I completely understand not playing this. But actually though don’t sleep on this bad boy, I’m a big fan.

Kagemaro, First to Suffer (23 decks, 77th most played)

…is this somehow the first “boardwipe on a legend” so far? Hang on, I just checked and there’s only like two of these in Black, what the fuck.

Okay, well, Kagemaro. It requires a lot of hand presence to kill things, but it also gets around Indestructible, so that’s nice. Look at all those blades its never going to use because let’s be honest this is getting sacrificed most of the time. It’s, like, fine? I guess? I suppose there’s nothing stopping you from loading up your hand and slugging someone to death with this, and while that effect is common in other colours, I’m pretty sure this is the only Black version, and Black is pretty good at drawing, so go for it I suppose.

Kuon, Ogre Ascendant/ Kuon’s Essence (21 decks, 78th most played)

On the one hand, getting Kuon to flip probably isn’t super hard. On the other hand, the payoff is extremely mediocre, and it’s super disappointing that it isn’t asymmetrical. Like, there’s a few cards you could just play that do the same thing, though to be fair I’m pretty sure all of them are 4CMC or higher. Kuon doesn’t really provide a way of winning the game, either- like most of the things on this list can at least attack, but if Kuon is flipped they’re probably staying that way.

Interestingly, this was the only BBB costed commander at 3CMC until Eldraine, so I guess if you were trying to turbo-devotion this is a thing? But like, why wouldn’t you just use Erebos or something. Also, does the devotion even count if it’s flipped? Questions I don’t want to bother answering.

Maga, Traitor to Mortals (62 decks, 56th most played)

Our final Kamigawa commander, and therefore the last one I’m going to go through today because jesus this is getting long. This card’s name has only gotten more perfect with age, but the card itself hasn’t done that well. It’s a solid enough leader for giant mana decks, filled with doublers and such, as it effectively has haste with that ETB, but if you aren’t producing excessive amounts of B then I’m pretty sure Maga just sucks. Like in other, less cardboard circles.

Aight that’s, what, 27 cards? For reference, I do plan on continuing at a 20-ish per installation speed, but I just wanted to burn through Kamigawa for possibly obvious reasons. Now that we’re through Spiritland, we can move onto bigger and better things- Time Spiral, Lorwynmoor, and beyond. Until then.

#ramble #mtg #commander #edh #mono-black

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

Text

Review: Pokémon Sword and Shield

Pokémon has moved forward several half-assed steps at a time, and that’s not a criticism. The series has existed comfortably in its own bubble and where other games would get lambasted for looking inward, Pokémon has thrived on reiteration and the slow crawl of minor innovations to the template. Pokémon games primarily get compared to other Pokémon games and no one expects the series to change drastically from its rock-solid fundamentals after so many years. Even as people forget weird features like poffins and Pokémon Musicals, they can take solace in the notion that even the jankiest gimmicks all work towards crafting the definitive Pokémon game, whatever that might look like in the future. Well, that future died with the announcement that Sword and Shield would mark the end of the full Pokémon roster and we would all need to leave the old “gotta catch ‘em all” mantra in the past.

Pokémon Sword and Shield is the eighth generation in the mainline series of games and the first to appear on home console. It’s set in the Galar region, a place inspired by the art director’s experiences as a youth growing up in the United Kingdom. Players assume the role of a silent protagonist chasing the dream to become the Pokémon Champion, a lofty goal that is pursued with much more fervor by the player’s rival, a perennial loser named Hop who is also the current champion’s younger brother. In my mind, the player character I created, a young Pokémon trainer named Tomoyo, has lived the entirety of her life stuck in this one-Pokémon Center town knowing nothing more about the world other than what’s filtered down to her through Hop’s experiences in the comforting shade of the champion’s cape. Her growth into a person with her own story to tell spurred me on to leave home but unfortunately Hop won’t be shaken off so easily.

