Summer Slowdown

     It seems that summer 2020 is just all around terrible.  The west coast is on fire, the Rockies are frozen solid, and the east is having another resurgence of COVID-19.  So its little wonder that the lack of summer game releases and the continued delays of major titles have slipped under most people's radars.

     But as this is a gaming blog and most of what I've been able to do since February is play videogames, I'm a little saddened by the lack of new releases coming out for any platform right now.

     From long awaited titles like Beyond Good & Evil 2 still not making a 2020 deadline, to a launch title not making it to launch (and Halo Infinite being the only thing anyone was going to purchase a series X for), 2020 is the year of disappointment in the gaming sphere.  Everything including the number of games released on Stadia, to the lack of quality of life updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons has let us down.

     I know that it is still September, and there are still three months to the rest of the year, and there is still Cyberpunk 2077.  But with that games history and the way this year is going I'm not holding my breath.  I just don't see any major players swooping in at the last minute to save the day, and I haven't heard any whispers in the æther of any sort of indie title that might be a light in the darkness.

     So as the heat here in the west fries  my brain and I succumb to the negative vibes of the worst year on record so far, I sign out saying that not even the greatest escapism mankind has created can hide the fear and anxiety building around the world, and that's pretty bad.

     

Weekend Rollback

     Doing these game streams for my son to have something to watch has really driven me to keep up a lot better with posting to my blog here.  I've got another video, hanging around the fifteen minute mark, ready to be viewed.  What I'm finding really interesting is just how easy it is to get fifteen minutes of streaming done.  I keep sitting down telling myself I've only got five minutes and I'll just do something quick, and then all of a sudden the video is three times longer than I expected.

     Now onto the topic today.  I've been trying to work with the equipment I have at the moment, so the videos are all mobile games so far, which got me thinking about good mobile games, or at least really popular ones, which led me to remembering Clash of Clans.  This title was once king of the land prior to titles like Fortnite, and about half a decade ago it seemed like everybody was playing Clash.  It even spawned a television show you could watch on Google Play, which I believe landed two seasons.  Still popular today, it sadly got eclipsed rapidly, as I said, by the ascension of Fortnite and PUBG.  Still, the RTS-like PVP battle-builder was revolutionary in its legitimizing mobile gaming, so I thought a quick video reminding older players, and introducing younger ones, was a great idea.  So here it is folks, an intro to Clash-of-Clans:

And Another One Down

     So, got a little free time this morning, real early, and recorded another let's play, this time for Kingdom Hearts Union Cross.  I honestly feel terrible that I haven't finished this game yet, but there are just so many levels that I could probably do two dozen videos on them.  I'll make sure to post them all if I do.

     Once again, this is just a shorter video intended to get some content up on the channel so my boy has some gaming TV to watch.  Though at this rate that might turn into something more, as he is still really excited about this project and wants more.

     Knowing that, I've set myself an initial goal to reach of recording a minimum of twenty four hours of content for the channel, and if I can accomplish that in a timely fashion, I may invest in more hardware for recording these videos, and may branch into trying to dig up gaming news as well.  Who knows, this may turn into a totally legitimate YouTube Channel.  Until then, I hope you enjoy my little videos.  Here's todays:

Starting a New Stream

     So my son demanded earlier today that I let him watch some let's play streams on YouTube, and he really wanted to watch some video game videos.  I told him he needed to wait until I could find something appropriate for him to watch.  Almost forty minutes later my son gave up waiting and went to play in his room, and I still hadn't found a gaming stream that was appropriate for his age.  This led to me thinking, 'hey, I have the skill and equipment to produce content, so I will.'

     So i sat down and recorded my first YouTube gaming stream, and now my son has something to watch.

     This first video is simple stream of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and is just an introduction to this new project, really.  I hope you all enjoy it, and leave me a comment or message with any feedback or ideas.  Enjoy:

There's One Hundred and Fifty or More to See

     I really should have posted this one over a week ago when I first accomplished it, but I was able to actually collect all the first one-hundred and fifty-one original pokémon, including Mew (I had to break down and buy the last pokéball plus our local Wal-Mart had, as it turns out this is the only way to get Mew in Let's Go Pikachu or Eevee).  So, the first milestone of my epic quest to catch'em all is accomplished.  Now comes the hard part: filling in the rest.

     I've learned some things about the rest of the Pokémon Home pokédex.  You cannot trade pokémon of a mythic tier with anyone but a friend.  No GTC, no wonder box.  So any of the pokémon that can only be gotten from events like trade shows or the world championships, you can only trade from person to person.  This will make trading my Jirachis a little harder, but as I found out you can use Jirachi in Pokémon Sword & Shield, and they are a very competitive pokémon, I'm hoping that works in my favor.

     So wish me the best of luck and I'll update as soon as I can with the next big step in my journey to catch all the pokémon that are out there. 

A Sense of Urgency

     The first goal of my pokédex quest is to try and get a special Magearna by collecting all the 151 original pokémon from Kanto before a month has elapsed since starting my Pokémon Home account.  I was looking on the cellphone app today, and I started twenty days ago.  I have a short ten days to play through Let's Go Eevee (which arrived yesterday and my kids are loving), and to beat the Elite Four of Black 2 and transfer over all the pokémon I need from Diamond.

     This urgent push has left me desperate, and maybe I'm doing things I normally wouldn't, like moving my clock forward this morning so it was dark in the game so I could evolve a Sneasel into a Weavile to help beat Iris, the champion.  Or uninstalling and reinstalling Pokémon Dream Radar so I could catch a bunch of pokémon all over again.  They say desperate times call for desperate measures.  

     So, I'm up to 59 of the original pokémon registered to home, and I'm scrambling to catch them all.

The Great Pokémon Quest update

     So, I'm currently in a mad scramble to beat the elite four in Pokémon Black 2, as that is currently the lynch pin in my process of updating all the way from the Gameboy Advance games all the way up to the Switch.  I've honestly been playing almost nonstop since Wednesday, and my wife has been a little upset, leading me to put playing on hold for Mother's Day, and just take a break.  Consequently, I'm feeling a lot of stiffness and soreness in my left thumb, which I did attribute to the gardening I spent some time on while i waited for my 3DS to charge, but again, my wife pointed out that this was a side effect of playing too long.

     All this mad gaming marathon happened because I had no idea where I was at in my original Black 2 save, and I hadn't picked up the game in probably six years.  Fun fact I learned when doing this, though, is that Game Freak put in safeguards against overwriting you game save in Black and White 2, so the game would let you start a new game from the menu, but you couldn't save it to the cartridge unless you had done a manual wipe of the last save.  It gave me instructions on how to do a manual wipe, but I had to lose four hours of gameplay just to do it.

     I also played around seven hours of FireRed, as well, to capture a single Zapdos, (Let's Go Eevee hasn't arrived yet, so I'm seeing if i can get Zapdos transferred before it arrives).  He was the only legendary bird of Kanto I didn't have already on a GBA title, or Diamond where I've been storing the bulk of my old collection.  I must have traded him at some point, because all of the old saves had him in their pokédexes, Zapdos just wasn't saved in any of their boxes.