Archive for the ‘Features’ Category


5 Reasons You Should Not Look Forward to Pokemon Black/White 2

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

Image courtesy of gamerant.com

My esteemed colleague ShinyVictini recently posted an article of 5 Reasons You Should Look Forward to Pokemon Black/White 2.  In the interest of both offering a balanced viewpoint on the upcoming Pokemon games and sharing my own views on the upcoming Pokemon sequels, I present you with 5 reasons not to look forward to Pokemon Black/White 2.  I, of course, invite you to peruse both of our articles and form your own opinion on the matter, but here’s why I’m not excited for yet another DS iteration of Pokemon:

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5 Reasons You Should Look Forward to Pokemon Black/White 2

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

It’s official, Pokemon Black and White 2 will be hitting the shelves in North America on October 7th, 2012.  If you?re a Pokemon fanatic, you should easily be all manner of excited for this upcoming hot release.  If you?re only a casual Pokemon gamer however, or if you have fallen out of favour with the core Pokemon series games over the last few years, then this article is for you.  Make no mistake, these upcoming titles will be the most technically accomplished, most feature-filled, best connected, and all-round most fulfilling Pokemon experience ever to grace a Nintendo handheld.  As I?ve pointed out in a previous article, the first Black/White games raised the bar in terms of what the series can deliver.  The developer Game Freak has spent an additional year fine-tuning and expanding their product, and will no doubt raise the bar yet again.  While some people will bitterly complain that they could have been spending that time on more important projects (like 6th Gen Pokemon for 3DS, harumph!), they instead chose to milk a little more out of the geriatric Nintendo DS.  Regardless, if you?re not interested in either of these upcoming titles, you should be, and I?ll tell you why.

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Opinion: Your Game is Boring

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Fable III has been included as a pack-in title with many versions of the Xbox 360 console for a long time, so for a lot of newcomers to this console generation Fable III may have been their first Xbox 360 experience.  For anyone out there curious about this game, be forewarned!  Let me save you the trouble, because this game is about as exciting as doing the laundry.  I’d even go so far as to say that it’s the most boring current generation title that I have ever had the misfortune of playing.

Let me start by offering a brief disclaimer that this article is simply the rant of a single frustrated gamer and this is not the official Game Usagi Fable III review (which happened to be favourable).  A few years ago I had great fun playing through Fable II, which is why I was so eager to dive into the next title in the series ? big mistake.  My busy life (also known as a day job) does not afford me much opportunity to kick back and play video games, so when I do find an hour of free time here and there, the game had better darn well be amazing.  I get supremely insulted when I feel like an awful game is recklessly wasting my precious time, so why does Fable III get my bloomers in a knot?  Read on…

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Opinion: Top 5 Gaming Disappointments of 2011

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

It is often easy to see gaming’s successes, they are well covered in the media, receive accolades and high review scores alike and their achievements are spread throughout the gaming community. It may be more beneficial, therefore, to focus on some of the industry’s more vexing occurrences so that one may avoid such pitfalls and the subsequent loss of their pocketbook contents. Consider then my top five most disappointing developments in gaming of the past year; they are either games that failed to deliver on the promise and potential of the franchise, or video game fads that were lauded to change the industry but perhaps only did so for the worse. Let us know your thoughts on my picks as they are by no means fact, but rest merely in the domain of personal perception. 

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Vindicating the 3DS: How Recent Games are Exploiting Stereoscopic 3D

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
When I first heard about the 3DS, I groaned. Were Nintendo marketing executives really riding the 3D craze, forcing a gimmick into a core console mechanic? The system’s name was like a punchline to a bad joke; it was almost as bad as when the Wii or iPad were first announced. Even worse, the ergonomics of keeping your head still at a constant distance from the screen were a human factors nightmare, a throwback to the old Virtual Boy.

Now, after three months of owning a 3DS, I am a believer.

Don’t get me wrong, at this stage stereoscopic 3D is not essential to play any game on the market. I am not even sure if it will ever be essential for gameplay, but with each subsequent game that I played I could tell that there was a future here. In 10 years, supporting stereoscopic 3D properly for gaming will be as important as having decent camera mechanics and up-to-date graphics. The operative word here, though, is “properly”. We don’t yet know how to leverage 3D in a big way, but we’re learning, and here’s how.

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The Original 151 Pokemon According To My Mom

Monday, March 26th, 2012

While she has never played any of the Pokemon games, my mom lived through my brother and I collecting Pokemon cards, playing the Game Boy games and Smash Bros., watching the Pokemon anime on TV, and going to the theatrical Pokemon movies.  She usually knows what we’re talking about when we discuss Pokemon, so we thought it would be amusing if we found how just how many of the original 151 Pokemon our mom could recognize from the sprite collection linked through the image above.  Read on to see what she named the original Kanto Pokemon, as well as any comments she made about them. 

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Top 10 Things Nintendo Should Do For 3DS Pokemon Games

Saturday, March 24th, 2012


The Pokemon Company and developer Game Freak have recently announced the upcoming Pokemon Black and White Version 2 games on Nintendo DS.  They follow the very successful Pokemon Black and White titles, which are the 5th generation of the core Pokemon RPG series.  As a dedicated fan of this series, I would surmise that these new titles are meant to satisfy our cravings while we wait patiently for the inevitable announcement of the next generation of the series on the Nintendo 3DS.  It is strange that Nintendo didn?t force them to develop for the previously struggling 3DS with a pair of titles guaranteed to sell gazillions.  Some people are rightfully disappointed that the next pair of core titles will be released on hardware less powerful than a modern graphing calculator, but as a fan I?ll play almost anything developed by Game Freak, as they consistently produce fun and addictive titles that always raise the bar in the series.

Like it or lump it, we?re going to have to wait a while longer for Pokemon Gen. 6 on 3DS.  Pokemon Black/White was an admission by Game Freak that their fans have grown up, and while these games did so many things right they didn?t take them quite far enough.  Now that the much more powerful 3DS is here, Game Freak has a huge opportunity to take Pokemon to the next level.

To get them started, I present here for the developers my top 10 suggestions of features and improvements that fans will expect to see in Pokemon Gen. 6:

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