Even as Hop is vaunted as a formidable rival, he crumbles within seconds of any given Pokémon match against the player character and typically loses to other mid-card trainers off-camera. Loser rivals have become a staple of the series ever since Game Freak decided to let players hold type advantage over the rival’s starter Pokémon a few generations ago. For the most part, this hasn’t been a problem as balanced team-building has to grow from the initial Grass-Fire-Water triangle of effectiveness. The purpose of the rival has always been to test the player’s progress against what’s to come, gating off high-level areas until the player proves they’re capable. Hop’s path toward the Gym Challenge Finals is tightly woven with the player’s own journey and while I welcome the idea of a rival/ally having greater involvement in the storyline, Hop simply sucks at Pokémon for the longest time. And here’s the kicker to all this: everyone in Galar sucks at Pokémon.

II.

When people claim that Pokémon is “easy” and offers “zero challenge,” they tend to forget that they come in armed with a huge advantage of prior knowledge of the mechanics. By design, the player is meant to become the Pokémon Champion and there are no alternate routes to some other final destiny. That said, Sword and Shield puts up a considerably weaker fight than its predecessors. You never get the impression that the trainers are trying at all to compete and the Routes between towns are now more than ever a vestige of environment design better suited to the capabilities of the classic Game Boy. Galar’s layout evokes memories of theme parks and my quick, unimpeded dominance of the region made me feel less like a champion and more like an asshole ruining the illusion for the rest of the patrons.

Separate from Galar’s underwhelming Routes, the Wild Area received a lot of buzz when it was first unveiled and to be fair, it’s the most exciting part of the game despite its flaws. The diversity of the wild Pokémon encounters more than makes up for lame trainer battles. It’s never more apparent that certain conventions are dead and gone than when running into high-level final evolutions of Pokémon that have never appeared in the wild before. In the past, wild Pokémon were more of a nuisance than anything, hardly worth the time spent inputting the commands for an easy one-hit knockout. Along with the variety present from field to field, many of Sword and Shield’s wild Pokémon also give juicy experience points, frequently outleveling the trainers present in the immediate area. The delicate level curve of the game is easily broken as a result of meandering through the Wild Area for too long but it’s still a welcome change of pace to decades of grinding trash mobs.

Players that think too hard will look at the Routes, then at the Wild Area, and will then ask themselves why the developers didn’t just design travel around the more gratifying open world environment. The issue is that the Wild Area doesn’t have that Breath of the Wild butteriness to it, perhaps an unfair comparison considering BotW wasn’t connecting to hundreds of other players at all times. Wild Area performance takes a huge blow while online even with the console docked and although chop is reduced if a player disconnects from the internet, that defeats the purpose of the lively community feel of the Wild Area. Given how erratic the Wild Area renders under the strain of weather conditions and online connectivity, I see it more as a fun experiment than the cornerstone of Sword and Shield’s design. It shows that Game Freak is at least attempting to evolve and it’s unfortunate that the shrinking Pokédex became the symbol of change when the Wild Area is the best new idea the studio has had in years.

III.

The region of Galar is dominated by the influence of one benevolent businessman named Chairman Rose who has sculpted the culture of competitive Pokémon battles around Dynamax, a Galar exclusive phenomenon in which Pokémon get really, really big. Stadiums are built on top of “power spots” that allow Pokémon to Dynamax for the entertainment of the crowds, building up matches as a festival occasion on top of being a legitimate sport. As nice as it is to have the gyms back, this aspect of the game hasn’t grown much at all despite how they dress it up.

Even once you catch a whiff of the true nature of Dynamaxing and strange instances of Pokémon going berserk, the game is dismissively patronizing about keeping players focused on their regular journey, with characters insisting that the Gym Challenge is more important than giant Pokémon running amok in the stadiums. This subplot eventually does come to the forefront at the worst possible moment and by this point, solving the crisis that’s about to unfold has zero momentum compared to the Pokémon League. The whole farce regarding the dark omen threatening Galar wraps up as soon as it’s introduced, making me wonder why the game even bothers raising the stakes to some world-ending catastrophe if it’s compressed into a handful of battles.

