From the looks of it, this might be the digital version of the Pokémon Trading Figure Game! It was as the name suggests a figure game developed a while back, although it kinda flopped.
Alpha Sapphire, White and HeartGold in that order.
ORAS has amazing theming, a good storyline, tight gameplay and is easily accessible and supportive of casual gamers, hardcore gamers and competitive battlers alike. It's visually impressive too. It's literally taking my favourite and first Pokémon games (RSE) and just updating and improving on them in excellent ways.
Black and White are the best plot the series has to offer hands down. The characters are well written and interesting (including Gym leaders that actually do stuff OUTSIDE their gym for once), the evil team is incredibly clever and just everything about the plot is excellent. In addition, Gen 5's Pokémon are my personal favourites for design. I played through Black and White about ten times when they were released with different teams because I wanted to use all the Pokémon in a playthrough each. The last playthrough was tiring, sure, but it never felt like a drag, and the plot, the characters and the Pokémon were the reason I could do that so many times.
HeartGold/Soulsilver still stand as the best Gameplay we've had for me. Everything is so smooth, and Pokémon following you is an absolute joy. There are a couple of problems I still have with HGSS, which means it's only my third favourite rather than being high up. For one, levelling up is horrible in this game. For another, I still to this day don't understand why certain Gen 2 Pokémon aren't found in Johto and are Kanto exclusives (looking at you, Houndour, Murkrow). Otherwise a Top Notch game.
Platinum is my fourth pick btw. Anything Kanto is at the bottom of the list. A couple of decent Pokémon designs in Kanto, but a lot aren't that great, and the horribly glitchy gameplay (in the originals - really inexcusable imo), ridiculous Poison overabundance and the fact that Pokémon don't even learn good STAB moves by level up drag the games down for me. Still respect and appreciate them for what they are though.
@Zombo I'm talking more Timed missions, orcLimited Ink challenges, but with the Roller/Charger. The regular amiibos just have normal levels with their weapon. Inkling Squid amiibo (the green one) has challenge levels like the ones I mentioned, but only for Shooter stages. I'm suggesting challenge levels like those levels, but using a Roller/Charger instead.
Callie is a Roller user, and Marie a Charger user, so if these end up being our beloved Squid Sisters as most expect, I'm thinking that challenge levels just like the Squid Amiibo, but with rollers and chargers instead, are a decently likely prospect.
Dataminging also seems to suggest new enemies (Enemy_Hammer_Guy, Enemy_Jumping_Guy and another that I forget) iirc, so they could unlock totally new gameplay as well, though!
As Pokemon obsessed as I am, I don't want to see a Pokemon game at launch (which I believe is the question). It's just too soon. We still have Z coming, and that should be a 3DS title, so time in between that and the NX's launch if it does come in late 2016 is simply too little. Do I want to see Gen 7 on the NX though? Hell yeah. Just not at launch.
A spinoff is potentially viable but this and last year are already packed with spinoffs, I think Gamefreak will probably not be working on that many of those.
Splatoon looked fantastic in all its pre release content, and boy did it deliver. As a big big fan of TF2, it took everything I loved about that game and made it even better. I'll be playing it for many years to come; I'm sure (or at least the inevitable sequel!)
I did vote for PSMD, bc the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is the best game series ever made imo, but as I'm in Britain and havent been able to play it yet, I couldn't vote it best game overall.
"I want Nintendo games to be amazing, I want them to be must-haves, and that applies to any game I boot up to review from any publisher, big or small."
This I think is an important thing to highlight. If feeling disappointed about a lot of this year's releases is something people want to remedy, then they HAVE to fix this for themselves.
Quality is very, very hard to find. It takes time, money, talent and experience to make a masterpiece, or even a good game. And consistently finding that winning combination is just impossible. People can't strike this balance. They just can't. Can you honestly say that you always put 100% of your effort into every single last thing you do? Because I definitely can't. Sure, Nintendo employees' jobs to make games, and its your jobs to review them and write articles, but despite being Nintendo and being this big, massive brand, it's a company. It's a group of people. And people are very, very fallible. Especially when you're new to the job, and this is the first game you've ever made. Especially when you have time constraints. Especially when you're struggling financially so need to save money.
