Yadda yadda yadda

- Welp, time to get my ass kicked by a F2P puzzle game. This is going to be a new experience for sure.

- Is it just me, or does Germany get all the cool Pokémon names? I mean, they get stuff like "Despotar", "Demeteros" or "Apoquallyp"... and, well, you all know how many boring portmanteaus we have. Sure, it might just be the whole grass-being-greener-elsewhere thing, but still.

- I'm going to venture a guess and say they completely embraced the fact that nowadays it's adults that play Pokémon. How else do you explain this?

- Finally, since I haven't updated you on our friends at Gen Zed in a while, munch on this... Julie Goldstein (along with much of the staff, it seems) is doing this entirely free of charge. Yes, she's dumb enough to commit career suicide over a gig she's not getting paid a damn cent for. C'mon, if you're going to make yourself completely unemployable, at least make sure you get something out of it!

Keep your money in your pockets

Remember when I said I was worried MD4 would turn out to basically be a fanservice-laden Gates to Infinity with all Pokémon and hunger? From what little we know so far, I wasn't too far off. The balance is still just as out of whack as MD3's was, and I know the first two games weren't perfect either, but the 3DS outings just insult your intelligence.

Traditional recruitment is completely gone, you now get all your Pokémon from Affinity Chart Connection Orb stuff. The good news is that you can do multiple missions in one go. The bad news is that the tutorial gets you a LEVEL 50 SALAMENCE. You're just a couple hours into the game and you get a LEVEL 50 SALAMENCE. What the fuck Trollfreak Chunsoft. Oh, but doing one particular mission allows you to do further missions that allow you to recruit... Team ACT from MD1. Well, we don't know if it's actually Team ACT, but they laid it out that way because FANSERVICE.

Oh, by the way, remember how MD3 just gave you friggin' Virizion early on just for the lulz? Well here you get Victini for free early on. I mean, come on. At least the first two games made you work for those legendaries - and I mean work really, really hard in some cases.

On a slightly related subject, I finally caved in and downloaded Pokémon Shuffle. Once you overlook the fact that your sessions will almost never go over 20 minutes unless you pay, it's actually quite a fun little game. I've done the first 50 regular stages, none of the expert stages even though I've unlocked a bunch, and I even managed to snag the event Emboar. (Note for anyone interested: every time you beat Emboar, but fail to catch it, its base catch rate will go up by 1%. So if you're having trouble, you can basically grind the catch rate on this thing - but start now, because there are only two days left! And yes, this is strictly an Emboar thing, no other battle, including events, does this.) Regirock really, REALLY seems off-limits with its 20k HP in 30 turns, though, and Diancie... well, I still have until the 28th to get ready for that.

Edit: Okay, so MD4 charges you for going from a continent to another. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. I'm sorry, but I'm just at a loss for words here. The first three games never did that! Nobody charged you a dime if you wanted to go to Blizzard Island, you went to Blizzard Island and that was it!

Oooh, but wait, it gets better. This is spoilerrific so I'll just mask it (highlight to read).

There's a boss fight where, about halfway through, you and your partner evolve to your final forms... AND THEN IT REVERTS AFTER THE FIGHT.

This is the most cruel I've ever seen a Pokémon game be.

The Zygarde mystery untangled

As most of us expected, it's getting two alternate forms, labeled 10% and Perfect. Perfect Zygarde is the silhouette we've seen before, and it's said to exceed Xerneas and Yveltal in power... though Kyurem had the same thing going for it, and we all know how THAT went. It's safe to assume Perfect Zygarde will have 700 BST - and it's also possible fusion of some kind is involved, since it has some blue and red on it. As for the 10% form (the one that looks like a dog), we don't know much about it, except that it's really speedy. We also don't know whatever its stat total could potentially look like, and there's still no word on how Thousand Arrows and Thousand Waves will work. Finally, the tiny blobs we've seen are the Zygarde Core and the Zygarde Cell, which makes up the mind of the new forms. No idea how it's going to translate in gameplay terms... we still have a lot to learn about all these new things, such as how the transformations are triggered in the first place, although we at least have the basics figured out.

