I like video games. I like them a lot. It took me years to finally catch up, but I finally got my Xbox 360 this Summer. Right away I went in pretty hard, I bought Fable 2, beat it in a week. I got Dragon age: Origins, beat that in two weeks. Then things started to get dull. I picked up Magic the Gathering, the super nerdy card game with my friend, so all my time and money went into that. Because of this new-found hobby I wasn't putting in nearly as many hours as I should have on my Xbox. I am awful at FPS games Like CODMW, and I have a TV that is nearing 20 years old, so the on screen text is nearly impossible to read. So, as time went by, I drifted away from my Xbox.
I did not like that however, but with me being in school now, I never have time to actually sit down and play. I recently got Mass Effect, because it's supposed to be one of the best games of all time. I like the game, but the commitment of time it takes to get into the game and understand the story and each individual characters story is too much. So I realized what I need to enjoy my Xbox; casual games.
Now, finding casual games is a lot harder for me then it sounds. All games for the Xbox are built for Xbox live. I do not want to pay the $50 for a year of live, especially since I am going to be moving into a building where I cannot run live. So I've been thinking about some non-online casual games to play. I'm thinking racing games, something I can turn on, play for twenty minutes and then turn off. A type of game that if there is a story mode function, I can come back to it 2-3 weeks after last playing and understanding where I'm at. This is the kind of game I am looking for. I just bought Orange Box tonight hoping that Portal will be able to provide me some casual fun without requiring too much of my time. So far so good. I'll let you know how it goes in a week or so.
If any of you readers out there know of any good casual games that do not require Xbox Live let me know. I am in need of some things to do in order to kill time.
Cheers!
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Monday, November 22, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Things Pokemon Should Do To Make Their Games A Million Times Better.
I have been playing Pokemon since the beginning. I remember when I first got the cards in second grade, I was so excited. Then I eventually got the game, and my life had forever changed. I would (and still do) spend as much time as I can playing the game, catching and leveling as many Pokemon as I could. I have played every generation, I even have paid off the Pokemon White Version that is going to be coming out in Spring 2011. I am that serious of a Pokemon fan. Now after all these years of playing the game I have found some things that I feel would make the whole experience better for everyone. This is a list of things Pokemon needs to do to make the games a million times better:
1. Allow a Pokemon to follow you at all times. They did this in Heart Gold/Soul Silver but it was the first Pokemon in your party. Don't do that, allow the player to choose on of his six to follow him at all times with a menu in the Pokemon tab of your start menu. If they want to choose someone else, all they will have to do is select the next Pokemon they want to have follow them.
2. Get rid of Hm's. They are a waste of a move slot. Are you telling me, that Lapras can't learn how to swim be across a body of water unless it knows Surf? I caught Lapras in a body of water swimming. Making Hm's be a racial perk would make things so much easier for everyone to use. No longer would you have to carry around an Hm slave that is a much lower level than your party just to make sure you can break a rock that is preventing you from getting to a legendary Pokemon. These moves still only be usable once you have gotten the appropriate badge, but I am tired of having to delete a wonderful move to teach my Charizard how to fly. That mother fucker is huge and wouldn't even notice if I was riding on his back across the region.
3. Incorporate some sort of MMO function. With the DS having wi-fi make it so that I can see another trainer running around the same city as me, not just underground. I guess Black and White are doing this, which makes me super excited. Hopefully I can fight them by talking to them and maybe trade as well. No more Union Rooms and waiting forever to get a trade done. Just walking around the city and talking to all the trainers I see. Now that would be cool.
4. More story. In all the Pokemon games there seems to be a story underneath the fact that you have to beat all the gym leaders and become the Pokemon League Champion. The first two generations had Team Rocket, the next one had Team Aqua/Magma, and the fourth has Team Galactic. The fourth generation came the closest to really revealing the story behind Team Galactic, but I really want more. I feel like they could up the game to a whole new level and bring in even more players if they made the plot involving the Team Baddies more clear.
5. Another take from the World of Warcraft, whenever your Pokemon levels, let it regain it's health and Powerpoints. This way you could level more efficiently without having to go out of your way to go to a Poke Center just to get your moves back.