Getting good at Game dev takes time. You'll stumble a lot. Even the masters stumble a lot. But people don't give anyone time ever. They get pissy at the slightest delay to a game, when realistically, the game will be much, much better with more time. And when a game IS on time, and it's mediocre, people get pissy because it's not everything they wanted it to be. But realistically, how is it possible to cater to every desire of every fan? It isn't.
Nintendo needs to keep making games to keep in business, that much is clear. For the masterpieces in making, they need time, but they need stuff in between to show consumers that they ARE still a thing, or they will slowly start to fade away. So as consumers, we need to understand. We all know the big N is in a major transitional period right now. The NX looms on the horizon. That console has to be perfected. It has to be good, at all costs. The games for it have to be good, at all costs. It needs to start strong. They need their best people working on that hardware and those games at the minute.
We as fans and consumers need to understand that that's happening and just accept that what we're getting now IS gonna be a little lacking in the pristine quality we know Nintendo CAN produce. In short, we need to be OK with mediocrity, and we need to lower our expectations. Rather than expecting TriForce heroes to be this amazing awesome game for instance, we need to understand that it's a multiplayer focused spinoff made reasonably quickly and cheaply. It's fun, it's lighthearted, it isn't serious, and it's full of charm. Why would you expect a good singleplayer of a game that was advertised as a multiplayer focused game? From everything I've seen of the game, it nails what it says it is. It's a fun, simple, co-op game to play with your friends. It's a bonding experience more than a rich, brilliant masterpiece.
I could go on with examples, but I've pasted enough of a wall of text as it is. I'll just finish with a tl;dr, I guess: Understand that not everything can be brilliant, and stop demanding brilliance all the time. It's not possible to bring that quality constantly. Be ok with mediocrity, and lower your expectations.
I still think Linkle's name in English has an origin, even if it's not a deliberate one!
Linkle, to me at least, is a portmanteau of Link and All (Link All, Linkle), which works because she finally links ALL players to the Zelda game bc she's a female character to better be the link for female gamers.
Of course, theres plenty of people who would disagree with her being good representation, and there's more genders than just male and female, but that's a possibility, maybe?
@NintenBo That image literally just says "Look at all the Pokémon games we've announced. This is when we're releasing Pokémon GO! This series sure has come a long way". Or at least thats how I interpreted it,
Z HAS to be coming at this point. We still have had no resolution to the Strange Souvenir, Pokébank Dataminers found stuff strongly suggesting at least one if not two further Gen 6 games, and the Zygarde stuff... there's no way it's not coming.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the likelihood of Pokemon Z being announced via a brief cutaway to Gamefreak!
We're expecting it, we have all but a confirmation that it's coming, Pokemon trailers have appeared in Nintendo Directs before, the direct is around the time of Corocoro, so even though it'll be a first, I think it could happen!
That would be a pretty hype announcement, especially for us Pokemon fans.
The Mystery Dungeon series is in my opinion the best video games series ever made, so PSMD is DEFINITELY being bought, although I will have to wait until Q1 of 2016 for it given that I'm in England.
Tri Force Heroes looks good and I have a few friends who are big Zelda fans, so I'll probably pick it up to play with them.
I don't see anything wrong with mediocrity though. Not everything can be AMAZING. Not everything needs to be. This is clearly just a relaxing, but not particularly challenging platformer. That's all it looked like from the outset. Just some simple platforming with a slightly interesting twist with the Zip lash. Not every game can or needs to be the best-thing-you've-ever-played.
The funny thing is that if this game had been released amongst a few more of the higher end AMAZING games, it probably would have gotten much more favourable reviews, and would have been called "nice and simple" or something to that effect. Game droughts bring the worst in people. And the devs of this game are hardly responsible for the drought.
Maybe it is trying to cash in on an old IP with a boring platformer, maybe they shouldn't have done that, who knows? I haven't myself played any Chibi-Robo game so I don't really have an opinion on that. But this review reads as if the author expected something AMAZING (because they have nothing else to play at the moment) when it never looked to be from the start. Shrug.
I'm a massive, massive Pokemon fan, and I owe a lot to Gen 1 as a series for being the start of the franchise. Without it, we wouldn't have the amazing games we have today in the series which have given me so much enjoyment over the years. So thank you Gen 1 for being the awkward baby steps the franchise needed to happen!
