Pokemon X North American Box Art

Well, here it is, the sixth generation of Pokémon. Nintendo have continued their long-running franchise with the releases of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, the latter being used for this review. Game Freak have kept fans waiting for three years to explore a new region and discover new species of Pokémon, though thankfully this has been slightly shorter than the four year gap between the last couple of generations. This generation finds the series on a new piece of hardware, and with that comes all sorts of new upgrades to the game and its mechanics. Before we dive into what has changed though, let us first look at what has not.

This is still a Pokémon game, and that means there a certain staples of the series that are guaranteed to be carried over. The player begins as child who has been awarded their first Pokémon by the regions Pokémon expert, Professor Sycamore. With nothing but their new friend and a handy Pokédex, the player begins a journey that sees them travel across the land while searching far and wide for new Pokémon to catch. During their journey, the player will encounter eight gym leaders that must be challenged to win their respective badges, all the while thwarting the evil machinations of a mysterious team of enemies. At the end of the journey, the player must face off against the four elite trainers of the region, as well as their champion.

The player is harassed throughout their journey by the selfish Team Flare.

For the first time in the series, the professor is not present to offer the choice of starter to the player himself. Instead, one of the player’s traveling companions offers the three new trainers what is perhaps the toughest choice in the game; grass, fire, or water? In previous games this would have major impact on the final team the player uses when deciding on the best mix of skills for type matchups, but as the player will quickly discover, each route and cave in the game is bursting full of different Pokémon. This is because, rather than having a standard Pokédex of 150 for the region, the region has been split into three areas with 150 Pokémon available in each. Yes, that means over half the Pokémon created can be found while playing through the story.

Raising Pokémon has never been easier. The experience share has been changed from a held item to a key item that can be switched on and off. While turned on, any Pokémon that did not participate in battle receives half the experience points of those that did. This generation also introduces Super Training, a mini-game where a Pokémon in the player’s party must be controlled in order to deflect Balloon Bot balls from going into their goal, while they send various balls into the opponent’s goal. This mini-game awards training bags to increase a Pokémon’s Effort Values. Typically, a Pokémon can increase their EVs while being in a Core Training session, but they can increase their stats using training bags.

A new type of Pokémon, fairy, has been added this generation to shake-up the battle system. Some types have been granted immunities from some status effects, such as electric being immune to paralysation. The new type has been applied to some existing Pokémon, either replacing their old type (such as Clefairy) or become a second type (in the case of Gardevoir). Although Pokemon X and Yhave a new type and triple the number of Pokémon the regional Pokédex, the games have introduced the fewest new species to the series. PLayers wishing to move their collection over from older generations will be disappointed to hear they have to wait until December to use the PokéBank, the new storage method for large collections. This coupled with the PokéTransporter will move collections into the new generation.

Pokemon battles[in glorious 3D

A first for the series, Pokémon X and Y are fully 3D, though only Pokémon battles take advantage of the hardware 3D. It can be slightly jarring to have the camera change perspective quickly when the player approaches some buildings, but overall the game does a good job of using the extra dimension. This is highlighted in not only the new puzzles used in the gyms, but also the models used in battle. Each Pokémon has a cel-shaded model that looks like it was taken straight from the anime. The only downside to this is that during battle, a little choppiness can occur when the camera does a split screen to show the faces of both combatants while the player chooses their next move.

While the graphics have gathered a lot of attention from fans, the music deserves some recognition as well. The standard Pokémon theme has been re-recorded in higher quality and with new instruments, making it more technically and aurally accomplished than ever. Pokémon cries have been updated, or in some cases, lifted straight out of the anime. A soundtrack will be available separately for anyone wishing to listen to the music outside of the game.

Despite a few niggling flaws, Pokémon X and Y made the transition to 3D quite successfully, if maybe a little early. Having a method of transfering collections at launch could have extended its life by many hours over the twenty-five it takes to complete the game. Fans of the series will be pleasantly surprised at the new training mechanics, while newcomers may find the game a little easy with the experience share. Nintendo just needs to hope people will pick up the 3DS apps in December.

Vote now to hold Luigi responsible for his actions!

Download: Produced 2013.10.20

Lusipurr, Blitzmage, and Mel have finally had enough of the miseries attendant upon the year 2013, and decide to hold the man of blood–the green menace–the villain of the hour, Luigi–responsible for ‘his’ year, indicting him for his calamitous intent.

This game is not of high enough quality, it needs more Lightning with jiggle boobs!

