#pokemon pearl
if someone doesn’t write a 30k+ Diamond/Pearl/Platinum shipfic i will cry
pls it’s all i ask
tag your first pokemon game vs your favorite pokemon game
True to form, I did not play that many games this year either. However the games that I did play all ended up being incredible experiences that left lasting impressions on me, so I like to think I somehow ended up going the quality over quantity route without even realizing it. Because of that I think I ended up with two favorite games this year instead of just a simple one favorite game of the year. I’m getting a bit tongue tied here but what I mean to say is one game I think is game of the year, another game is my favorite game I played this year (but not game of the year since it did not come out in 2021). Hope that clears it up. You’ll see more of what I mean when we get to it.
If you are wondering why or how I didn’t talk about [your favorite game ever] I probably didn’t play it this year, is all. I have a giant pile of shame I amassed in 2021, and it haunts me. A lot of these I might have played a little but not enough to have anything to talk about, not start at all, came out around the same time as other games I wanted to play and I had to make a choice, or happened around some personal issues I went through this year. I know I talked up how much I love the Super Famicom version of Famicom Detective Club, I’m sure I’ll love the Switch remake too, but dammit all that came out the week my dog died, sorry guys, I still can’t bring myself to play it.
For now let’s just talk about the video games I did play.
Critters For Sale
Critters For Sale is an indie made point and click adventure game and most people will probably recognize it as that weird game from YouTube where Michael Jackson is a time traveler and has reached out to you to awaken your past memories as one too. Yes, that really happens, it’s the first of five playable episodes in this game and most likely the most known thing about it since the first episode is completely free. The rest of the game is more or less just as crazy though and features even more real world celebrities, as well as aliens, interdimensional beings, secret societies, demons, and of course the critters.
I would describe the game as a bad trip but I feel like there is more to it than that, especially since its creator Sonosheehas indicated that this is just the beginning and they have plans for future games to follow. This is one I followed for awhile, I want to say it was somewhere around 2 years ago when I first found out about Critters for Sale when searching for random stuff on itch.io. I was immediately sucked into the wonderful visuals inspired by the Gameboy Camera–and the musicwas peak A E S T H E T I C. I still listento quite a few tracksfrom the game regularly and always find myself going back to the musicfrom this game when I need a pick-me-up.
Above all the creative weirdness though is a solid and unrelenting atmosphere, like this is not a world we naturally belong to and should not be partisan to right now but here we are. Everything is off-kilter but the residents in this world seem to not find anything amiss. One of my absolute favorite jokes in the game is from an NPC that just out of nowhere exposits that he is having a spat with his girlfriend who in retaliation has taken his xbox away–and “I live in South Dakota where there is nothing to do but play Halo 3”. Did I mention this conversation is happening0 in 1997? And you are most likely talking to an alien from outer space. This shit cracks me up so much, it’s so out of left field and stupid and makes no sense in the context presented. I love it.
Deadly Premonition
Deadly Premonition is the favorite game I played this year. It is not “Game of the Year” since it didn’t come out this year, heck, even the latest version, the Switch port didn’t come out this year, but to me this was the best gaming experience I had all year. The impact this game left on me is so much so that I would say Deadly Premonition is in my Top-5 Favorite Video Games of All Time now. Maybe that’s biased; when I played the game I was in a very dark place and I wasn’t sure what to do to get out of it. Out of desperation I picked this up, and somehow I made it through, but even if saying it’s one of the best games of my life is biased because of that, I don’t care. The impact it left is all the same.
What makes DP so special is its own creator, SWERY, who is a master of utterly bizarre games. You know it’s a SWERY game when it’s way overly ambitious, made on a shoestring budget, is full of bugs, glitches, and crashes–and somehow still moves you to tears. SWERY is an absolute oddity when it comes to mainstream gaming, there is no real clear way to review or talk about a SWERY game which is probably why his games tend to be all over the damn place when it comes to critical reception. Odd characters, bizarre strings of dialogue, a love of cinema, and anti-game play mechanics all make up key components of DP.
That last bit is an aspect that I would like to personally go into more depth about DP one day since most people really only talk about either its charm or its jank, but at the core of DP is a lot of small things that are designed very strangely. The easiest of which to talk about has to be how the game starts with protagonist York crashing his car, forcing the player to traverse the rest of the map on foot. This is unnecessarily long, and grueling, it probably lasts a solid 2 minutes of just walking down a highway with no car until you get into town finally.
Any sane person would turn the game off, this is a horrible start! What kind of game play is this?! But it has a point, your power is taken away from you, all your comforts of the city: your car, your computer, your cellphone, all gone. You are unwanted here, an outsider, there is no rest, and no place where you belong. The game, naturally through its game play (or anti game play as it’s not fun) expresses all this to you silently. There’s tons of small, weird moments like this, and I would argue even the less than stellar combat in the game that is often viewed poorly even by fans is another example of anti-game play, this isn’t what SWERY wants you to do, he wants you to be a good detective not rambo.
That tangent aside, Francis York Morgan and of course Zach too, are characters I will never forgettable.
Monster Hunter Stories 2
I never really got around to playing the original MonHun Stories on 3DS despite liking the demo a lot and watching a fair bit of the tie-in anime that aired around the time it was originally released. I was probably gonna pass this game up too despite it looking fun since I was still in a bit of a funk but at the behest of a friend–and also I had some good luck and bought the amiibos for it which I still collect so I may as well buy the game–I got it on release date. And I am glad I did! MonHun Stories 2 is just a plain fun video game, pure and simple. The capture and ride mechanic makes for an addicting game play loop that builds on an already solid tired and true JRPG formula. The graphics are incredible (honestly putting the latest installments of Pokémon to shame), the characters are tons of fun, and I got to make a terrible derp-faced kid that looked like he hasn’t slept in weeks save the world, thanks character creator!!!
