You know, I kinda miss this era of gaming where games would have a bunch of minigames or different gameplay styles sprinkled out throughout the game like this instead of just having one consistent gameplay style throughout like most games today.
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ff7 rebirth did this and then people got mad
Sounds about right
The stuck culture hypothesis is a problem almost completely exclusive to the American film industry. Television, videogames, books etc. have their share of shlocky franchise reboots and sequels but the ratio is already much healthier. Even with the movies there are signs that the IP mania has peaked and more diverse cinema experiences are slowly but surely trickling back in
The post-timeskip designs for the Strawhats are honestly quite good. The outfits from Zou onwards all look good to me, especially since Wano when their costumes are more closely connected to the location that the Strawhats are in. Franky and Chopper are the only downgrades in my eyes. The others are either just as good or even better
It's just that the original outfits during the Fishman Island arc looked kinda bad and unnatural, and that these outfits are pushed in every piece of extended media. If the games and merch would feature the designs of later arcs, I think they would be received quite well
It's just that the original outfits during the Fishman Island arc looked kinda bad and unnatural, and that these outfits are pushed in every piece of extended media. If the games and merch would feature the designs of later arcs, I think they would be received quite well
The April Fools Day's sprites on PS are getting less funny, relying more on shallower references and less on original content.
For some context, I sort AFD sprites into four main categories, based on what the joke is. I paid more attention to this some years ago, maybe it's changed, but here's my mental framework. It's intentionally made a little rigid for explanation's sake – I'm not expecting people to narrowly fit boxes. You can think of these categories as a spectrum: the start is more focused on the Pokemon itself, the end is more focused on other media / context.
Breloom
"Low-Poly": The joke is you represent the base Pokemon in an intentionally silly, oversimplified way. As opposed to the very standardized, professionalized, familiar models and sprites of modern Pokemon, you start playing Kid's Drawing Monster Fighter. These sprites also just fun to let some personality and style of the maker slip through in a casual, low-stakes way.
Deoxys (Normal Forme)
Deconstruction: Here, sprites distill a Pokemon to its very core parts, revealing some absurdity in seemingly normal elements by calling heavy attention to them or removing standard context. (If this makes you think I'm more qualified to talk about AFD sprites, I made the Mega Beedrill sprite, which falls most into this category, and a few others. Dark Mode causes it to look off, though, so I omitted it here. Surprisingly many Deconstruction sprites displayed poorly on Dark Mode.)
Calyrex-I
Standard Joke: Unlike deconstructions, which create humor from the core parts of a Pokemon, standard jokes create humor from peripheral parts of the Pokemon. Note the difference between "Deoxys is DNA that attacks you." versus "Calyrex-I happens to have a lance that looks too heavy for it to carry."
Annihilape
Reference: References create humor by connecting Pokemon to pre-existing, external content. This sprite references a scene with the Joker that exists as a standalone scene, unrelated to Annihilape.
References are related to my fault with more recent AFD sprites – which are more reference-based than earlier sprites, to my knowledge – so I should go in a bit more detail.
Ideally, to me, references create new, original humor by injecting Pokemon in the pre-existing content. I think the Annihilape example works well here. It invites you to imagine Annihilape as the Joker, recontextualizing its Rage Fist as unhinged masochism. This isn't a way I had thought of Annihilape before, and I think it's a pretty good comedic interpretation.
However, I think some reference sprites struggle to create this new humor. Instead of using Pokemon to change or create a joke, they draw attention to a similarity the Pokemon shares with the reference. For example, Beedrill's sprite is a fast forwarded Bee Movie. The joke here isn't "Imagine if Beedrill was a bee in the Bee Movie", like with Annihilape, just the two items happen to both be about bee(s). This makes the connection, and the joke, flimsier.
I agree that these types of jokes have their place. Sort of like with the "low-poly" sprites, they provide a silly alternative to normal Pokemon sprites, letting you use internet memes to battle instead. Conceptually, that is pretty funny. But we're exposed to internet memes a lot, I think, so these references come across as more unoriginal and drawn out to me. This is especially true as the joke type takes up a higher and higher percentage of sprites, making it less original within the context of AFD sprites. These sprites also lack the artist-unique style and charm of the low-poly sprites.
My thoughts on this aren't perfectly iced out, but that suffices for now. I'm not trying to be a huge jerk about this, especially since people are contributing their time and ideas to a funny silly thing for us to have fun with. But that's my view on them in as objective terms as I can manage.
For some context, I sort AFD sprites into four main categories, based on what the joke is. I paid more attention to this some years ago, maybe it's changed, but here's my mental framework. It's intentionally made a little rigid for explanation's sake – I'm not expecting people to narrowly fit boxes. You can think of these categories as a spectrum: the start is more focused on the Pokemon itself, the end is more focused on other media / context.
"Low-Poly": The joke is you represent the base Pokemon in an intentionally silly, oversimplified way. As opposed to the very standardized, professionalized, familiar models and sprites of modern Pokemon, you start playing Kid's Drawing Monster Fighter. These sprites also just fun to let some personality and style of the maker slip through in a casual, low-stakes way.