Final Fantasy to be Made by Committee

Final Fantasy has not been quite right for a while now. It is as though the series was not y2k compliant, and emerged from the other side of the millennium with an infestation of defects and bugs, causing it to misfire randomly. The series has had its bright points since then, but it has been a decidedly patchy affair on the whole. People have been suggesting for years that the Final Fantasy series was in desperate need of some form of quality control, and now it seems that Square Enix means to do something about it.

FF-Reunion has this week revealed that Square Enix has established a ‘Final Fantasy Committee’ – a group charged with watching over the series and bolstering the quality of series entries. While this is a laudable move in theory, one nonetheless harbours a degree of doubt as to how well it will serve them in practice. When attempting to solve a problem one is ill-advised to appoint the parties responsible for said problem to positions of authority. That is to say that any committee charged with correcting the trajectory of Final Fantasy should have been formed, at least predominantly, by people further removed from it than its principal creators. The ‘Final Fantasy Committee’ is comprised of Yoshinori Kitase, Hajime Tabata, Naoki Yoshida and Motomu Toriyama. One has no qualms with Naoki Yoshida and Hajime Tabata’s involvement in overseeing the series, as Tabata’s output has been sterling, and Yoshida knows a thing or two about salvaging an ailing project. Kitase is a little more of a stretch, as he does not seem to have been much of a potent custodian of the Final Fantasy series in recent years, yet his directional work on three of the four projects that he led in the 1990s may warrant his inclusion. The one real head-scratcher is the inclusion of Motomu ‘Lightning is my waifu’ Toriyama, who is held by many to have steered the Final Fantasy series towards its current seventh generation nadir.

Notorious belt and zipper fetishist, Tetsuya Nomura, has not been included in the committee on account of his being too busy directing Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III, yet one dismaying oversight is Square Enix’s failure to include Hiroyuki Ito, the man responsible for creating the ATB battle system, directing Final Fantasy IX, and co-directing Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy XII. If anyone were an obvious choice for Final Fantasy custodian, then it should have been him. At any rate, while the committee may not be up to the task of remedying all that ails Final Fantasy, it may nevertheless be able to put a halt to the creation of true stinkers like All the Bravest.

This is one bugtype you might prefer not to catch.

X and Y Have Shipped as Bugtype Pokemon

In a move that is quite uncharacteristic for Nintendo, it appears that they last week released one of their key franchises replete with one crippling bug, capable of crashing the game and corrupting save data. As readers may be aware, attempting to save your game when located in the outdoors portion of Lumiose will cause this error to occur, leading many gamers to suppose they had just lost several hours worth of progress. In response to this Nintendo have pledged that a patch for the game is a top priority, and that it will be able to salvage corrupted save files – yet there is no ETA on when this patch will be available.

Fortunately for impatient gamers, a more immediate work-around has been found for users with corrupted save files. Allegedly, players are able to get corrupt save files to load by repeatedly hammering the ‘Home’ button during loading when the music begins to play and the screen is still blank. Still, as the saying goes, prevention is better than the cure. It is incidents such as this which perfectly illustrate why one is becoming increasingly dismayed at the growing prevalence of portable RPGs which only ship with one save file. Maintaining multiple saves is an excellent way of mitigating game breaking design flaws.

Kinect may seem laughably nonthreatening, but Microsoft may have delivered on the promise of 1984.

Kinect to Place Shoppers Under Surveillance

It would appear that the watchful eye of Sauron that is the Kinect is not set to stop at watching gamers in their living rooms, and then passing along the information to the NSA. In perfect timing to throw a spanner into Microsoft’s hamfisted mollification efforts ahead of the Xbox One’s release, Mondelez International, the company behind brands such as Triscuit, Ritz and Oreo, have this week announced that they will be using Microsoft Kinect in order to spy on consumers as they do their shopping, so as to to harvest their response data, and to ultimately better target marketing at individual shoppers.

“Our goal is to understand how shoppers see, scan, spot, show interest and select products from the shelf in the store, we can also engage and influence the purchase decision by delivering a targeted shopper experience. For example, we can deliver audio or play a video based on demographics, distance and even the time of the day.”

When Microsoft created the Kinect it was never going to end up as just another sub-par video gaming peripheral, not when it is capable of stealing/processing the kind of data which virtually any commercial entity would find invaluable. Indeed, probably the only reason that Kinect is not being used for surveilance purposes by America’s law enforcement agencies is the fact that it cannot see black people!

Puppeteer is now available for PS3.