There's also supposed to be some palette-swapped Greninja or something, but there's no word on what it's supposed to do. I'm just hoping it's not a further buff or anything, because it does NOT need it.

Gen Copyright Infringement

(Yes, ANOTHER friggin' Gen Zed post. It's not my fault this is turning out to be the unintentionally funny saga of the year.)

Because God forbid that those people have any original ideas. What do we have here... The Usual Suspects, South Park, Scooby-Doo, Doctor Who, the Wizard of Oz... and they're selling this for money. Pretty sure this doesn't even count as satire and thus doesn't fall under fair use. Please have one or more of these get on their cases, HARD.

You know what the really sad part is, though? For all that everyone is making fun of this gong show, we have to remember that most of the people involved (which means EVERYONE aside from Black and Goldstein themselves) are doing this as their first gig. They're looking to make a name for themselves, and use this as a possible springboard into other jobs. And unfortunately, they've stumbled upon these two endless voids of failure where cleverness creativity visual appeal common sense EVERYTHING goes to die. It's unfortunate, but the best thing to do at their point would be to NOT add this to their résumé, and not ever mention this to potential employers. Hell, even AFTER I was hired by someone else I'd still want to keep my mouth shut because being associated to Gen Zed might be enough of a reason to get sacked.

Good news, though: apparently some people are actually working on a Gen Zed parody series, and this appears to be really serious. If nothing that's ever been said could faze the Black/Goldstein OTP, this might actually be the thing that really makes them realize "we done fucked up". But wait, it gets better. Someone suggested to the people behind the parody that they try to get ahold of a trans man to play the lead role, then do everything in their power to have the first episode out before Gen Zed's (which was pushed back again recently, this time to December). Just to have Gen Zed's entire reason for existing becoming (even more of) a complete lie. Of course that was only a suggestion, the odds of that happening are slim, but man, if it happened I'd be the happiest man on Earth.

Pikmin 4 confirmed to be late in development

Okay, that's fine and all, but if that's the case, why did they not say jack about it at E3? Did they legitimately think people would want Federation Force more than this?

Never before have so many questions been answered so quickly.

I refuse to believe it, and yet this is very much real.

A little bit of everything

- People are getting pissy over the Xenoblade Chronicles X localization because it's changing a lot of names from the Japanese version. You know, as if it wasn't completely normal. So, how bad does it get? Well, you want to know what BLADE stands for in the English translation? "Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth". Okay, so it sounds a bit... lame, I'll give you that much. Now, do you want to take a stab at what the Japanese name was? "Beyond the Logos Artificial Destiny Emancipator". I shit you not. And people think THAT was better? What's wrong with their heads? There are a lot of changes too, some character names changed, some features were renamed as well (Nav Ball to Follow Ball being the most notable one), but geez... fucking weeaboos, man. JAPANESU ES BETTERU.

- Still waiting for Smogon's stats... apparently whoever's in charge messed up the stats' generation process, which led to anomalies like Raichu being in the top 20 in NU, even though apparently it's terrible there. Man, I really want to see those Pikachu Cup stats, to see if it was the bribe that got us the Endeavor event. Right now we have the most basic stats available for OU, UU, RU, NU and PU, but nothing else, and no detailed stats at all.

- Quick poll: which is the harder Mario level, the Perfect Run from Galaxy 2 or Champion's Road from 3D World? I'm going with the former. Not being able to take any hits whatsoever is the biggest thing, and the difficulty is very unevenly spread. The question mark tile, cloud and Pull Star segments are all complete jokes, and the Yoshi part is actually a bit tricky, but since it's first it's not too bad. It's the flip-swap segment that gets me every single time, I've never gotten past it. And even if I did, the freaking Hammer Bros would slaughter me in short order anyway. In comparison, Champion's Road allows you to take a few hits, and you have Peach and the Tanooki Suit at your disposal as well. There's no really easy part, but there's also no point that's completely and utterly unfair - as long as you hold on to those Tanooki Suits for dear life. One thing I'd like to see next time they try this super-hard level thing is to let us choose which segments to do first. No checkpoints means you barely get any practice in on the later parts, and too much on the earlier ones (though the first star in Grandmaster Galaxy is kind of a fix for this particular aspect, since there are checkpoints there).

