Video Game Plans as of November 2014

Briefly, here's an update on video game stuff. 

Though I got pokémon ORAS last week, I've only barely touched AS.  I'm torn on time, though, since I still haven't finished my Gen I team in pokémon X, which I still intend to do, even if that's the last thing that I do in X.  (I'm not expecting to do any special teams in AS, though.) 
I'm planning to do a Y-Locke's Log this Sunday, since I never got to it before. 
I'm also hoping to play some more FTL, which I haven't touched in a while, but that's probably going to get pushed back to December. 
Also in December,  I'm hoping to play through LEGO Indiana Jones, since it shouldn't take that long, and it should be simple to finish. 
Anyway, it's looking like I've got to make a big video game push in the next few weeks.  I'll let you know how it went, next month.  ;)

Poké-Plans for November 2014

So, the drop date for Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire is closer than one might think.  Unfortunately, I'm way, way behind on my generational team plans. 
Since I came up with all of the notes for it, I'm at least going to beat the game with my Generation I team before I go pick up ORAS on the 21st.  (Or was it the 23rd?) 
As I recall, the biggest uncertainty that I had was a 4th move for Jolteon.  I know that I wanted it to have Hidden Power (Ice) along with Rain Dance and Thunder, but I just wasn't sure about the final move for its Repetoire.  Double Team is the most tempting, but I'm doing a breeding rule, & getting all 3 non-Thunder moves might make this harder on myself than necessary.  @_@

That's all for now, but expect a post in November on how this goes. 

I've Been Playing some Minecraft

Just as an update as to what I've been doing (and why I've been so late to post this particular month), I've been playing some Minecraft, after a long period of playing little to no Minecraft.  I'm finally getting back into it after playing so much Pokémon X.  I think that I'm playing less Pokémon X than I otherwise would, because I was rushed, because I needed to get ahead of the spoilers.  So, even though I'm planning to beat the Elite Four with a few more teams, that game's kind of shelved, for now, while I work on everything else. 
I'll go into more detail on my Minecraft blog, but I have added a few mods, and removed one. 
Also, playing Minecraft has allowed me to catch up on at least one podcast, so there's that. 

Pokémon X: Victory 1

I've got good news, everyone!  I've finally defeated the Elite Four and their Champion.  Also AZ. 
I defeated them with a team of entirely Generation VI pokémon:  Meowstic, Gogoat, Hawlucha, Barbaracle, Doublade, and Greninja. 
Now, I'm setting out to defeat them again, with a team from each generation.  I'm also imposing a few other rules for my teams: 

• at least one mega evolution on each team
• at least one Eeveelution, if that generation has any (none for III & V)
• preferably, at least one pokémon that I'm using because I like it, rather than because it's "good"

However, before then, I'm going to finally catch pokémon from my Friend Safaris.  Specifically, I'm seeking females with Hidden Abilities.  I'll say this:  Meowstic's Role Play move is incredibly useful for this purpose.  

Pokémon X Mini-Update

Some Pokémon X spoilers follow. 





I thought that I should mention a few things about my Pokémon X progress: 
1.  I beat the 8th gym! 
With that out of the way, I think that I know who's on my team, though many of these decisions have made themselves.  They are: 

• Meowstic (female):  special attacker
• Gogoat:  physical attacker
• Barbaracle:  tank
• Hawlucha:  beat stick (and conveniently flying-type)
• Doublade:  Ghost/Steel type fast physical attacker that's a Ghost/Steel type
• Greninja:  high-speed mixed attacker w/ double-team

The Honedge line is pretty awesome:  One of Steel's weaknesses, Fighting, is negated by the fact that it's a Ghost type, and, as a Steel type, it's immune to Poison-type damaging attacks and to being poisoned at all. 
Barbaracle is actually a pretty good tank once it evolves out of its Binacle stage. 
I don't have any status-inflictors on the team, but I think that I'll be OK with the team as it is.  Each pokémon knows a variety of damaging attacks, so type coverage shouldn't be an issue.  3 of my pokémon are weak to Electric attacks, but Gogoat knows Bulldoze, so I don't foresee problems from Electric-type pokémon - though I've already fought an Electric-type gym leader, so I don't expect any of the Elite 4 to use them, since that's pretty normal. 