That said, I started Pokemon in Generation 3 with Ruby and Sapphire (I then retroactively played the old games), so all the nostalgia for Gen 1 simply doesn't exist for me. And that's why I just don't really like Gen 1 that much. The aforementioned glitches and limited spritework are a hindrance to the game, but the abysmal type balance (Psychic dominating as much as it did) and other minor gameplay issues are what really hold Gen 1 back from being the best. That said, whilst my most hated Pokemon come from Gen 1, a lot of the designs equally fall into some of my more liked designs, so Gen 1 is far from all bad! The region is extremely well designed in a way that a couple of future regions aren't, and the plot is decent.
I liked my baby steps analogy from earlier because it actually describes Pokemon pretty well. Babies are popular things, and are fresh and new and exciting in the lives of those who encounter them. Older kids and adults, whilst still loved by a few, are rarely as unanimously loved. And I feel like that describes Pokemon pretty well. Gen 1 hype is the baby, everything that followed is what came after.
I'm gonna look forward to this series.
(Oh and by the way, Pokemon Snap is awesome, they need to make a Sequel. Using the Wii U Gamepad as the camera! Won't happen with NX but hey).
I don't even know anything about who he is, but from this article alone I dislike Pachter. I'm glad people here don't seem to either. What an poopyhead.
I mean "consider Pokemon as a free-to-play game" does this dude want Pokemon to descend into pure poopydoodle? Clearly he does.
Comments 16
Re: Pokémon Comaster is Revealed as Another Upcoming Smart Device Release
From the looks of it, this might be the digital version of the Pokémon Trading Figure Game! It was as the name suggests a figure game developed a while back, although it kinda flopped.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Trading_Figure_Game
Article for those interested.
Re: Poll: Vote for Your Favourite Main Series Pokémon Games - 20th Anniversary Edition
Alpha Sapphire, White and HeartGold in that order.
ORAS has amazing theming, a good storyline, tight gameplay and is easily accessible and supportive of casual gamers, hardcore gamers and competitive battlers alike. It's visually impressive too. It's literally taking my favourite and first Pokémon games (RSE) and just updating and improving on them in excellent ways.
Black and White are the best plot the series has to offer hands down. The characters are well written and interesting (including Gym leaders that actually do stuff OUTSIDE their gym for once), the evil team is incredibly clever and just everything about the plot is excellent. In addition, Gen 5's Pokémon are my personal favourites for design. I played through Black and White about ten times when they were released with different teams because I wanted to use all the Pokémon in a playthrough each. The last playthrough was tiring, sure, but it never felt like a drag, and the plot, the characters and the Pokémon were the reason I could do that so many times.
HeartGold/Soulsilver still stand as the best Gameplay we've had for me. Everything is so smooth, and Pokémon following you is an absolute joy. There are a couple of problems I still have with HGSS, which means it's only my third favourite rather than being high up. For one, levelling up is horrible in this game. For another, I still to this day don't understand why certain Gen 2 Pokémon aren't found in Johto and are Kanto exclusives (looking at you, Houndour, Murkrow). Otherwise a Top Notch game.
Platinum is my fourth pick btw. Anything Kanto is at the bottom of the list. A couple of decent Pokémon designs in Kanto, but a lot aren't that great, and the horribly glitchy gameplay (in the originals - really inexcusable imo), ridiculous Poison overabundance and the fact that Pokémon don't even learn good STAB moves by level up drag the games down for me. Still respect and appreciate them for what they are though.
Re: Pokémon Company CEO Reveals Pokémon GO Rollout Details, Teases Another "Big" Project
@Lizuka Agreed. Pokémon A & Z versions would work quite nicely for multiple reasons!
Re: Rumour: Data Miners Find Evidence That Suggests New Splatoon amiibo Are Coming
@Zombo I'm talking more Timed missions, orcLimited Ink challenges, but with the Roller/Charger. The regular amiibos just have normal levels with their weapon. Inkling Squid amiibo (the green one) has challenge levels like the ones I mentioned, but only for Shooter stages. I'm suggesting challenge levels like those levels, but using a Roller/Charger instead.
Re: Rumour: Data Miners Find Evidence That Suggests New Splatoon amiibo Are Coming
Callie is a Roller user, and Marie a Charger user, so if these end up being our beloved Squid Sisters as most expect, I'm thinking that challenge levels just like the Squid Amiibo, but with rollers and chargers instead, are a decently likely prospect.
