I've made it a project to finally finish all the older Pokemon games in roughly chronological order, and now I've finally wrapped up Gen 2.

I'm old and nerdy enough to have played partially-translated versions of Red and Green on No$GMB before they ever came out in the US. I wasn't quite grown, but I was definitely older than the target audience and approached the games as a fan of console RPGs. I was really impressed by how ambitious the games were: a huge amount of monsters that were all playable & with designs that broke away from the medieval fantasy rut that most RPGs were still stuck in.

So with that in mind, Gen 2 is still a big jump in ambition for a handheld RPG. It adds a breeding system, holdable items & a realtime clock that enables a host of subfeatures like daily events, nocturnal/diurnal monsters, time-specific evolutions and moves that vary according to in-game light levels.

And then there's Kanto, a post-game that's nearly as large as the base game. (Though much faster to complete, since the mons in most areas are pretty low level.)

The game's story is barely there, as always, but I do like how your Gen 2 rival is just some guy who sucks. He's not even the final trainer you have to beat to become the champion.

undeniably, there was something lost during the transition from gen 1 to 2. you can even start to see it from red/blue to yellow. designs became less abstract, instead opting to ape the designs shown in the anime. the feeling of a JRPG monster game was traded in favor of eschewing a new genre, something a cross between that and a pet simulator. it's very fascinating for me to go back and see how distinctly unpokemon red/blue was, and gen 2 is really where you start to see a lot of the themes and tone come about.

on some level, i do prefer red/blue to this game. there's a greater "pick up and play" element to it for me, there's a staggering amount of content condensed into a relatively simple experience. something about the game design of red/blue evokes a "do another playthrough" desire out of me; it could be the relative minimalism by series standards or just the fact that it feels so video game-y in a way that pokemon's largely abandoned. charmander isn't a cute little salamander, it's a monster that's meant to grow into something greater than itself. and sure, some of the NPCs in the game do remark about how cute and adorable pokemon like jigglypuff and meowth are, but there's this implied understanding that, to be a superior pokemon trainer, you should be looking at stats and moves, not at designs.

fastforward to gen 2, and you get an almost completely opposite message from the game. there's a greater emphasis on bonding with your pokemon, both in the addition of a friendship statistic and also in the form of friendship evolutions. baby pokemon are added despite serving no advantage in gameplay terms and being relatively useless. much more gimmick pokemon are added that seemingly lack real-world counterparts to add to the world, like shuckle and gligar. in large part, gen 2 is the point in the series when pokemon decided to stop being centered on imitating the real world with a JRPG lens and instead became its own, lived-in universe. pokemon have mythos and lore beyond pokedex entries now! you can breed pokemon and get powerful egg moves onto things, regardless of how sensible it may be (hello chikorita with ancientpower)! gen 2 is when we look at pokemon's world in greater detail instead of abstraction. on the one hand, i appreciate and miss the abstraction of gen 1. on the other, it's undeniable that gen 2's when the pokemon series really kicked into high gear and cultivated its iconography and gameplay systems beyond what many expected of a fad of the year series.

it's worth mentioning that this game does a lot of quality of life improvements as well as bug fixes and move effect retoolings from gen 1 that were sorely needed. i could spend what feels like days listing off everything improved, but it's staggering when you sit down and bullet-point out how much of gen 1 needed to be fixed by its sequels; moreso staggering that it was. it's very easy to go "the jump from gen 1 to gen 2 was big", but it doesn't feel quite as big until you play them both back to back. the art style alone is so different that the games feel as though they're not even related. pokemon red/blue was the blueprint, pokemon GSC was the reinvention.

the largest and probably most damning flaw of the game for me is that a large portion of the gen 2 pokemon are prohibitively difficult to obtain. some are locked away behind trade evolutions, some are only obtainable after beating the elite four, and some are just painfully rare encounters (see: dunsparce, teddiursa, and swarm pokemon like yanma + qwilfish). and literally half the gym leaders only use pokemon from gen 1. you're telling me that you introduced one new ghost type pokemon in misdreavus, and not a single fucking person in morty's gym uses it? and falkner is left by the wayside in only using pidgey and pidgeotto. sure, he's the first gym leader, but you really couldn't have at least given him something at least a little interesting like hoothoot or murkrow?

but i'm nitpicking. this game is considered a hallmark of the series, and, when you consider the context, it's easy to see why. as much fondness as you could have for digimon, you simply must admit that it lacks a pokemon GSC. it lacks a video game that dominated markets and cemented its series as a mainstay of pop culture. for what pokemon has become and what we all wish it could be, there was a time when it felt like it was truly breaking new ground, as though it were mapping uncharted territory. that was exciting. thrilling, even.

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕 Fuck This 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

I think this utilization of indie devs as a guerilla advertising force is enormously fucked up. It'll almost definitely dilute the indie scene and what videogames we talk about going forward. However, it's nothing new, in the sense that liscensed flash game shlock to sell products have been around forever (remember those LCD happy meal games? It's just like that but updated). It's a polished face to an age-old exploitation. Instead of giving the substanceless game the respect of actually getting direct scorn, which would ultimately embolden the product's aim of attention grabbing. Or otherwise meming around the existence of this which would flaccidly play right into its hands. Let's do a more 'macro informative' approach. Here's some interesting articles on recent abuses from the company in question to sate the appetite a bit:


Pandemic Racism
"McDonald’s actions speak louder than words. The reality is that 80 percent of McDonald’s majority Black and Brown workforce don’t have access to paid sick leave. That is dangerous under normal circumstances; during a global pandemic, it’s deadly." McDonald’s is Hiding Policies That Perpetuate Systemic Racism Behind Woke-Washing