Deconstruction: Here, sprites distill a Pokemon to its very core parts, revealing some absurdity in seemingly normal elements by calling heavy attention to them or removing standard context. (If this makes you think I'm more qualified to talk about AFD sprites, I made the Mega Beedrill sprite, which falls most into this category, and a few others. Dark Mode causes it to look off, though, so I omitted it here. Surprisingly many Deconstruction sprites displayed poorly on Dark Mode.)
Standard Joke: Unlike deconstructions, which create humor from the core parts of a Pokemon, standard jokes create humor from peripheral parts of the Pokemon. Note the difference between "Deoxys is DNA that attacks you." versus "Calyrex-I happens to have a lance that looks too heavy for it to carry."
Reference: References create humor by connecting Pokemon to pre-existing, external content. This sprite references a scene with the Joker that exists as a standalone scene, unrelated to Annihilape.
References are related to my fault with more recent AFD sprites – which are more reference-based than earlier sprites, to my knowledge – so I should go in a bit more detail.
Ideally, to me, references create new, original humor by injecting Pokemon in the pre-existing content. I think the Annihilape example works well here. It invites you to imagine Annihilape as the Joker, recontextualizing its Rage Fist as unhinged masochism. This isn't a way I had thought of Annihilape before, and I think it's a pretty good comedic interpretation.
However, I think some reference sprites struggle to create this new humor. Instead of using Pokemon to change or create a joke, they draw attention to a similarity the Pokemon shares with the reference. For example, Beedrill's sprite is a fast forwarded Bee Movie. The joke here isn't "Imagine if Beedrill was a bee in the Bee Movie", like with Annihilape, just the two items happen to both be about bee(s). This makes the connection, and the joke, flimsier.
I agree that these types of jokes have their place. Sort of like with the "low-poly" sprites, they provide a silly alternative to normal Pokemon sprites, letting you use internet memes to battle instead. Conceptually, that is pretty funny. But we're exposed to internet memes a lot, I think, so these references come across as more unoriginal and drawn out to me. This is especially true as the joke type takes up a higher and higher percentage of sprites, making it less original within the context of AFD sprites. These sprites also lack the artist-unique style and charm of the low-poly sprites.
My thoughts on this aren't perfectly iced out, but that suffices for now. I'm not trying to be a huge jerk about this, especially since people are contributing their time and ideas to a funny silly thing for us to have fun with. But that's my view on them in as objective terms as I can manage.
90% of everything is shit. A lot of open world games are bad and because they're almost exclusively AAA games they are games everyone sees, but there are plenty of good open world games that are not largely empty or devoid of content.
1. That is literally the most popular Pokemon take of all-time, that is the take of every big Twitter account that talks about Pokemon, every Reddit post that gets popular, basically every Youtuber.
2. The top down games didn't focus on story and the Pokemon more than the 3D games lol
nintendo is pretty much never going to focus super hard on the story ever again solely because of how hard b2w2 flopped
Did they ever? As much of a fan of the DS games as I am, I've always felt that fans overrate their plots because the other pickings are even more slim. The first Unova games are touted as the franchise at its narrative peak, but they flatten the most interesting villain premise the series has seen up to that point before the player has a chance to really meditate on the philosophy they espouse: Team Plasma are shown to be cruel scoundrels before the player even has a Gym Badge, and the entire game is dedicated to providing counterexamples to N's philosophy, so the player never has to think very hard about opposing them. In the sequels, the pretense is just dropped completely, and they're just another evil team with vague world-conquering aspirations and very little depth (besides the ones who left after the events of the first game and are trying to redeem themselves, if you're inclined to count them).
Besides that, the most interesting thing the Unova sequels do story-wise is showcase how the region has changed in the two years since the first games, but this is rarely explored meaningfully. Outside of the Memory Link flashbacks (which most people probably won't see without watching a video online because that system is ass-backwards to get working), we don't see very many characters reckon with a negative or painful side of things changing, so it lacks complexity. This is all fine — I think a simple story is fitting for the childlike wonder/joy of adventure that these games generally go for, and they're still great games that I enjoy playing — but you won't ever catch me defending these games as narrative experiences. For my money, the most compelling narrative in these games is the one you write yourself through team construction.
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Ramping up the plot focus is literally the single most enduring legacy of the Unova games. The actual success rate has been iffy, granted, but even the XYs and SWSHes are clearly trying to tell more involved stories and get players invested in the human cast members. Pokemon Masters flat out could not have existed 15 years ago
I am actually baffled at how you could come to this conclusion unless you completely checked out of Pokemon circa when BW1/2 were still new
Don't watch pokemon youtubers or pay attention to what pokemon players on twitter say, sorry. Y'all bringing up the npc instead of the pokemon as the main story driver just drives the point home. There's a reason why Sinnoh is looked so fondly upon and no, it's not because of Cynthia.