Dataminging also seems to suggest new enemies (Enemy_Hammer_Guy, Enemy_Jumping_Guy and another that I forget) iirc, so they could unlock totally new gameplay as well, though!
Re: Poll: Which Nintendo Franchises Do You Most Want to See With the NX Launch?
As Pokemon obsessed as I am, I don't want to see a Pokemon game at launch (which I believe is the question). It's just too soon. We still have Z coming, and that should be a 3DS title, so time in between that and the NX's launch if it does come in late 2016 is simply too little. Do I want to see Gen 7 on the NX though? Hell yeah. Just not at launch.
A spinoff is potentially viable but this and last year are already packed with spinoffs, I think Gamefreak will probably not be working on that many of those.
Re: Feature: Time to Vote for Your Nintendo Life Game of the Year Awards 2015
Splatoon looked fantastic in all its pre release content, and boy did it deliver. As a big big fan of TF2, it took everything I loved about that game and made it even better. I'll be playing it for many years to come; I'm sure (or at least the inevitable sequel!)
I did vote for PSMD, bc the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is the best game series ever made imo, but as I'm in Britain and havent been able to play it yet, I couldn't vote it best game overall.
Re: Talking Point: Nintendo is Right to Move On From the Wii Family Name With NX
Need articles do we, Tom?
This one feels a little obvious but yeah, part of Wii U's failings was its name, and I'm glad they're moving away from it.
Re: Editorial: It's Not Fun to Criticise Nintendo Games, But It's Been Unavoidable in 2015
"I want Nintendo games to be amazing, I want them to be must-haves, and that applies to any game I boot up to review from any publisher, big or small."
This I think is an important thing to highlight. If feeling disappointed about a lot of this year's releases is something people want to remedy, then they HAVE to fix this for themselves.
Quality is very, very hard to find. It takes time, money, talent and experience to make a masterpiece, or even a good game. And consistently finding that winning combination is just impossible. People can't strike this balance. They just can't. Can you honestly say that you always put 100% of your effort into every single last thing you do? Because I definitely can't. Sure, Nintendo employees' jobs to make games, and its your jobs to review them and write articles, but despite being Nintendo and being this big, massive brand, it's a company. It's a group of people. And people are very, very fallible. Especially when you're new to the job, and this is the first game you've ever made. Especially when you have time constraints. Especially when you're struggling financially so need to save money.
Getting good at Game dev takes time. You'll stumble a lot. Even the masters stumble a lot. But people don't give anyone time ever. They get pissy at the slightest delay to a game, when realistically, the game will be much, much better with more time. And when a game IS on time, and it's mediocre, people get pissy because it's not everything they wanted it to be. But realistically, how is it possible to cater to every desire of every fan? It isn't.
Nintendo needs to keep making games to keep in business, that much is clear. For the masterpieces in making, they need time, but they need stuff in between to show consumers that they ARE still a thing, or they will slowly start to fade away. So as consumers, we need to understand. We all know the big N is in a major transitional period right now. The NX looms on the horizon. That console has to be perfected. It has to be good, at all costs. The games for it have to be good, at all costs. It needs to start strong. They need their best people working on that hardware and those games at the minute.
We as fans and consumers need to understand that that's happening and just accept that what we're getting now IS gonna be a little lacking in the pristine quality we know Nintendo CAN produce. In short, we need to be OK with mediocrity, and we need to lower our expectations. Rather than expecting TriForce heroes to be this amazing awesome game for instance, we need to understand that it's a multiplayer focused spinoff made reasonably quickly and cheaply. It's fun, it's lighthearted, it isn't serious, and it's full of charm. Why would you expect a good singleplayer of a game that was advertised as a multiplayer focused game? From everything I've seen of the game, it nails what it says it is. It's a fun, simple, co-op game to play with your friends. It's a bonding experience more than a rich, brilliant masterpiece.
I could go on with examples, but I've pasted enough of a wall of text as it is. I'll just finish with a tl;dr, I guess: Understand that not everything can be brilliant, and stop demanding brilliance all the time. It's not possible to bring that quality constantly. Be ok with mediocrity, and lower your expectations.
Re: Gallery: There's Loads Of Awesome Linkle Fan Art Available Already
I still think Linkle's name in English has an origin, even if it's not a deliberate one!
