- 2 Posts
- 23 Comments
- @[email protected] to
English - •
- 9M
- •
Mobile games just make more money now than console games. It only makes sense to aim for casual gamers on the Apple Arcade or Android Play store.
It’s a problem in that it somewhat alienates the hardcore console players. But the console market is shrinking. That’s true for all fanbases, not just PuyoPuyo.
The only stuff that gets money in the console market are super mega AAA games that reach millions, like FFVII remake. But these mega-games cost so much that there’s no risk or creativity anymore. (I like PuyoPuyo Tetris’s style, it was a risk and a bit different. We need game makers to take risks like that)
That’s a lot of ranting.
I get it. PuyoPuyo main story is necessary for casuals to get introduced to the game. Chaining 10+ long while harassing is a skill that took me a literal decade to reach, and there are far stronger players than me at the game.
But PuyoPuyo Tetris was that big casual story driven game that truly did bring a lot of players into the scene. Myself included. So yeah, I wouldn’t be a serious PuyoPuyo without that.
PuyoPuyo Champions/eSports is pretty good for competitive players. We got Fever and Tsu mode, the main modes that people care about.
There are also more casual mobile games like that Apple Arcade one brought up. The real issue is that modern video games make money from Apple and Android stores, not really the consoles anymore.
I mean, the badge thing is primarily there so that when you trade a level 70 pokemon to your kid brother who is vs Brock (who only has lvl 10 pokemon), your kid brother gets a slight penalty for trying to use Pokemon obviously outside of their level. They also obviously exist as a 2nd gate for Cut / Surf / (etc. etc.) abilities, to prevent the same high-level trade from increasing the size of the world too much and sending your kid-brother onto a sequence-break.
In the typical anime lore, the badges don’t “control” pokemon or command respect. The exception being the Pokemon Special manga where badges have significant power, but that’s why Team Rocket / Giovanni explicitly takes over multiple gym leaders in an attempt to combine badges and take over legendary Pokemon (which is a more grimdark setting that does have these conspiracies or evils to face)
All of Ash’s badges don’t allow him to control Mewtwo or other `mon. In the case of Charizard, it was finally finding challenges that Charizard deemed worthy that brought respect. I’m not sure if Primape ever actually respected Ash. Mimikyu for Team Rocket was also for purely selfish reasons, there to harass Pikachu… I don’t think Team Rocket ever truly controlled Mimikyu.
If you want it for specifically Pokemon, I do highly suggest the Pokemon Special comics. (EDIT: Named “Pokemon Adventure” in the English speaking world. Though “Pokemon Special” is the Japanese name, so you’ll likely be able to find it in any case…)
Its the world the original creator of Pokemon wanted anyway, before Nintendo watered it down for a more kid-friendly environment.
EDIT: Anime in general took kid-like aesthetics and bring mature themes into them. Madoka Magika, Promised Neverland, Full Metal Alchemist, and the like. Young Justice did a good job for American media.
You mean… Sonic SatAM ? :-)
There’s other settings where people are literally getting mind-controlled to work for an evil overlord, with a scrappy young group of freedom fighters running disruption campaigns against them. But the setting needs to be reworked entirely from the ground up.
I think such a setting could occur in Pokemon, but it just hasn’t been written yet. More importantly though, Pokemon is aimed at a younger demographic who wouldn’t appreciate such a story. And indeed: Sonic SatAM’s problem was the lack of toy sales. A lot of these cartoons are toy-commercials after all, as that’s where the real source of funding is. If the comic/anime/cartoon fails to sell toys, the whole system falls apart.
These slightly darker and more complex stories about freedom fighters (Sonic SatAM), or conspiracies (Young Justice) tend to lead to superior shows… but inferior toy sales. So everyone reverts to a happier storyline a few years later and My Little Pony suddenly shoots up to #1 (no offense to the Bronies out there, but yall spent money on those toys and it supported that universe…)
EDIT: I should probably note that Team Rocket in the Pokemon Special manga is a secret organization controlling large swaths of the world. In fact, the above fight is Koga vs Blue. Yes, Gym Leader Koga was trying to kill two kids, because Gym Leader Koga (future Elite 4 member) is an elite agent of Team Rocket.