Pokémon Shining Pearl
The Short Version: This is a flawed remake of a good game. It feels cheap and was full of bugs and glitches when it first came out as well. Bad graphics. But Pokémon is Pokémon, the base game is always strong: catching, raising, and battling is just as addicting. I wish it was better but I still liked it a lot as a fan. I never beat the original Pearl so I am looking forward to finally finishing it with this remake. I do however think we deserve better than this though. The Pokémon Company continues to disappoint on Switch.
I have Opinions: Okay, so Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are obviously trying to replicate the style of the original Nintendo DS games hence why the graphic design choice, but it’s not /DOING/ that right. I have no doubt they saw the very beautiful Link’s Awakening remake and thought they could just imitate that in a similar fashion–go for something that can look cute in a top-down perspective; try to capture how older Pokémon games alternated between overworld chibi sprites and more anime-esque battle sprites. And if this was a remake of Ruby and Sapphire that would be fine but they already missed the boat on that!
They forgot that the games they were remaking are not just 2D but 2.5D (i.e. 2D with some 3D depth for added effect). These games were on the Nintendo DS and while Gamefreak probably could have turned in something more ambitious at the time with 3D they still didn’t ignore that extra axis. Gamefreak’s contributions on the Nintendo DS are brimming with depth. They use tons of 3D mixed with 2D to create illusions of depth, almost like a shadow box or pop up story book.
These games are gorgeous and the remakes fall incredibly flat not just because “2D good, 3D bad” but because the original games were made to take full effect of the hardware they ran on. They had a wow factor, the 3D objects in the game made the world feel bigger. It was Pokémon in a dimension the likes of which we never seen before. And because of that the entire Shinnoh region is designed with depth in mind. It’s full of skyscrapers, and bridges, and cliffs, and ridges, as well as many objects that are high above and obstruct your view momentarily as you travel underneath them. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl completely miss this point. Everything is in 3D to begin with, any attempt at recreating this scale, or depth, fails, it’s just another 3D object, there is no wow factor. Ironically the 3D game is flatter than the actual 2D game. These remakes do not pop, I mean that literally and also because they are ugly.
If they truly wanted to actually go about the right away to capture what the Nintendo DS games were they should have looked at Square Enix and Team Asano’s recent works, titles like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy gorgeously incorporated 2D with 3D and create worlds full of depth that pop and feel alive. Instead we got plastic dolls in a flat overworld. The game screams cheap, and I am sure many people worked very hard on it, but it was obviously rushed and despite its best defenders touting the graphical style being “true to the originals” that is a bold face lie. The original games were designed with depth of view in mind, not the flatlands we got with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
Shadows of Adam
Shadows of Adam is a fun little return to classic JRPGs of yester year. I know these old retro inspired RPGs have truly become a dime-a-dozen nowadays but I still quite enjoy them for what they are worth. Shadows of Adam brings with it a fun turn based combat system and some really nice pixel graphics. It’s not much but in a way that is really all you need to make a good retro inspired indie game like this, and the developers absolutely nailed it. This was just a cozy and simple play through I was able to find the time for this year, and at the time having that took a lot of stress off of me.
Shin Megami Tensei V
SMTV is my Game of the Year for 2021. This was one I was looking forward to for like what, almost as long as the Switch was around, and it paid off in droves. It feels like a natural progression for the series, tackling open world game play and letting you explore an entire netherworld as much as you want. It’s pretty much the best elements of the two main 3DS entries, SMTIV and SMTIV Apocalypse, combined with the best elements of Xenoblade to create a truly immersive experience. This is just a game that is fun to play on its own, story, missions, side quests, it doesn’t matter, just let me Naruto Run in Da’at and chill with the boys, and I’m having a great time. So much so that I joke around with friends that the Tokyo you live in sucks. Screw that place, let me just live in Da’at forever, bro.
I had a lot of fears and reservations going into this one so it was reassuring that I ended up playing the game for some 10 hours straight the day it came out. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and really enjoy a bereft JRPG in a long time and I think SMTV is my gateway back into that.
I’m curious about all my gaming followers: first Pokémon game, first Zelda game, and first Mario game in the tags?
i can’t quite decide which pokemon to draw, i would love some recommendations!! c:
Garchomp
“When it folds up its body and extends its wings, it looks like a jet plane. It flies at sonic speed.”
-Pokémon Diamond Pokédex entry
Feeling pretty!
Lopunny
“An extremely cautious Pokémon. It cloaks its body with its fluffy ear fur when it senses danger”
-Pokémon Diamond Pokédex entry
Lucario will be sent to Tayson.
Bye-bye Lucario!
Tayson sent over Charizard.
Take good care of Charizard!
Lucario
“It has the ability to sense the Aura of all things. It understands human speech.”
-Pokémon Diamond Pokédex entry.
Mumargi" Sketchbook & Digitial, 2018
It’s been a while since I’ve dabbled with any Pokemon and since Mismagius is my favorite witchy-looking ghost type, I figured I’d try my rendition of it for the month :)
It’s always such an odd transition for me switching from long periods of only doing linework into colors. I really enjoyed how the subtle glow turned out on this though. Not bad for being a few months out of practice, heh
cant wait for pokemon Pearl version
please tell me this implies a pokemon diamond version with trucy
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