Post-Move Quick Fixes

So yeah, moving really puts a kink in your gaming schedule. It's also really hard to play enough of one game to come up with a full post for any one in particular. To get back in the habit, here's some quick fixes for what I've been playing:

 

Man, I really want to like this game, mostly because of its status as a classic, but its getting really hard to keep playing this and even finish it with how bad its getting at times. I've never had to check a FAQ for an FPS game before, but I have to do it near constantly with this one. One moment, you're supposed to avoid a mined area, and the next a guy with a shotgun near one means 'clear it out'. There is almost no intuitive 'you should go here next' going on, and choosing wrong could either waste supplies (some of which you -need- to keep going), or get you some more depending on your luck. The movement is still slippery, and yet at the same time I keep getting caught up in corners. To top it all off, the game itself uses a weird memory load procedure, and thus my playtime is entirely limited to when it starts to get jerky, then I have to either quit out and reload, or just stop for the night. The bugs are really getting bad, I'm at a point where you need to cross in front of a sniper, so obviously you're supposed to toss a grenade up into his nest (his netting for some reason is bullet proof). Except A) Gordon tosses like a girl and its near impossible to get any distance on the grenades, and B) A total of 8 grenades went in, didn't explode due to some bug. This is about where I stopped.

This is almost entirely a guilty pleasure now, considering how long I have to get to 'complete' status and how random any progression is. Still very fun and challenging though. Trying to get through the challenge mode so I can have some more options in the main game. As with all rogue-likes though, I feel bad playing them because it is never definite progress. Means the game is truly fun though.

I actually beat this game a long time ago, but 'beaten' for it is only beating the Elite 4 the first time, and there's so much more to do. Over the past two weeks, I basically beat all the Kanto Gym Leaders, beat Red (the hardest match in the game), and re-challenged the Elite 4. That leaves re-challenging the gym leaders, which is a pain due to them only being available to get their numbers at a certain time...then you can only challenge them again at another time. I may just sit for an evening and screw around with the DS clock so I can finish it. Other than that, need to snag all the legendaries and I can call this complete.

To this games credit, its a near perfect mobile game experience. You can pick it up, complete one or two missions, save, put it back down, and when you next pick it back up you really don't have to remember where you were. I'll do a larger one on this one later because there's far more to cover, but essentially they improved on everything from the first game, removed a lot of the annoyances, and made the class system more intriguing (and way less broken). Still some small little quibbles, but I've been enjoying it. Mostly doing sidequests, I -think- I'm almost finished with the story, based on the quest list.

I actually try not to mention this one, and I'm kinda avoiding doing a full review since so much has already been said and its constantly changing still. I do have to say though, I love this game. There are minor quibbles, but I do truly enjoy booting it up, killing some monsters, having shinies drop (even if they end up not being upgrades), then logging out without any requirements to log back in. I put it down for a month or two, picked it back up recently, and had no problems swinging back in. I think its going to be a 'pick up at patch to see whats new' for most people though.

Completed: Pokemon Leafgreen Version

Completed

Pokemon Leafgreen Version

System: Nintendo DS
Status: Completed!
Currently: Completed!

It is always a great thing to add another game to my list of completed. I may have to touch this again to send up starters, but I think you can get them and the other fossils in the other games without issues. I have kind of adjusted my views on this game, since I remembered it was the first remake, and the games were still working on a few things back at this point.

If you go back and play it now, yeah, it seems very bare bones. You can barely catch anything beyond the original 150, and the post game content consists of a few small islands with some Johto pokemon, Mewtwo of course, and the ability to rechallenge the Elite 4, and one of the legendary beasts from gen 2 wandering around. I did the islands yesterday, and the rest of that basically took this evening to finish up. The Elite 4 were actually rather challenging the second time around, the first time I curbstomped them.

Overall, its a mixed bag for the game, it clearly shows its age, and it lacks the refinements that the 4th gen games have, and also lacks the novelty of a new story and mons that the other 3rd gen games had. Overall, I would say pass on this unless you can find it rather cheap (hah), or you really want to get the legendaries associated with it (of which, I think only Mewtwo is unattainable elsewhere, could be wrong).

Daily Review: Pokemon Leafgreen Version

Daily Review

Pokemon Leafgreen Version

System: Gameboy Advance (Playing on a DS)

Status: Unfinished

Currently: 4 badges, working through Silph Co.

I really don't have much to say about the Pokemon games. They are kind of review proof. You either know you like them, you know you don't, or you haven't touched them since a certain game. Since the Leafgreen game is a remake of the first ones, its a bit strange, since it has a lot of the changes that have made them more balanced since the first incarnations, yet because it sticks to the same monsters being found throughout the world as in the original game, you really don't get a lot of the balancing advantages.

So yeah, this is probably the most 'eh' of the two remakes they've made so far. There's very little added to the game that isn't entirely superfluous other than the post game area where you can catch some different monsters than the original. If you've played the first gen already, you'd probably only want it to get the exclusive monsters that you need this version to get (which I think is only Mewtwo at this point, since the birds can be caught in HG/SS), and if you haven't played this gen already, there isn't much here to surprise you over the other versions with much wider selection initially.

My biggest trouble with the game is the system though, since I'm playing it on a DS, I'm so used to being able to close it and walk away, and have to remember the GBA games don't let you do the idle mode. Minor issue though, and not to do with the game. Does suck when you walk away, forget about it, and it dies on you though.