Hello there.
First of all, I'd like to announce that from tomorrow I'll go on a small 5-days vacation, so expect my disappearance. Sorry for inconvenience.
Secondly, I just change the blog's template! For more detail you can look in the chatroom! Remember, you can always talk to me directly via that Chatroom. Please don't hesitate to do so, in fact I would really appreciate to see your comments!
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Unless you have plans, thing will get really messed up. I figured out that even in this blog full of random rants, I should plan ahead a little. Therefore the topic for today will (hopefully) be just one thing: Games.
What? You should have known already that I'm addicted to games.
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Last year, the newest installments of the Pokemon series have finally been released: The anticipated generation 6's Pokemon X and Pokemon Y. The games are completely 3D, and they are awesome. Though I couldn't play myself, after several Youtube clips I came to my own conclusion that Pokemon is now way beyond a simple game. There are global tournaments here and there, and to be a professional trainer you have to have a lot of effort. Anyways, the storyline is great, but still not the greatest. My favorite have to be the grand-epic generation 5's Pokemon Black/White and Pokemon Black2/White2. They are so intense that I just can't believe a simple, save-ya-world game back in my days could have come this far. Their demonstration about the clash of truth and ideal is just......epic.
However, though story-wise BW/BW2 are the best, the ending has to be XY. It's so touching that even I, at that time a random person who watched the ending first, felt stunned. At that moment I didn't know the contents of the game at all, but the ending managed to blow me away. It's one of the best ending scene and credit roll I've ever scene, considering everything. Games, movies, animes. EVERYTHING.
But if you ask me about the soundtracks and overall aspects, for Pokemon I'll stay loyal to generation 3's Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. It's the last generation that I played, and it's really meaningful to me. The soundtracks themselves are incredible, though newer generations come with newer favorable styles, my favorite will always be the BGM of Evergrande City and the Credit Roll scene of RSE. Speechlessly touching.
If there's anything that I don't like about Pokemon, it would be some Pokemon designs and a system. Some Pokemons look weird when they look related to machinery despite the fact that they don't at all. For example Unova's legendary Zekrom/Reshiram/Kyurem. Seriously, what's with their TURBO tails? Lots of Pokemon looks too digital, too. For instance compare Dragonair to Rayquaza. In my opinion Rayquaza looks more like a high tech robo dragon (It's awesome though, especially that blackness of the shiny version.). Fortunately gen 6 seems to fix that pretty well. Personally I think Pokemon's design should stay either to natural side like Butterfree Or just go all the way to complete digital like Genesect. (Though in my opinion Genesect doesn't look like a Pokemon, just an opinion though.)
About the system, it's the newly introduced Mega Evolution system of gen 6 that temporarily transforms a particular Pokemon to yet another form that tops it's usual final evolution. Seriously, Pokemon is NOT Digimon. Even though the mega evolved Pokemon's art is SO COOL I don't think Pokemon needs that. If you want to include this awesome art maybe they better make the mega evolution permanent, like evolution, not transformation. Still it's not that bad, so I guess I can get along with it. By the way those art are extremely cool. All of my favorite Pokemons received their mega evolution: Mega Alakazam is a psycho sage, Mega Gardevoir RULES EVERYTHING IT'S THE MOST AWESOME POKEMON EVER, Mega Banette is extremely cool, and a lot of people's favorite Mega Gengar (in its shiny form) is AMAZING with its unbelievably WHITE BODY.
You amaze me, Pokemon. I will look forward to your next surprise.
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It's last year also, that ZUN the god-in-disguise released the full version of Touhou 14: Double Dealing Character. I'll try my best not to wander away from the topic.
The gameplay is intentionally thrown back to the basic of a vertical shoot'em up bullet hell game, for nostalgia sake. And trust me, in this game nostalgia hits HARD. It starts from stage 1. The stage takes place at the Misty Lake, a place introduced way back in stage 2 of Touhou 6, the first Windows game of the series. The midboss is Cirno, the beloved tomboyish daughter, the ever-famous ice fairy, and supposedly the iconic boss of the place. She's the main boss of the stage back in Touhou 6 too.
