Nuzlocke challenge makes Pokemon more interesting

Some games already have the aspect of completing different challenges and have the trophy system supporting it e.g. if you play with a harder difficulty setting the game will grant you a golden trophy or a secret ending. Fan challenges are still the best, you can modify them as you like and they are usually thought of very cleverly bearing in mind they have a lot of testers who give the needed feedback.

I'm very keen on doing challenges in games, because it changes the gameplay completely. That is why I was up to trying the nuzlocke challenge. Each generation of Pokemon games follows the same mechanics and rules in the world; it can make the experience quite boring and the challenge is just what I wanted to keep my attention high. When every generation is getting more easier and easier, it adds the extra spice. The nuzlocke challenge is to make Pokemon games more intense and make the difficulty harder. 

Rules:

-Adding the first wild Pokemon to your team you encounter from each area. 

-You can’t catch Pokemon you encounter from the same area.

-Any Pokemon that faints is released aka they are considered dead.

-You have to name every Pokemon you catch for adding sentimental value.

To these rules you can add more rules to make it even harder, but I decided to only have these. My first try with the challenge was me playing Pokemon shield so the wild Pokemon rule is a bit different because you can see the Pokemon unlike in the previous games. I chose to close my eyes and just run in some direction and hope to have an encounter.

The game started quite nice, I didn’t have any difficulties and nobody from my team died for maybe 2 hours. In sword/shield games nuzlocke challenge is easier also considering how easily you can level up your Pokemon this due to the game emphasizing the adventure aspect of it and easily switching different types of Pokemon which was quite difficult in previous games, level upping was much harder. That's why I think that nuzlocke is the perfect challenge for sword and shield though it wasn't as hard as it would be in the other Pokemon games. 

Even when my team members died one after another, in my previous game sessions with Pokemon games I really didn't switch up the team and I ended up  trying some not so preferred Pokemon. It made every Pokemon matter more and not just dumping them to the storage system and forgetting them. It also made me to think in more strategy vise trying to keep my children alive. My experience shattered me completely after camping with my friends, making curry and playing with them. At the end I couldn't ditch my friends, it was getting emotionally too hard to release them and I did cry couple of times. Still even me crying over my dead pals it made the game more interesting and immersive. Having consequences had me more interested even in the story and really live the trainer life.

Special thanks to these troopers that got wiped by literal cupcakes, RIP.

Baby, Munakokkeli, Frootloops, Sauske, Sir, and Herra Hattu

Awakening of my wind

This week, we are starting by talking about one of my favourite games from way back in 2002. It has the best soundtrack and the most authentic feeling of exploration and adventure, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

I could ramble on about Zelda and it’s very convoluted lore and timeline for hours. To be clear, I am not going to review Wind Waker nor explain the plot in depth,  I will be talking about the art style in particular. On the release, it was not very well received and the feedback was pretty rough, only because everybody was waiting for a more realistic Zelda after Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Nintendo had just shown footage of dark themed realistic tech-demo of Ganondorf and link fighting (Zelda GameCube [Space World 2000 Tech Demo] ) and, oh boy, when they revealed the Wind Waker. Colorful cartoony Link with a big smile. 

-“hyyah” :D

The hate was, what it was at the time, because the expectations were not met, but let me tell you that they wouldn't have been able to create such a timeless art piece of a game if they had done the next zelda game realistically. Considering the hardware limitations and time limits that were set.The devs had more time to concentrate on everything else. Without having to think how everything would look and focusing on the realistic touches which would emphasize the little finickies ( hm, is finicky a word?). Makers of the game had more freedom, they were faster and could focus on the other parts. Even Wind Waker had time constraints and it can be seen in the game, but Wind Waker wouldn't matter so much if it wasn't for the style.

-Everybody say, “stylism over realism!”

Pursuing a more stylistic artstyle over realistic games is the classical triple AAA game’s trick, but I ain't fooling. I get the natural curiosity of how you can make something as realistic as you can. Artists did it in the 1840s before they got weary of it after perfecting it. Honestly, I don’t think game devs are stopping either before getting the perfect realism. It’s a big market and what consumer’s want game companies do deliver. BUT, with a big market you have competitors and with not so exciting visuals you are easily fallen to the mediacore section. Realism isn't even accessible at all without having a big company with funds and users having to have prizy equipment. Focusing solely on photorealism does often hurt the playability which doesn’t look good with aging graphics.

Stylized game’s target groups are harder to define. You have to know your audience clearly and it's going to be a smaller market. BUT, with a style you can have a unique and memorable game with extra flair. You neither are needing a powerful hardware and the game is going to run smoothly with higher frame rate instead of rendering details.

I don’t actually hate realistic games and I actually love some of them. I am glad that the game industry has had a switch from always trying to make realistic games and trying new things. Although we are not seeing many successful stylized games, stylized realism in games are enough for me. With the industry growing so fast I know that more people are coming to the field appreciating and experimenting color palettes, mechanics and just being creative as heck.