2.  Barbaracle can't learn Waterfall.  :-\
Given that the 8th badge is required to use it, I'm presuming that I'll need to use Waterfall to reach the Pokémon League.  I've got a Clauncher, so I'll probably use that just enough to get there.  Still, I'd have gladly taught the move to Barbaracle, were it allowed.  :-\

Pokémon X Progress

I haven't made much progress through Pokémon X, it seems. 
I've caught Xerneas, so there's that.  I've been preparing a team to fight the Ice-type gym leader coming up, but I arrived in Couriway town only to be ambushed by a Professor and discover that there was no gym in that town.  So, now I have to slog my way through the next route to get to the next town, which almost certainly has the gym. 
I think that part of my delay is because I'm trying to catch 'em all.  For instance, I spent significant amounts of time in the tunnel north of Couriway once I found that Rock Smash sometimes led to Shuckle.  (I didn't catch it the 1st time.  :-\)
I did catch a Noibat, though it's male, so I'd have to Ditto-breed it. 
Also, Diggersby has been getting more use again, since Dig can be used to escape caves.  Come to think of it, I should probably swap out Diggersby for Talonflame, since there seem to be a lot of Grass-types out there, given that I'm on the route again. 

Pokémon X Update: December 2013

I thought that I should post an update regarding my Pokémon X progress.  
At the moment, I'm trying to reach and then defeat the Elite 4.  Unfortunately, the holidays kind of put a damper on things, keeping me busy and all that. 
I was hoping to be past the Elite 4 by Xmas, since that's the condition, as I learned, to get certain pokémon that I was hoping to put out on Wonder Trade.  The reasoning - which I originally saw on twitter - was that a lot of kids would be starting their Kalos adventures on Xmas, so we should supply them with decent wonder trades, once they start doing that.  It's still not long after Xmas, so I'm still trying to do what I can.  I also looked up some egg moves for a pokémon that appears later in the game, so, failing anything else, I can always hatch a bunch of little egglings for them. 
(FYI, I have six badges, so I need two more before challenging the Elite 4.)  
I'm still sticking with only using Generation VI pokémon.  The core of my team so far is Greninja, Doublade, and Hawlucha.  I've trained various things off and on.  At the moment, I'm working on leveling an Inkay, though I'll probably have Meowstic on my team when I face the Elite 4. 


I do want to mention that the Battle Chateau is a very nice feature.  I basically get unlimited trainer battles, so I don't have to fight mere wild pokémon when I play catch-up on levels. 

A Sunday Gauntlet

I've decided to give myself some goals tomorrow, so that this plan doesn't go completely to waste. 
1.  I intend to beat the next gym leader (#5 I think) in Pokémon X. 
2.  I intend to assemble the 3D pieces of my copy of Ogre. 
3.  During #2, I intend to try to catch up on Sleepy Hollow.  This is limited to during Ogre assembly time, though, so there's no guarantee that I'll get fully caught up.
4.  Bonus goal:  Beat the next gym leader after item #1 (so, 6th gym leader, if I recall correctly). 

I mean, I'm just really far behind on Pokémon X, so I need to get kraken!  Wait.... 

P.S.:  5.  Bonus goal:  Rock Smash until I finally find an Old Amber.  I stumbled across a hint that this might only be possible in Glittering Cave, so I'll try there.  

Regarding the Introduction to Mega Evolution

The player's introduction to Mega Evolution in Pokémon X & Y would have been easy to mess up, but I think that they got it right. 



By the way, there are some spoilers in this post. 