That’s not “capture” or any soft words here. Its literally kill. Koga even resurrected a zombie Psyduck as part of this arc.
In the Pokemon Special Manga, Team Rocket is a serious world threat with deadly consequences. I mean, imagine what a criminal ring could do with legendary creatures, especially when said criminal ring has already infiltrated multiple members of upper-class society (Ie: Gym Leaders and Elite 4).
I’m curious how Pokemon Horizon, with Liko’s focus on adventure, will help the Pokemon series here on out.
Even from the start, Ash was not really “catch them all”, but was a generic adventure in this world. Very few Pokemon (relatively speaking), become Ashs’s friend, so its not really a mass-mind control thing. And only Team Rocket (or other “evil” entities) have the problem of actively trying to “steal” Pokemon or otherwise mistreat them. Even then, Jessie / James are among the most empathetic characters (which is why Wobbuffet and other such `mon hang out with them so much), so everyone’s pretty much morally fine.
The few times “Pokeball-mind control” was used was like… Mewtwo in that one movie, and other such obviously evil situations.
Liko is perhaps a better basis for a modern Pokemon hero moving forward, rather than Ash. I mean, when Pokemon got started, the focus was (as always) selling toys and figures and cards. Pokemon is now popular enough you don’t need the main character causing casual FOMO upon children to buy more toys, if you get my drift. :-)
I mean… there’s all sorts of problems in Pokemon lore. The fact that you can literally capture the creator of the oceans (Kyogre is practically a god), or the master of continents (Groudon), or the master of the Sky (Rayquaza) is when things started to get silly in Gen3.
Overall, Pokemon entities, like N, only make sense within their season (ie: Black and White). Its not like the creator of Pokemon foresaw how Pokemon’s lore or story would evolve 10+ years later, so trying to retcon N’s logic into things from Gen1 or Gen3 is… well… its going to be problematic.
Its the general problem with any long-running series. You either end up with amorphous meaningless blobs (see Mickey Mouse or Sonic, who have been in so many settings that they are practically meaningless today), or you end up with contradictions as your story writers took short-term / long-term risks with the lore and setting.
I think Pokemon Special Manga had roughly the right level of edginess / darklord energy to me. Palworld seems unnecessarily grimdark, to the point of pointlessness.
Pokemon Special still has the death matches:
As the famous scene of Charmeleon vs Arbok. And its far less rosy about Red’s (aka: Ash) chances of becoming top 1% through the Pokemon League. Its not all roses but its not all dumb grimdark energy either, its a good balance. Lethal force against a giant snake trying to lethally poison you and your friends is fair, and Blue (aka: Gary) is right to use lethal force, and Red is naive about holding back in that fight. Having the rivalry also helps compared to Ash vs Gary (the Anime counterparts to Red and Blue in Pokemon Special)… setting Blue up to be the more pragmatic (albeit lethal) rival, with Red being the more classic protagonist.
Mind-control and enchantments being used for… ill-purposes… is explored in a lot of fantasy settings. I don’t think Pokemon (or Pal-world for that matter) are very good settings for that.
Well, in Pokemon at least, Pokeballs don’t mind-control the target. When Ash first got Pikachu, Pikachu rarely listened to him. Other Pokemon were more docile from the start, but there’s still examples of Primate or Charizard who actively didn’t want to work with Ash.
In Palworld, they’re doing this on purpose to make a more grimdark world to get more press / have a edgier environment than Pokemon ever did. So… yeah? The edginess is the damn point of the game.
Ghost Squad, also an arcade game.
For roughly 3 years of my life in college… after class, I’d go to the local arcade, spend $1, play roughly ~1 hour of the game… beat my old high score and go home. I did look up world-records and I’m a nobody on the world-record list, but I was #1 through #50 on that machine on the high score list, no one else at that arcade could even take out my #50 score.