Sexual Harrassment
"According to the lawsuit, since at least 2017, AMTCR knew about sexual harassment and allowed it to continue, unabated, by supervisors, managers, and coworkers at various of its McDonald’s restaurants. The harassing conduct, which was mainly directed at young, teenage employees, included frequent unwanted touching, offensive comments, unwelcome sexual advances, and intimidation. As AMTCR failed to adequately address the complaints of sexual harassment, many workers found the working conditions so intolerable that they had no choice but to quit." McDonald’s Franchise to Pay Nearly $2 Million to Settle EEOC Sexual Harassment Lawsuit


Corporate Malfeseance
"According to the SEC’s order, McDonald’s terminated Easterbrook for exercising poor judgment and engaging in an inappropriate personal relationship with a McDonald’s employee in violation of company policy. However, McDonald’s and Easterbrook entered into a separation agreement that concluded his termination was without cause, which allowed him to retain substantial equity compensation that otherwise would have been forfeited." SEC Charges McDonald’s Former CEO for Misrepresentations About His Termination

Check out The McDonald's Videogame (2006) by the dev team Molleindustria using Flashpoint to foster a better understanding of these corporate ghouls.

(5-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

I want it to be the same as (brother)'s review.

WADDLE YOUR DEES AND DEE YOUR WADDLES AND DO YOUR WADDLES AND [uncontrollable laughter] POOP YOUR WADDLES

I honestly picked this game up because I was interested in the Miles Morales sequel and figured I should experience the preceding story first. Oh, and it dropped first too.

Playing through the story was generally quite enjoyable, even if that story was nothing particularly inspired. I'll admit to geeking out a lot at the in-universe references. "Ooh! There's the Nelson and Murdock law offices!"

The combat and stealth gameplay and city full of excruciating collectibles fun activities will be absolutely nothing new to anyone who has spent any time with the Arkham City games. I especially found the "Spidey sense" alerts + dodging I-frames a little bit less precise than in Batman, but overall it wasn't bad. Stealth was generally enjoyable and nothing beats setting up the trip mines for silently dealing with annoying patrols.

Where the game shines and best lives up to it's namesake is, of course, the movement. Swinging around New York like that is just pure joy. You get xp from aerial tricks, but it is so minimal compared to other sources that you don't feel compulsion to turn the movement into yet another completionist challenge. There is a fast travel system, but I forgot about it until near the end of my first run and even on the second time through (for Ultimate difficulty achievement) and in the DLC, I mostly only used it when I was tired and in a hurry.

The city feels fairly active, which is something I appreciated and the inclusion of things like pigeons flying around and the occasional rat really made me feel like I was in New York.

I am neck deep in the final DLC and, upon completion, should have mastered it (only remaining achievements are story completion and one for an activity I have yet to unlock in this DLC). I'll update when I finish (if I remember)

Oh, the suits also! There's a lot to choose from, including those from the Raimi, Garfield, and MCU films and a ton from the comics. There's even an animated one that makes it look like comic book style and it's pretty damn cool!

(Steam Release)

Frankly, I'm a bit of a pessimist, and when I heard DF was making big pushes to be more "accessible" for its Steam release, I assumed we'd be looking at a developer-approved official tileset and... that'd be about it. I heard about the mouse controls but was not particularly hopeful that they would be more useful or clear than the keyboard shortcuts that already existed. I'll admit I was wrong! You'd be forgiven for not realizing that the game under the hood was originally designed as an ASCII-only project where gameplay more closely resembles "inputting missile launch codes" than swirling analog sticks. The official tileset and mouse controls alone are worth full price for anyone who, like me, has been fascinated by DF but been unwilling to spend the time learning how to gather all the info I need.

The game is still relatively hard to parse, but if you've played one of DF's many spiritual successors (or games inspired by those, in turn) then this shouldn't be too tough a task for you. Especially given the tutorial, which is actually quite good at explaining what's going on and how not to fail instantly - probably the biggest hurdle to learning DF before this point. It's still the same game, it still has its legendary level of detail and its quirky gameplay mechanics - if you're not used to games where fluids and creatures can travel diagonally, you better learn - and it's still possible to lose it all to the zaniest bullshit on the planet.

I think it's finally helped me see the appeal of DF firsthand - I'd dabbled with the game over the years but never enough to fully grasp what I was doing, so my forts were small and rapidly became failures, never interesting enough to have me doing a deep-dive on the wiki for optimized bedroom designs. It's easy to hear about things like cats dying due to an error in calculating feline Blood Alcohol Content and become intimidated, but Bay12 have been smart in where/how the level of detail gets increased. Most of it's in the worldbuilding or systems that run in the background, meaning that savvy or passionate players can opt into interacting with these elements without it being required of new players. All this info turns the fortress itself into a character - a canvas marked by each being that passes through it. Losing in every bizarre way possible is its own fun, of course, but there's still something to gain from watching your dwarves build a legacy and a culture all their own.

Wants to handle Blade Runner / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep style questioning, while also drawing parallels to The Queer Experience. Everyone wants to know what it's like to be you, because you're not normal. Has queer characters in spades. Substitutes jaded Eastern European leftism for youthful, cautious optimism.

Suffers from the limitations of the scope, it can feel like the Big Defining Moments for culture on the station just kind of... don't have anything change. The struggle part quickly fades past a certain point, and it turns into a more regular-feeling VN after that point. Doesn't inter-weave as much as it feels like it should.