6. Let abilities be hereditary. Meaning, that I can breed Pokemon to gain different abilities instead of the two per species. For example, Infernape only gets blaze, and I would kill for him to have Iron Fist or whatever its name is. If abilities were able to transfer through breeding then I would just have to breed Infernape with a Hitmonchan and there we go, an even more bad ass Infernape.
7. Let there be some sort of system that checks for the levels of my Pokemon compared to the level of a random trainers Pokemon. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to catch a swarming Pokemon in Platinum and then a weak beginning of the game trainer wants to fight. Allow there to be in-game level comparisons and if your Pokemon are say, 15 levels ahead of the trainers, or vice-versa, the battle doesn't happen.
8. Make the storage system better. I just saw in Pokemon Sapphire that I should organize my boxes for particular types. That's a really cool idea! Only if it would automatically send water Pokemon to the water box, and fire Pokemon to the fire box. This would be possible if they added a bit more mechanics into the storage system and settings functions of the game. This then would allow the suggestions made by the game itself be reasonable suggestions for people to use.
These are all I have for right now, I am sure I will come up with more things to write about in this as time goes on. Keep checking on this for more ways to improve Pokemon.
Cheers!
1. Allow a Pokemon to follow you at all times. They did this in Heart Gold/Soul Silver but it was the first Pokemon in your party. Don't do that, allow the player to choose on of his six to follow him at all times with a menu in the Pokemon tab of your start menu. If they want to choose someone else, all they will have to do is select the next Pokemon they want to have follow them.
2. Get rid of Hm's. They are a waste of a move slot. Are you telling me, that Lapras can't learn how to swim be across a body of water unless it knows Surf? I caught Lapras in a body of water swimming. Making Hm's be a racial perk would make things so much easier for everyone to use. No longer would you have to carry around an Hm slave that is a much lower level than your party just to make sure you can break a rock that is preventing you from getting to a legendary Pokemon. These moves still only be usable once you have gotten the appropriate badge, but I am tired of having to delete a wonderful move to teach my Charizard how to fly. That mother fucker is huge and wouldn't even notice if I was riding on his back across the region.
3. Incorporate some sort of MMO function. With the DS having wi-fi make it so that I can see another trainer running around the same city as me, not just underground. I guess Black and White are doing this, which makes me super excited. Hopefully I can fight them by talking to them and maybe trade as well. No more Union Rooms and waiting forever to get a trade done. Just walking around the city and talking to all the trainers I see. Now that would be cool.
4. More story. In all the Pokemon games there seems to be a story underneath the fact that you have to beat all the gym leaders and become the Pokemon League Champion. The first two generations had Team Rocket, the next one had Team Aqua/Magma, and the fourth has Team Galactic. The fourth generation came the closest to really revealing the story behind Team Galactic, but I really want more. I feel like they could up the game to a whole new level and bring in even more players if they made the plot involving the Team Baddies more clear.
5. Another take from the World of Warcraft, whenever your Pokemon levels, let it regain it's health and Powerpoints. This way you could level more efficiently without having to go out of your way to go to a Poke Center just to get your moves back.
6. Let abilities be hereditary. Meaning, that I can breed Pokemon to gain different abilities instead of the two per species. For example, Infernape only gets blaze, and I would kill for him to have Iron Fist or whatever its name is. If abilities were able to transfer through breeding then I would just have to breed Infernape with a Hitmonchan and there we go, an even more bad ass Infernape.
7. Let there be some sort of system that checks for the levels of my Pokemon compared to the level of a random trainers Pokemon. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to catch a swarming Pokemon in Platinum and then a weak beginning of the game trainer wants to fight. Allow there to be in-game level comparisons and if your Pokemon are say, 15 levels ahead of the trainers, or vice-versa, the battle doesn't happen.
8. Make the storage system better. I just saw in Pokemon Sapphire that I should organize my boxes for particular types. That's a really cool idea! Only if it would automatically send water Pokemon to the water box, and fire Pokemon to the fire box. This would be possible if they added a bit more mechanics into the storage system and settings functions of the game. This then would allow the suggestions made by the game itself be reasonable suggestions for people to use.
These are all I have for right now, I am sure I will come up with more things to write about in this as time goes on. Keep checking on this for more ways to improve Pokemon.
Cheers!
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