Linkle, to me at least, is a portmanteau of Link and All (Link All, Linkle), which works because she finally links ALL players to the Zelda game bc she's a female character to better be the link for female gamers.
Of course, theres plenty of people who would disagree with her being good representation, and there's more genders than just male and female, but that's a possibility, maybe?
Re: CoroCoro is Teasing a Big Pokémon Announcement for Next Month
@NintenBo That image literally just says "Look at all the Pokémon games we've announced. This is when we're releasing Pokémon GO! This series sure has come a long way". Or at least thats how I interpreted it,
Z HAS to be coming at this point. We still have had no resolution to the Strange Souvenir, Pokébank Dataminers found stuff strongly suggesting at least one if not two further Gen 6 games, and the Zygarde stuff... there's no way it's not coming.
Re: The Next Nintendo Direct is on 12th November
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the likelihood of Pokemon Z being announced via a brief cutaway to Gamefreak!
We're expecting it, we have all but a confirmation that it's coming, Pokemon trailers have appeared in Nintendo Directs before, the direct is around the time of Corocoro, so even though it'll be a first, I think it could happen!
That would be a pretty hype announcement, especially for us Pokemon fans.
Re: Feature: The Biggest 3DS Games of 2015 - Q4 Edition
The Mystery Dungeon series is in my opinion the best video games series ever made, so PSMD is DEFINITELY being bought, although I will have to wait until Q1 of 2016 for it given that I'm in England.
Tri Force Heroes looks good and I have a few friends who are big Zelda fans, so I'll probably pick it up to play with them.
Re: Review: Chibi-Robo!: Zip Lash (3DS)
I don't see anything wrong with mediocrity though. Not everything can be AMAZING. Not everything needs to be. This is clearly just a relaxing, but not particularly challenging platformer. That's all it looked like from the outset. Just some simple platforming with a slightly interesting twist with the Zip lash. Not every game can or needs to be the best-thing-you've-ever-played.
The funny thing is that if this game had been released amongst a few more of the higher end AMAZING games, it probably would have gotten much more favourable reviews, and would have been called "nice and simple" or something to that effect. Game droughts bring the worst in people. And the devs of this game are hardly responsible for the drought.
Maybe it is trying to cash in on an old IP with a boring platformer, maybe they shouldn't have done that, who knows? I haven't myself played any Chibi-Robo game so I don't really have an opinion on that. But this review reads as if the author expected something AMAZING (because they have nothing else to play at the moment) when it never looked to be from the start. Shrug.
Re: Feature: A Pokémon Retrospective: Generation 1 - 1996 to 1999
I'm a massive, massive Pokemon fan, and I owe a lot to Gen 1 as a series for being the start of the franchise. Without it, we wouldn't have the amazing games we have today in the series which have given me so much enjoyment over the years. So thank you Gen 1 for being the awkward baby steps the franchise needed to happen!
That said, I started Pokemon in Generation 3 with Ruby and Sapphire (I then retroactively played the old games), so all the nostalgia for Gen 1 simply doesn't exist for me. And that's why I just don't really like Gen 1 that much. The aforementioned glitches and limited spritework are a hindrance to the game, but the abysmal type balance (Psychic dominating as much as it did) and other minor gameplay issues are what really hold Gen 1 back from being the best. That said, whilst my most hated Pokemon come from Gen 1, a lot of the designs equally fall into some of my more liked designs, so Gen 1 is far from all bad! The region is extremely well designed in a way that a couple of future regions aren't, and the plot is decent.
I liked my baby steps analogy from earlier because it actually describes Pokemon pretty well. Babies are popular things, and are fresh and new and exciting in the lives of those who encounter them. Older kids and adults, whilst still loved by a few, are rarely as unanimously loved. And I feel like that describes Pokemon pretty well. Gen 1 hype is the baby, everything that followed is what came after.
I'm gonna look forward to this series.
(Oh and by the way, Pokemon Snap is awesome, they need to make a Sequel. Using the Wii U Gamepad as the camera! Won't happen with NX but hey).
Re: Industry Analysts Speculate On Nintendo's Future And Satoru Iwata's Possible Successor
I don't even know anything about who he is, but from this article alone I dislike Pachter. I'm glad people here don't seem to either. What an poopyhead.
I mean "consider Pokemon as a free-to-play game" does this dude want Pokemon to descend into pure poopydoodle? Clearly he does.