For all the emphasis placed on Dynamax, the battle feature is one of the more underwhelming gimmicks in a series that’s full of them. The story explains that its use is anchored to locations featuring power spots, isolating it to stadiums and raids in the Wild Area. Despite the showy nature of the effect, it’s never utilized in any meaningful way in battle and it only takes a couple of fights to see the full extent of what the system has to offer. So long as a player can survive three Dynamax moves, the threat of actually wiping out in a Gym Leader match will have more to do with type disadvantages than the power of Dynamax. The max raids against wild Dynamax Pokémon are far more challenging than what you’ll see against trainers and the rewards from the raids are stupid good, so the gimmick isn’t entirely a worthless feature. Still, it doesn’t clear the air of this idea that Dynamax wasn’t worth the trouble.

IV.

Held up to the light at any angle, Sword and Shield is marred with flaws, but I still wouldn’t want to go back to the early generations after experiencing Pokémon on the Switch. The story is an absolute shambles but if your game is to raise, train, and tinker for the perfect critter, Sword and Shield is a considerable step up from the 3DS era’s mature metagame functionality. Untold millions of hours will be saved as a result of cutting out so much of the bullshit regarding stats, natures, and leveling. The interface is clean and responsive, controls can be set to play with a single joy-con, and the decision to give players almost-unlimited access to their Box storage is a lifesaver when it comes to breeding and farming Pokémon eggs. People that approach Pokémon at the surface level will see the same game they’ve been playing for years but the maniacs that put in the time and effort to hunt for shiny Pokémon or train for competitions will be grateful at how much the process has been streamlined.

I finished the main story at about 30 hours with a third of that time spent either going out for detours or idling to prepare coffee. The main game isn’t much longer or shorter than the past couple of Pokémon games but the scarcity of unique things to do after the credits roll is somewhat insulting. “No postgame” is an exaggeration but “minimal postgame” would be hard to argue. I can’t blame people for feeling cheated with the first $60 console Pokémon game having a single post-game quest to capture the box art legendary and no other high-priority content outside of the meta. Going back to pick up missed items and face trainers in rematches isn’t nearly as compelling as uncovering secrets after becoming Champion, especially if you have no interest in playing past catching rare Pokémon. I took myself past the 75-hour mark to complete my Pokédex and as fulfilling as it was for me, I wouldn’t claim that it’s a significantly worthwhile endeavor for the average player. By comparison, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon had its own post-game quest, an extensive roster of legendaries to hunt down, and yeah, full support of all Pokémon going back to Ruby and Sapphire for GBA. Whatever the reasons might be, Sword and Shield has a very definitive end to its adventure that comes all too soon.

For all the controversy in the lead-up, Sword and Shield ended up being more than a little OK, if not a messy success that could still be better. The future of the series will be challenging as long as Game Freak commits to the idea of rotating Pokémon in and out of the main games, guaranteeing that the next game will have limited compatibility with this generation out of the box. Nintendo and co. took a calculated risk with Sword and Shield and now that the games have sold a verified and very real One Billion copies at retail, they can reasonably infer that they won’t have to bend to the will of a few thousand rowdy fans clamoring for a return to the old ways. They have a healthy base of players comprised of casuals who don’t give a shit about Dexit, newer fans that aren’t too miffed about leaving the 3DS games behind, and folks who just like Pokémon too much to complain too loudly. I found my own enjoyment in Sword and Shield, but I’m also not rushing to post #thankyougamefreak without seeing the shape of Pokémon to come. You don’t have to like it, but odds are you already paid for it.

Pokémon Sword and Shield originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on December 21, 2019 at 6:17 PM.

By: David Estrella

#Anime #News #Ani-Gamers

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