Posts Tagged ‘7’
30
Oct
Posted by vagrantesque in 3DS, DS, Games, GB, GBA, Switch. Tagged: 1, 2, 3, 3DS, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, advance, Best, cons, DS, game boy, Games, gen, generation, nostalgia, Pokemon, pros, videogames, worst. Leave a comment
Games/Expansions
Pokémon Sword
Pokémon Shield
The Isle of Armor
The Crown Tundra
Platform
Switch
Region
Galar
New Pokemon
89
+7. Into the slipstream
If you had to summarise the entire legacy – the highs and the lows – of the main eighth generation Pokemon games in just one word, “streamlined” would be pretty close to bang-on. Just about everything Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield did for the series seemed hell-bent on trimming fat, tucking in corners and straightening out paths. This post will come back to this theme repeatedly, but we start with all the miscellaneous quality of life improvements that make going back to older generation games just a little bit tougher after playing Sword or Shield.
The headlining improvement in this area was surely the ability to access the player’s boxes from almost anywhere in the game world, swapping a Pokemon out from storage into the party with a couple of button presses on the clean new user interface. A one-button save shortcut, the entirely fresh autosave option, non-intrusive activities to allow boxed Pokemon to grow (goodbye Festival Plaza and good riddance), combining the Affection and Friendship stats into one mechanic, wild Pokemon models visible in the overworld (a welcome feature brought over from the Let’s Go spin-offs), a proper audio balance menu, bikes that can surf, and the consolidation of several useful features traditionally locked to specific cities into the most useful Pokemon Centers in history all add up to a smoother moment-to-moment experience than ever before.
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13
Feb
Posted by vagrantesque in 3DS, DS, Games, GB, GBA. Tagged: 1, 2, 3, 3DS, 4, 5, 6, 7, advance, Best, cons, DS, game boy, Games, gen, generation, nostalgia, Pokemon, pros, videogames, worst. Leave a comment
Games
Pokémon Sun
Pokémon Moon
Pokémon Ultra Sun
Pokémon Ultra Moon
Platform
3DS
Region
Alola
New Pokemon
86
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+7. It’s the simple things
I’m starting this one with a catch-all cheat for the first time since my Gen IV post because the seventh generation Pokemon games rolled in at the end of the series’ 20th anniversary year with a swag of smaller changes that truly gave the traditional Pokemon flow a boost in playability. Some of them were flavour-leaning, such as the huge list of Pokemon who suddenly learned new (usually really cool and/or signature) moves on whatever level at which they happened to evolve, the long-absent return of music tracks specific to the time of day in-game, or the (once again) greatly appreciated minor stat boosts bequeathed upon a couple of dozen older Pokemon to bring them more in line with their designs (e.g a bit more Special Attack for Noctowl, much more durability overall for Corsola and the celestial rock twins).
Other, more immediate changes came under the “quality of life” banner, and they were received with open arms by the community at large. The headliner for long-suffering competitive players was the IV Judge feature no longer requiring a visit to a particular NPC to access, nor an intimate knowledge of six specific phrases. Simply open your in-game PC after a certain point in the game, tap an icon on the summary page of your intended Pokemon, and there’s a graph of all six of it’s hidden Individual Values. Laughably easy. In addition, each time you caught a Pokemon in the wild you now had the option to add it to your party right then and there, rather than send it to a PC box. The bottom screen of the 3DS also started pulling more of its weight this generation, displaying new information such as all combatants’ current stat boosts/drops, not to mention the predicted effectiveness of a move on an opposing Pokemon as long as said ‘mon had been encountered before. Someone at Game Freak was paying attention.
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20
Dec
Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: 7, abrams, awakens, bb8, episode, Film, finn, force, han, jedi, jj, kylo, leia, lightsaber, luke, Movie, part, peeta, ren, Review, rey, seven, sith, star, wars. Leave a comment
It’s a bit difficult to review a movie with this much weight riding on it, so soon after seeing it. The gap between the midnight screenings and the ideal start time for my year-end countdown posts is mere days, so I had to get cracking. But believe me, I’ve been mulling this movie over in my mind almost every second of that short time.
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Starring: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac
Director: JJ Abrams (Star Trek, Super 8)
Rating: M
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Say whatever you want about 2015 in movies – If Star Wars was good, the year was always going to be remembered fondly. In fact you might even argue that it didn’t have to be good, only better than those endlessly panned prequel films. The carefully timed, Disney engineered hype cycle for Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been lengthy, intense and omnipresent, and the, ahem, force of that hype has been looming over the movie, waiting to crush it like it did The Phantom Menace way back in 1999.
Within that unenviable context, what director/superfan JJ Abrams has done with this mega-franchise is astounding.
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9
Oct
Posted by vagrantesque in Games, MUBC. Tagged: 2ds, 7, affleck, bale, batman, ben, blast, cast, episode, mega, MUBC, podcast, seven, ultra. Leave a comment
Missed the chance to go to the EB Expo on the weekend? Maybe you did go but are keen to hear someone else’s impressions? Fear not – the Mega Ultra Blast Cast breaks down the whole show with opinions and arguments and such, just for your benefit. Shane is our sounding board as Delaney and I discuss our favourite games of the show, the things that surprised us, the best cosplays we saw and the most in-depth Titanfall demo breakdown you’ve ever heard. At 2:20 it’s the longest podcast we’ve done since our first one, but you can read the description on Soundcloud and click the timestamps to go to the section you are interested in. If you feel so inclined, go for a run, take a scenic drive or just curl up on the couch and listen to the opinions of two excited Sydneysiders and one jealous guy.
You can play the whole thing right off this page if you wish:
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Or you can go to the Soundcloud site/app and listen from there:
https://soundcloud.com/mega-ultra-blast-cast/mubc-10-eb-expo
(Follow the link and then click the download tab)
As always if you enjoy what you hear please share the cast with your friends and like our Facebook page. Cheers!
4
Sep
Posted by vagrantesque in MUBC. Tagged: 2ds, 7, affleck, bale, batman, ben, blast, cast, episode, mega, MUBC, podcast, seven, ultra. Leave a comment
In our shortest episode yet of the Mega Ultra Blast Cast (under 1:10), we succumb to the rising temperature of the overeager Australian spring and get a little bit delusional. And by a little bit I mean a lot. There are some weird things said in this podcast. We do discuss things of substance though, such as the internet backlash over Ben Affleck’s casting as Batman, the strange announcement of the 2DS by Nintendo and why you should buy a Playstation Vita now that its price has dropped. We’ve also been playing some pretty fun games, so have a listen!
If you feel so inclined, download the following file (or just click play), go for a run, take a scenic drive or just curl up on the couch and listen to the biased opinions of three delusional Sydneysiders who really need to get an air conditioner.
Soundcloud continues to be the hosting platform:
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https://soundcloud.com/mega-ultra-blast-cast/mubc-07-batman-un-bale-d
(Follow the link and then click the download tab)
We continue to strive to find a way to get onto iTunes but it is a lot more difficult (and expensive) than we ever thought it would be. If you enjoy what you hear please share the cast with your friends and like our Facebook page. Cheers!
Vagrant Rant 