The human characters have always been the drivers of the plot going back to the earliest games. It's the human characters who start you on your journey, give you a goal to work towards (either catching them all or beating all the gyms/becoming Champion), and place obstacles in your path (rivals/evil teams). You brought up the Sinnoh games, but they're no different in this regard: With the possible exception of the Lake Trio helping you beat Cyrus, the main drivers of the story are the human characters, and the Pokémon are the tools that the human characters use to advance the plot. That's not to say that Pokémon aren't important at all, but they're mostly important from a gameplay and personalization perspective. The game isn't less focused on the humans just because the camera doesn't zoom in on their faces all the time. If I had to identify reasons why the Sinnoh games are looked back on so fondly, I would point to the visual style, music, characters, and the fact that so many people on the Internet today played them as kids.
The PMD games are the obvious examples of Pokemon driving the plot, but in the PMD games, the Pokemon are basically just people, at least from a social perspective. Also I think the PMD games (at least 1 and 2) having good plots is probably the coldest take you can have about Pokemon so that probably doesn't belong here anyways. In the main series games, Pokemon are at best plot devices; even the super-powerful legendary Pokemon we have to stop from destroying the world in every game past Gen 2 is being controlled or manipulated or was awakened by the human main antagonist.
I also don't see how increased trainer customization has anything at all to do with any part of the plot to be honest. This seems very much like a false dichotomy and if the plots of the newer games are weaker (I don't think they are as a rule; the Gen 7 games had reasonably solid plots in my opinion) it definitely wasn't because more focus is given to the player character's looks.
I also don't see how increased trainer customization has anything at all to do with any part of the plot to be honest. This seems very much like a false dichotomy and if the plots of the newer games are weaker (I don't think they are as a rule; the Gen 7 games had reasonably solid plots in my opinion) it definitely wasn't because more focus is given to the player character's looks.
Blood Meridian is unfilmable not because of its violence, but because of its structure and language
It's not a long novel but it's extremely densely packed and some chapters have around 10 locations and single sentences can skip through weeks. I think the book has almost 200 Locations all in all. You can't put that in a 3 hour movie, even if someone tried to do so in a shortened manner, they'd have to switch location every 2 minutes during the majority of the film
And the environments are described so intensely, so precisely and vividly. It couldn't work on a set, it would be extremely difficult on location, it would be pretty expensive. And considering the violence, the budget couldn't come back
Maybe it could work as an 8 hour animated series. No idea how to fund such a project though
It's not a long novel but it's extremely densely packed and some chapters have around 10 locations and single sentences can skip through weeks. I think the book has almost 200 Locations all in all. You can't put that in a 3 hour movie, even if someone tried to do so in a shortened manner, they'd have to switch location every 2 minutes during the majority of the film
And the environments are described so intensely, so precisely and vividly. It couldn't work on a set, it would be extremely difficult on location, it would be pretty expensive. And considering the violence, the budget couldn't come back
Maybe it could work as an 8 hour animated series. No idea how to fund such a project though
The primary* appeal of the Pokemon TCG app is a skinner box. I was pretty hyped for it, but then i realized I was just spinning a roulette wheel for the hope of a jackpot. The physical cards are this to an extent too, but I think there's a greater dynamic of like, commons/uncommons still being cool for their own reasons. They're physically tangible, have a broader range of artstyles/Pokemon/ideas, and you had to give up something for them. Many of my favorite TCG cards are more rare, and that rarity-value-prospect is definitely a reason why, but I also have common cards I just think are real neat (especially Delta species) or have some emotional connection to.
*Not only appeal; I get that it makes TCG battling much more accessible, too
*Not only appeal; I get that it makes TCG battling much more accessible, too
I've been falling off of TCG Pocket because as my overall dex % has increased, my skinnerbox has been really boring with me not really getting anything. My only real goal right now is get the Mew card, but even that is out of my control.
Kinda just feels like a task everyday to do my 5 minute dailies and get my free hourglasses, saved up around 200 now.
The gameplay itself is too luck-based for me.
Kinda just feels like a task everyday to do my 5 minute dailies and get my free hourglasses, saved up around 200 now.
The gameplay itself is too luck-based for me.
I loved Z-moves, but there’s definitely room to improve. You could swap a move for a fifth one using PP—might be a little overtuned, but stall would probably struggle. You’d still have four moves per turn, just more options.
honestly, as part of the afd sprite team, i've noticed this myself. as much as i love the memes and references, i do think we're getting close to the point of oversaturation with them and afd sprite culture would benefit immensely from more sprites that are just regular jokes. we've been trying to take things in that direction recently
(of course, this hasn't prevented me from changing my personal approach to spriting at all. the majority of my sprites are memes or references, but i like to think they draw enough of a substantial connection between the mon and the thing referenced to be funny most of the time. i try to avoid just going "recognize this and laugh")
on the other side of the coin, i'm actually not a super big fan of how many sprites are just "mon drawn poorly". even though that was the original idea of the afd sprite project, i think it loses its punch when so many sprites are ultimately just the same one joke
i'm willing to bet it would've ended up being that if it was known at the time that the next region was going to be spain. alas, 'twas not to be
does this mean peony would be the sancho panza parallel