Then we go to stage 3, the bamboo forest of the lost, first introduced as Touhou 8's stage 4. The BGM has some parts recognizable from the original BGM. The enemies' patterns also resembles the old times. Furthermore, did you know that the 'original' Touhou 8's stage 4 actually, and intentionally, resembles the PC-98 era Touhou 4's stage 4?
Nostalgia-ception.
Stage 4 throws us to Touhou 7's stage 4. It takes place in an eerie storm, while back then it took place at a clear, vast sky. The bosses before were the modern instrument poltergeist trio, and the boss this time are the Japanese traditional instrument Tsukumogami(object spirit thing) duo (later joined by another Tsukumogami, completing trio). The main bosses' BGM also has some parts resemble Touhou 13's extra stage boss theme, and that extra stage boss is often seen involving with Tsukumogamis.
Stage 5 and 6 take place in an upside down castle deep in the sky, while back in Touhou 8's stage 5 and 6 they took place in an ancient mansion hidden in the bamboo forest of the lost.
Aside from nostalgia, this game is really east-meets-west alike. There are a mermaid, a Japanese headless demon, a werewolf, two taditional Tsukumogamis, an Amanojaku (explained later), an inchling called Kobito, and a Tsukumogami who used to possess a traditional instrument but later changed into a modern, western instrument.
The bullet patterns are mind blowing too. Oh, and because from now on there are quite a lot of specific words, so to make things easily understandable, bosses have nonspells (equivalent to RPG's normal attack) and spellcards (equivalent to skills).
Now, some spellcards are just unbelievable. Take a look at the Amanojaku, a youkai related to contradiction who, in Touhou universe, has the ability to reverse anything and everything. She literally flips the screen. She first switches the left-right control (along with leftside right screen flip effect), then up-down control (along with upside down screen flip effect). And then she nefariously SPIN THE SCREEN counterclockwise, and you have to move during the spin. It becomes manageable after practices though.
You think that's evil? It's nothing compared to this final stage boss. A badass inchling. Her body is small but her BGM is the BIGGEST ever. Her hat is the most badass hat ever imagined by humanity: A rice bowl. (I'm not joking. It really looks badass.) And 2 of her spellcards are mind blowing. There's a spellcard that the bullets increase their size by like 3 times along the spell. Then there's another survival (You win the spell by surviving through the time limit. You can't hurt the boss.) spellcard that INCREASES YOUR HITBOX, thus making it extremely easy to get hit, and in Touhou if you get hit you lose a life. I can never get through this without using bombs.
ZUN, you evil.
And for the sake of lols, ZUN made the last boss shoots Taiko drums at you. Literally. There's a spell that I would like to call Rocket drums, because that's what it is. Hilarious yet threatening.
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Battle Gems, a match-3 game available on iOS (and soon on any portable devices and PC) by Artix Entertainment, has finally come out. It's full of puns that if you manage to catch them all, you will die laughing. There's a Forum Troll, a Darth Hater, a Brutalcorn, and even a Hint-eye.
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I miss the old Maple Story, and I hate how Thailand got blocked to play international servers.
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Ragnarok is still alive, and so does Yulgang.
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Should I give it a try on Aura Kingdom and Lime Odyssey? They look fun, but my computer is dying.
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I HATE COOKIE RUN. Stop sending me those Line requests. I wish Battle Gems has Line request so that I can spam it back.
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Fantasy Night of Touhou Project, an iOS game copied from the original Touhou series, is ridiculously hard and doesn't worth it.
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Adventure Quest Worlds, a famous 2.5 online game by Artix Entertainment, as well as my favorite online game right now, is now on the storyline full of spiders. Their awesome, in-detailed art scares me even though I'm not really scared of spiders. Those with arachnophobia shouldn't play right now. Normally I'd convince anyone to play and enjoy it's awesome art, though. (Speaking of which, there's a tiny spider next to me.)
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I'm still waiting for Touhou online. If I'm skilled at game making, I'll definitely do it.
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That's pretty much it I guess. Until next time.
Thank you for reading.
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