SNES – Super Mario World. I got to the point of ~12 minute speedrun, also no where near record-breaking world record or anything, but I’d like to think I’m better at that game than most people. Before college, my routine when I got home was to speedrun the game and beat it within ~15 minutes.
Factorio is probably the “long running game” that I put a lot of effort into.
The only games I ever reached “advanced/expert” level in were BlazBlue, Puyo Puyo, and Tetris. I wish I had the guts to actually go to a major tournament for Blazblue (the most popular of the three games I reached expert status into…). I’d expect that I probably was strong enough to qualify for Evo but I wouldn’t expect to be in the top 32 even… just barely a qualifier. I was a regular training partner / punching bag for a few top-of-the-USA players on my friends list. I would lose 80%+ of the time but I was strong enough to occasionally eek out a victory vs top-level play (though you’re never quite sure if the expert is feeling bad and letting me win, lol). I did play at some local tournaments though and knew I was near top of my state/local neighborhood at least. So I think I qualify for the expert ranking, though there is a huge tier of difference between “top of USA” and “top of local tournament”.
EDIT: In terms of USA players, I’d regularly qualify for Puyo Puyo and/or Tetris tournaments. But I’m not top10 or anything crazy. Of course, USA-play is much weaker than overseas players. I’m not that good with regards to speed, only ~1 minute 40-line clear, but I think my downstacking and opening-theory is stronger than most people in Tetris and I can regularly beat faster players than me. Note that Puyo Puyo Tetris is a relatively slow Tetris game so top-tier PPT players are only ~40-seconds 40-line clear in this game, there’s a lot more focus on downstacking efficiently since line clears are so slow.
I can sometimes 14-chain in solitaire Puyo / training mode, though my style is mostly harassment / beginning to screenwatch at the midgame for Puyo. Again, expert level in USA, but only maybe “advanced” as far as Japanese players go. I’m relatively bad at chaining but I think my midgame is good enough to qualify me for the expert level. I never outchain players of equal ranking to me, but instead perform crushing power-2 or other harassments while they’re vulnerable on the 2nd level.
I also tried to reach advanced levels in Starcraft: BW and Age of Empires 2, but alas, I’m not that good at RTS. I’d say the games are still close to my heart due to the many hours / months / years of practice I put in, but I’m a nobody in these games.
Which science did you get stuck at?
The 3rd science pack is probably the hardest leap forward. But purple/yellow science are difficult too (just not “as hard” as blue IMO).
The 3rd science pack requires mastery of oil refining. The 4th and 5th (purple/yellow) science packs are “just” about scaling up to exceptionally large bases, which is easier IMO than trying to figure out oil (though still somewhat difficult, and the scaling is of two grossly different stuffs. Purple science requires a ton of stone-and-steel, while yellow science requires a ton of copper).
Once you recognize that purple and yellow need way more space than you originally expected, its actually really easy. Just build “bigger” than you ever had before, but otherwise the basics are the exact same as red/green science. Don’t build a “few” assembly machines, you need to be thinking of at least 50+ assembly machines for the entire purple / yellow chains, and possibly need ~2 or ~3 belts of raw iron ore (for purple) or ~2-to-3 belts of raw copper ore (for yellow). Meaning you need maybe 200+ furnaces (I’m not joking). But… “big designs” are just big, they’re not actually difficult to think about.
3rd / Blue science is difficult because its the only time you ever have to master fluids in Factorio. Fluid trains, fluid wagons, fluid containers, etc. etc. You pretty much have two designs: you either bottle everything up into steel drums so that you can “stick with belts”, or you learn to properly use pumps+pipes+trains (fluid wagons) to move things around. In both cases, its complex but its the only way you get past blue-science.
Touhou is difficult, but “Easy” is still fun. Just don’t expect to win, neither the adult nor the child.
