I've always found the Uncharted 4/The Last Of Us/God of War 2018 to all be decent, but all those games are kinda lacking in imteresting gameplay and are basically the video game equivalents of "Oscar bait"

  • laziestflagellant [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    God I have such a weird relationship with the Pokemon series. Like I think the gameplay is all very well and good, easy to pick up, it's possible to implement tricky battle strategies that force you to approach a situation differently, collecting the critters you like and battling with them is all very fun. So there's a solid foundation there, surely all that's left to do is add in new features that enhance the gameplay of collecting cute creatures and battling with them, right? And Game Freak does do that! And then they take away the same features in the next game.

    And it's not even like a new thing either, I remember being so mad about them removing the following pokemon feature in Gen 5, to the point it soured me on the generation for a long while. And it's like... Gen 5 is considered by a lot to be the pinnacle of the series. And it is really good wrt story and presentation and features. But they still removed following pokemon as a feature. It only returned in the fucking DLC three generations later. And pokemon amie/refresh, that was a great feature. It's great to be able to pet your cute critters. No idea if they'll ever bring it back!

    But collecting the cute critters still makes the brainmeats happy so I guess I'm stuck still turning my head at the mention of new pokemon news.

    • Aryuproudomenowdaddy [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I just installed the fan made game Insurgence yesterday. Seems solid and the story has a more mature bent, people get straight up murdered and there's Pokemon cultists instead of Team Rocket variants.

      • laziestflagellant [they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There's a bunch of fan stuff for pokemon that's great to get into. You got romhacks (the gen 3 romhack scene is so advanced that what people come out with these days is completely bananas), you got RPG Maker fangames like Insurgence (iirc), you have illicit MMOs people are running, you even have two different Minecraft mods with two completely different gameplay styles to choose from.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Gen 1 was great, and every other gen was a slowly degenerating, creeping into monotony capitalistic cash grab

      Gen 4 is the last gen that is likeable in any way

      • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Gen 1 was great, and every other gen was a slowly degenerating, creeping into monotony capitalistic cash grab

        People say that, but honestly I think they forget how much of a buggy unbalanced unplayable mess Gen 1 was. I've spoken to multiple people who realized they were projecting their Gen 2 nostalgia onto Gen 1

        • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          People say that, but honestly I think they forget how much of a buggy unbalanced unplayable mess Gen 1 was

          Pokes were still objectively more naturalistic and less cash-grabby. The patterns that made gen 6 trash were visible even in gen 2, except at such a mild level that they were even amusing. Namely, more trivial polka dots and stuff to make 'mons look different

          Gen 2 was the best gameplay experience IMO.

          Gen 2 Crystal version also had the objectively best pokemon animations until 2013 (And I still think they're subjectively better than the ones after 2013)

          • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
            ·
            2 years ago

            The thing is, a lot of Gen 1 designs were subtly redone in Gen 2 (and somewhat in Yellow IIRC), and the Gen 2 redesigns are the ones people really remember as classics. A lot of the sprites in Gen 1 look really weird, and probably not how you remember them

            Those animations were good, but I have a soft spot for the animations in Gen 5.

            Really, just Scrafty pulling up its...pants? Skin? Idk, that one idle animation is what I'm thinking about in particular, I love it lmao

            • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              The thing is, a lot of Gen 1 designs were subtly redone in Gen 2 (and somewhat in Yellow IIRC), and the Gen 2 redesigns are the ones people really remember as classics

              Yeah I know but even the subtle redesign was still based off of the original gen 1 design.
              Also I legit liked the gen 1 GameBoy ones better in many cases, especially with Bulbasaur, and most other forms of the starting 3, it looked cute

              Really, just Scrafty pulling up its…pants? Skin?

              You're thinking of XY, he doesn't pull up his pants in Gen 5

              https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Scrafty_(Pok%C3%A9mon)#Sprites

              All animations during the 13 years between Crystal version and Gen 6 are just distortions/translations/rotations. No actual animation in most cases. Though Scrafty actually has a tiny bit of animation where he closes his mouth and grumbles for a second.