- All this hoopla for 50 minutes? So apparently the first (and presumably only) season of Gen Zed is made of eight episodes that last between five and seven minutes in length. Which basically means their combined length is that of two to two and a half episodes of a show with a more normal running time. But then again, why am I not surprised? Any longer, and they'd be forced to start developing their characters beyond "TRANS TRANS TRANS", "cis white strawman", "token black stereotype because diversity or something", and "Amy Wong expy because diversity or something". And we all know SJWs see the world with a very limited array of labels (of which "pedophile" apparently isn't part of if the alleged bearer is one of their own number).

- But if you're starving for bottom-tier fiction and can't wait for Hayden Black to just cave in and put that stuff up on YouTube because no network will ever pick his shit up, you're in luck, because the impossible just happened last night. SONICHU IS GETTING RELAUNCHED. I am not kidding, for the first time in over five years we got some new pages. First thing on the menu was the second half of the Christmas special (the new stuff starts on page 13). And I gotta say, all those pessimistic people who thought CWC circa 2015 couldn't produce hilarious content are eating their words HARD. Sure, there's some debate on whether or not he did these recently or he's been sitting on these pages for almost six years, but it's pretty clear given the (relative) quality of the art and the themes that were brought up (including, but not limited to, Simonla's revival) that this is all brand new. Still, racism, sexism and almost undecipherable autistic word salads? It's like he never left at all! So now we got Duke Nukem Forever, Sonichu 11 is officially underway, what next? Your move, Mr. Newell.

Pokémon news grab bag

(I was waiting to see Smogon's Pikachu Cup stats before putting this up, but they're just not getting uploaded, so I guess I'll get back to it tomorrow... if we have the stats by then.)

- Smogon has started retconning banlists for previous generations, and the first victim is none other than gen 5 weather teams. The already implemented Drizzle + Swift Swim ban was retooled into a blanket ban for all weather inducing abilities and speed-boosting abilities on the same team. This means Sand Force / Mold Breaker Excadrill is now allowed, but Chlorophyll Venusaur can no longer be used in conjunction with Ninetales. Do I agree with that? Probably not. It IS true that the gen 5 meta has changed a lot since X/Y came out, and Venusaur became an extremely prominent and dangerous threat since then. However, what set Swift Swim apart from Sand Rush and Chlorophyll is that Swift Swimmers also get a power boost on top of their speed boost, whereas the others get nothing of the sort. While this fact may seem irrelevant, since people in favor of this change say it is, it's important to remember that Swift Swim was so good in comparison to the other two that the moment you'd get rid of a Swift Swimmer, another almost just as broken would take its place. No more Kingdra? Say hi to Ludicolo. Ludicolo goes? Replaced by Kabutops. Kabutops gets banned? It's Gorebyss time. And so on. Meanwhile, you can't slap, say, Sandslash on a sand team or Victreebel on a sun team and act like they're suitable replacements for Excadrill and Venusaur. This is why I would've preferred a straight ban on Venusaur instead, but so it goes.

But hey, I get to boast about Venusaur being the best Kanto starter again, so it's all good.

- After Lysandre's Trump Card, yet another card was banned from the TCG - Shiftry. The difference is that this one has been around for years, and it's its synergy with the newly released Forest of Giant Plants stadium card that made it go from a marginal card into an obliterating force capable of picking up turn 1 wins like they're going out of style. You can read the full explanation here. Since cards don't get rotated out of the expanded format (at least not for the time being), it's likely that we may see more and more of these scenarios in the future.

- Remember that catchy reggae song about Slowpoke? Well, they made an English version.

- Don't you dare, bitch. DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE.

...actually, by all means, go ahead and kick the hornet's nest. Get the entire Pokémon fanbase on your case. I'll be standing over here while you add a few zeroes to the amount of people who hate your guts. Hell, I see you already got started while I was typing this blog entry. Yeah, brag about your current job description all you want, but in this day and age where prospective employers check their candidates' online footprint, it's looking like it might be your LAST job description.