The way that we get a Lucario from Korrina still feels slightly forced, but at least they put in scenes prior to that that indicate that it was taking a liking to us.  The main good thing about this is that we don't have to level up a pokémon to the Mega Evolution point on our own.  From what I recall, we only get one (I'm not counting Mega Blaziken since that promotion will end), and I was trying to do a team of only new pokémon, so finding out that I had to swap out my Gogoat for my Bulbasaur and grind it until I got Venusaur would have been tedious. 
Since they're including most pokémon from every generation in these games, I think that I'll eventually make a team from each generation.  I just realized that I can include both Mega Venusaur and Mega Aerodactyl on my Gen I team - at least after I dig up some Old Amber. 
I do hope one thing, going forward:  If they decide in Generation VII to give a new Mega Evolution to a previous-generation pokémon, then they should at least not try to do any fancy tricks to explain it away.  You just never had, I don't know, Dragoniteite or whatever.  It's that simple.

Misc. Video Game Updates

As you probably know from a previous update, I've been focused on Pokémon X lately.  However, I haven't dropped other games completely.  Here's the latest on stuff: 

• Pokémon:  I'm about to beat the 2nd gym.  
• Team Fortress 2:  This year's Halloween map is actually pretty good.  I like that each person gets his own gift, when they spawn.  It's been a bit crashy, but I think that today's update fixed that.
• Minecraft:  FYI, I've gotten my boss addicted to Minecraft.  That said, I've been too busy w/ Pokémon X to play!  FWIW, he's tried the new Thaumcraft 4 for Minecraft release candidate 1.7.x, and it's apparently unnecessarily hard, including a new creeping evil force thing and recipes that are sometimes literally impossible to solve.  I think that I'll hold off on updating, not because I want to avoid it, but rather because I'm still doing a lot of exploring in Thaumcraft 3.
• Kongregate:  I've just been checking dailies & getting badges of the day.  The latter seem largely scary-themed these last few days.
• Miscellaneous betas:  Well, I can't talk much about most, & I haven't been playing them much due to Pokémon X.  

So, to summarize:  Pokémon X.

Pokémon X - my play so far - October 30th, 2013

Pokémon X is quite fun! 
I am catching so many Pokémon.  I've actually had to organize my boxes by generation, since they seem to have included ALL THE POKéMON in these games.  That said, I'm still limiting my team to new Pokémon.  After all, there are plenty of those.  If they allow me to re-battle gym leaders, then I'll probably do post-Elite-4 runs with teams from every generation.  XD
I think that the new Fairy type is going to get a lot of use, since it has so few weaknesses.  I'm bad at memorizing, so I'm just learning the type associations from use (they tweaked a few others, too), but I know that they resist Dark and Bug, which is surprisingly handy.  Note:  In addition to using only new Pokémon, I'm making it a partial point to keep a Fairy on my team. 
Sadly, I'm not very far through.  I work full time, there was stuff going on during the release weekend, and two weekends ago was a convention, but things should clear up a bit now. 
(A note for my fan:  Pokémon takes up far less time than doing a novel, so don't feel like this prevented NaNoWriMo or anything; I didn't have a workable novel idea this year.) 
Here's a list of the Pokémon in my rotation.  Note that I'm about to get the second badge: 

• Frogadier - evolved form of my starter
• Floette - trying out a Fairy
• Swirlix - I swapped this in because I heard that it's version-exclusive.  I'm hoping that it will evolve soon.  
• Vivillon - incredibly useful for catching Pokémon, but still good at fighting in its own right - also interesting for a fully-evolved Bug to have Shield Dust
• Skiddo - trying to evolve it into Gogoat!
• Honedge - physical powerhouse Ghost/Steel type - sadly, its evolutions have been spoiled
• Hawlucha - a never-before-seen type combo (both from the original 15, no less) and ZOMG THERE'S A LUCHADORE POKéMON!
• Meowstic - previously said that it would murder me in my sleep if I didn't use it
• Litleo - my earliest Fire type, & Fire/Normal is new
• Fletchinder - non-legendary Fire/Flying Pokémon!