Download: Produced 2013.10.13

After reaching the previous MAP milestone of 120 episodes, Lusipurr consolidates the Megaphones Ahoy! and Starlight Megaphone episode numbers into a single production list, and SiliconNooB and Gyme cause a ‘technical difficulty’ with obscene utterances.

Pokemon X

We begin with a description of the scene: a young boy or girl is summoned to appear before the local academic–a worthy who goes by the nickname of ‘the Pokemon professor’. This sylvan-surnamed individual dispenses a pet–aligned generally with water, fire, or grass–to the excited child. In the process, a whole world of opportunity is made available, for now, with the power of Pokemon to aid him, the youth can set out into the wild. There, he will do battle with countless other Pokemon, enlisting a few in his party, and becoming stronger through chasing the rest away in combat. But Pokemon are not the only concern with which our intrepid hero must contend: adults, motivated by greed and malice, seek to destabilise the security and peace of the world. The hero will find himself caught up in that struggle, forced to face down two parallel sets of goals: his own effort to prove himself in the Pokemon League, and the necessary task of defeating those who would endanger or oppress others for the sake of private gain. Along the way, he will have the support of family, friends, and allies–for the hero will encounter many people in the course of his journey. By proving himself, he can depend upon their support later on. Friendship is key: between a trainer, his Pokemon, and his friends.

Pokemon X & Y Starter Evolutions

Since the release of the original Pokemon in 1998, the story formula related above has remained more or less unchanged. New Pokemon have been added, along with new modes of gameplay, new mini-games, new side-stories, and new anime episodes which expand upon the world. Yet, with each release in the franchise, Pokemon has remained steadfastly true to the original story: a tale of self-discovery, burgeoning friendship, and the realisation of the value of cooperation. Pokemon neatly straddles the line between the concepts of individual exceptionalism and the power of collaborative accomplishment. Additionally–most recently in Pokemon Black and White–Pokemon has tried to address issues of complex morality regarding its own subsumed premises: is it just, after all, for the world to be so dependent upon Pokemon? Or are we as critical players exercising our own form of cultural imperialism by attempting to judge the fictional culture of the world of Pokemon by the standards of our own culture’s morality? Is it even possible for us to evaluate Pokemon by its own standards?

Beautiful 3D!

Now, fifteen years on from the original release in North America of Pokemon Red and Blue, the Nintendo 3DS has received its first entry in the franchise: Pokemon X and Y. In addition, these most recent games in the series are the first ‘main series’ Pokemon games to be presented in 3D. Other games in the franchise have used 3D environments in some way or another, but never to the same level as in Pokemon X and Y.

With these innovations have come challenges unique in the history of the franchise: have the programmers and developers properly anticipated those challenges? Have they incoporated these innovations in a way which is beneficial to the presentation of the game? Or, do the new features and gameplay mechanics actually detract from the simplistic and basic premise of the Pokemon style?

Use the comment thread below to discuss your approach to the game, challenges you have faced, tactics you are employing, and what you are getting out of your playthrough. Do you feel that the presentation of Pokemon X and Y has changed for the better relative to the preceding games in the series? Are there aspects of the game that you would change still further, or that you would hold up as an example of what need not be changed? How has your experience with other Pokemon games shaped your impressions of the most recent release? Do you have any stories about your first Pokemon experiences? Tell us in the comments!

The aim in this playthrough is to complete the entirety of the game in four weeks. For our first week, we invite users to wrest control of the first three gym badges from their holders. However, feel free to join in, even if you are behind on the playthrough. Anyone and everyone is invited to participate, regardless of game format, speed of play, or familiarity with the series. Tell your friends!

Without further adieu, it is our very great pleasure to invite you now to join the Lusipurr.com staff members, guests, and readers as we select a starter, meet with a Pokemon professor, and indulge in 3D Pokemon battles in The Age of Revolution: A Pokemon X/Y Playthrough!

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Stay a while and listen.

Download: Produced 2013.08.18

England follow up retaining the Ashes by winning the Ashes, much to the delight of Lusipurr and the chagrin of SiliconNooB. However, sports rivalries are eventually set aside in favour of a discussion about intellectual pursuits and Hamburger Helper.

Generation VI has been announced. Excitement BUILDING!

Produced 2013.01.13

The lucky drawing takes place with a free game going to one lucky Lusipurr.com donator, with only six entrants eligible in the drawing! Also, SiliconNooB and Lusipurr note the continuing violent games controversy by violently expelling ‘Paradise Gas’.