P.S. The title is a fart joke 💨💨

Making creatures with Bobby Yeah

Link for the short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJv5gjA3atA

Header might be misleading and I apologize that I am not with Bobby. Bobby Yeah is a stop motion animated short horror film by Robert Morgan. First time I watched the film was almost 4 years ago and I think it's still one of the creepiest and weirdest things I've seen. It’s about a subhuman creature, Bobby, who after stealing an important pet, experiences nightmarish scenarios.

In an interview, Robert stated that the film was pure imagination after experiencing 4 years of creative frustration. He explained that he used to over analyze his scripts to death and he was tired of people asking what's the meaning behind it. For this project he didn't have rules, if he had an idea and it sounded interesting it was going in, he would worry about it later. Using the frustration as a tool to release all of the build up is interesting to see the outcome has the anger in it. This kind of strong feeling with a pure imagination is surely needed for the creativity to bloom.

Characters from Bobby Yeah: a malevolent baby and Bobby

I wanted to make a creature inspired by the short film. I have been very fascinated by it.The character models are designed with a way that you can almost feel them. Combination of texture, sound and movement make them look super gross but intriguing. I'm quite interested in making 3D models so I opened Blender and went with it. My goal would be to make this amazing character model with animation, textures and the surrounding scene. Did Not work.. IT LOOKED LIKE A GUMMY..I gave it a fair shot and honestly I was just lacking the skill and I didn’t have the time to look up tutorials from Youtube. I don't have any idea why I thought that I could do all of that with such a short time period and without enough experience. I still want to challenge myself to make a scene in blender with all of the fineries but next time I'll make it simple.

 my gummies:

I pulled my trusty Wacom tablet and opened Photoshop. Went a lot more smoother. I didn't quite catch the Bobby yeahs style but I am pretty satisfied with the outcome. Creature lore? It's a lamp. Big baby lamp.

My process:

Consuming media

I have always consumed a lot of media. I was that kid who was loud and hyper all the time and the only thing that could make me still was watching television or playing video games. My big sister was a huge nerd back then and of course I thought she was the coolest, which she still is. She introduced me to a lot of media, especially games. Though as competitive I am there was a lot of crying and throwing controllers (jeez). Closer to my early teen years, when social media started to be a thing, I didn't quite understand it. For a good while I didn't have any account on anything and when I did I wondered why I got so little followers and likes. Why didn't everybody follow me back? Then (to some even today)  followers and likes were  the currency of how relevant you were and it got compared a lot.

I wanted to think that I didn't care what other people thought of me, but it truly was that even one like from someone I considered popular was the best day of my life, just to get accepted. That one tap on the screen, gave me the feeling that finally they like me and they could be my friend. It is quite foolish, but it did reflect my media behaviour a lot. What I thought was cool, what to post or even what to be. I don't care as much as I did then, although I don't know why I worshipped people like that and why it was so important. In highschool, hierarchy has always been present and it's no different in social media platforms.I worry about the youngsters of today. While social media is a bigger thing than it has ever been.

I would say 90% of my media usage is being consumed via phone. 80% of the time procrastinating and the remaining 20% reading news articles. On instagram I spend my time on either watching cat videos, browsing art or admiring my own feed. Can sound a bit selfish but isn't the whole idea of your feed to prop up your ego? On youtube I watch let’s plays, in depth analysis of games, podcasts or that weird scene of ghost busting and telling creepy stories.  Even on youtube I am tired of the drama and how restrictive it is with it’s weird policies.Ta-dah, and then comes our beloved trash. FACEBOOK. I absolutely hate that I am browsing facebook's recommended videos. The thing is that the same videos won't perform any good at other platforms and they have 20 seconds of unskippable ads. Yes, they are that trashy, But I'll watch them. I am part of the problem. I'll wait 20 seconds just to watch the youtuber prank video. Watching videos and using Media does affect me and I get anxiety very easily but at the same time I don’t really care and I use it to make the time fly faster.

Why, is a good question to  be asked. I guess it's just an old habit. I don't consume as much media since I lost my phone two years ago and lived without a decent phone for a year. I got used to living without a smartphone and even when I bought my newest phone I usually just forget it somewhere for hours.It was interesting how without interacting on the internet with others left me quite alone and forgotten when my presence suddenly disappeared. It is surprisingly important to know what your friends and pals  are up for and what they are doing. Commenting and keeping the connection up. That sounds very weird,  of course you have to keep your friendships up. But without being in the same city and actually seeing each other the only interactions you have is via phone. 

To end my post I will award you with this 👻 you did it 👏 you read my text 👏 you are a champ!

HI Y'ALL!

 

Hi, welcome to my blog. 

You may know me as Liisa but please do refer me as master since this is my domain.

This blog will reflect a lot of my preferences so you will mostly see in my blog: horror (not that my post's are that bad 😞, speaking 'bout genre), game related stuff  and hopefully funky smooth post's. My goal is to make this blog interesting, coherent and somewhat weird. Learning stuff and sharing it. Hopefully doing some art/game projects to share.