I like to be, off-and-on, training Pokémon of each of at least most of the types, so I'll probably expand my team a bit as I go on.  For instance, I just noticed that I have neither a Rock type nor a Ground type.  It's no big deal, though - if I find something that I like, then I'll add it.  So far, I'm seeing a lot that I like!  (For instance, Pancham was about to enter my rotation when I discovered Hawlucha.)

Pokémon X & Y

Pokémon X and Pokémon Y are now out and, for the first time in many years, I've got the newest Pokémon game while it's still new.  Despite being behind the curve, what with having a job and all, I've still managed to avoid most spoilers, which helps keep the series fresh, since I'm discovering things through play. 
First, there are two main criticisms that I have: 

• The Lumiose City Glitch - This is kind of a huge deal, since it's a save-killing bug.  (For those who don't know, possibly because they're reading this in the future:  Saving outdoors (later discovered to be specific areas) in Lumiose City, then loading that save file, could actually lock up the 3DS.  The game was obviously unplayable.)  I have no idea how this got past playtesting - or component testing, for that matter, though I don't know how Nintendo/Game Freak/The Pokémon Company coded it, so that breakdown might not work as well.  Fortunately, we live in a day and age when such things can be patched.  That said, I'm honestly surprised at how long it took them to release the patch.  (Also, this is the one time that I'm glad that I got spoiled, since I just avoided saving anywhere within the Lumiose City limits.)
• The controls in 3D areas are a bit weird.  It's easy once you know the trick:  You can only move forward (usually), and sideways buttons rotate you.  The main issue w/ this is that it's unlike the controls for the rest of the game, so the controls in any over-the-shoulder area are always unintuitive.  

Now, here's stuff that I like: 

• So far, the new Pokémon designs are pretty cool.  My personal favorite is actually Spewpa, since it's a new - yet realistic - approach to the 3-stage bug Pokémon.  (Cool note:  Just before the release of the games, a praying mantis made an egg sack in our garden.  Like Spewpa, it's just kind of spat/frothed up and then dried.)
• Wonder Trades are awesome.  Finally, I don't have to do a bunch of online stuff to find someone with whom to trade, but I also don't feel compelled to overthink things like with GTS.  
• The roller skates handle really well, once you get used to them - which isn't very long.  Weirdly, they seem to be putting the bike to shame, since they're much easier to don/doff.  
• Item registration is much better in this system.  In generation V, if more than one key item was registered, pressing Y resulted in a small menu, which had to be navigated up/down if one wanted anything other than the top item.  Now, if more than one item is registered (up to 4), a directional menu pops up, making it much easier to select the item w/ one additional button-push.  This also makes it quicker to use, since it's easy for me to remember, for instance, that my Old Rod is Y-Up, while my bicycle is Y-Right.  
• Berries are back in the game.  In generation V, it became a chore to have to make sure that a Pokémon was tucked in, then go onto my computer to go online to the global link, to make sure that I was berry-ing.  This was compounded w/ the knowledge that it would only be up as long as Nintendo bothered to maintain the servers, and is further compounded by the fact that Nintendo is phasing out the Gen V Global Link by mid-January. 
• Berry growing is changed for the better.  Admittedly, having to pull weeds is technically tedious, and doesn't add any game value, but I like the rest of it.  I like that I can get random fights against Bug Pokémon that are trying to eat the berries.  While there are 2 stages added to berry growth - thicker trunk and buds - this is compensated by increased berry output, so it's all good.  The game just plain starts with 36 berry growing spots, and making mulch out of berries is a nice optional.  Also, hybridizing berries to get other (existing) berries is a neat way to make it not just an item-hunt.  
• Gogoat!  I don't technically have one yet (working on it!), but the idea of riding a goat Pokémon still seems awesome. 

That's all for now.  I'll probably mention more later, though possibly not in a dedicated review post.