Touhou is famous for its all-female cast of Witches, Shrine Maidens, Vampires and other female-themes cute characters. Its a Japanese single-person developer who does the music, art, and gameplay. The art of the official projects kind of sucks, but the character designs are unique enough that the huge fanbase iterates-and-improves upon the art style. Participating in the greater Touhou fan culture is fun for all ages.
I personally got started with Touhou 8: Imperishable Night.
Click the “CargoDist” setting for mail and passengers.
That was introduced like 5 years ago, but requires you to go into settings for some reason rather than being the default. This causes passengers to individually each have a source-and-destination, and they’ll take different transit lines (plane, train, and bus) in the network to reach their destination. This allows for more complex traffic patterns like loops, hub-spoke, etc. etc.
Tropico 4 definitely had some instability problems with regards to traffic.
Because Tropico 4’s traffic was somewhat realistically modeled, you’d grow and grow until your roads got congested, and then your entire island collapses economically (and you’ll likely be deposed as a leader, or piss off the Americans / Soviets enough that they invade and you lose since your politics with them likely relied upon trade deals that you’re failing). And unlike Cities: Skylines (or Tropico 5/6), there weren’t as many options for fixing (or preventing) traffic problems.
But if we ignore the traffic problems with very-late state islands, Tropico 4 is probably my favorite too.
Tropico series is pretty good.
Tropico 6 is the newest and the most joke-like, but all of them are extremely tongue-in-cheek. The addition of Carmen Sandiego-like “Steal the Whitehouse with Hackers” mechanic is going a bit too far with the joke IMO, but there is a solid city-builder here.
Tropico is somewhere between Sims and Sim City: a “Large” Tropico is ~10,000 people, and every person has their food/rest/religion/job/entertainment/political scores tracked individually (much like in Sims where food/hygine/etc. etc. scores are tracked). You cannot control anyone on the island except “El Presidente”. But you do have orders that probably get followed, such as arrests, assassinations and the like.
If you lose an election, you instantly lose the game. If you piss off “the Superpowers”, you instantly lose the game (In earlier games, USA and Soviet Union are the superpowers. In Tropico 6, the superpowers change from age-to-age).
I’d say that Tropico is “unstable” after reaching high populations. Its more designed as a scenario where you play until the point of instability, and then you end your save. Its still many months of real-life gameplay before you reach unstable points, but its really designed to play different scenarios rather than perfecting a singular island chain. Think “Roller-coaster Tycoon”, or “Ceasar 3”, or Cleopatra.
Which btw: Cesar 3 and Cleopatra are also excellent citybuilders, albeit aimed towards the “scenario” slant rather than the infinite slant… and also 20+ years old. But these oldies are a goodie for a good reason.
This sounds like a build-issue.
RTX 4090 is a very power-hungry GPU, especially on the top end. It can suck down a lot of power, especially if FPS is unlimited and graphics setting are very high.
If your computer ever runs out of power, the computer crashes, even if it loses power for just 5-milliseconds, you’re screwed. Only the beefiest power supplies can power that kind of high-performance load.
- @[email protected] to
- •
- 2Y
- •
Shell Shock
A crude imitation. Shell Shock has the whole progression scheme where your weapons get stronger and more diverse the more you play. Its basically applying the crappy “Call of Duty” formula and level up system to an old arcade game.
The best modern version of Scorched Earth is probably the “Worms” series. Its got too much of a cartoon veneer though: exploding sheep and banannas… but the strategy is overall there. I did prefer the original Scorched Earth.
I want Shell Shock without the level-up system (and probably without the wormholes as well). I mean… scratch that. I just want scorched earth again with online play.
“GunBound” was an interesting twist from the 00s, a Koran game full of costumes / cute anime-like drawings and the like… you spawned with a single weapon based on the character you chose. It wasn’t balanced but it was fun trying to derp around with whatever weapon you got.
With the dawn of eSIM, I’m not sure if Dual physical-SIM is very useful.
Last time I went on a trip, I just downloaded an eSIM + kept my physical SIM slot.