Lurker > Evillordexdeath

Day 9
85 Stars, 32 medals

I've made it to world 6, where the game is really starting to roll out the big boy levels. A long maze on Boo Moon, the second level in Melty Monster Galaxy that gave me some flashbacks of the Moon Goron section in Majora's Mask, and the long first level of Clockwork Ruins Galaxy in particular took a bit out of me, and after that last one I decided to pack the game in for the night. There was a lot of verticality to the level design in that one, which can be a little bit frustrating. I thought the first level in Melty Monster was quite cool, partially because it was a re-emergence of the lava creatures from Super Mario World, which you don't see used too often. The second level is definitely better designed than the Majora's Mask section and is actually pretty fun, but it was the first level in a while where I burned through enough lives to get the ghost Rosalina to offer to beat the level for me. I didn't take her up on that offer, of course. On the bright side, it was a good chance to earn a ton of star bits - I got over 600 from that level alone.

The way I've chosen my level order might have been a little bit of a mistake. I figured it would be best to start from the earlier, easiest levels so that I would be better at the game by the time I made it to the hard ones, but on the flipside it would be nice to go back to world 1 for a quick easy level as a way to unwind after making it through a level like Clockwork Ruins.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Day 8
75 stars, 30 medals

I had intended to play for more, but my wii remote kept warning me that it was about to run out of batteries so I decided to stop on a nice round number. Knocking on the end of world 5 now. I completed the Daredevil run of the world 3 boss, which took me a few lives, unsurprisingly since I struggled a bit with the original fight. The levels in world 5 have been pretty good. Shiverburn Galaxy uses the hot/cold alternation that was also in certain levels in Galaxy, and combined with the skating mechanics being good that made for fun levels. There was a long sand slide at the Egyptian-themed Slipsand Galaxy which I thought was a neat idea, and the last level I did was in Boo Moon Galaxy where the shape of the world around you distorts Inception style as you progress.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Day 7
66 Stars, 26 Medals

Unto world 5, which is apparently the penultimate one - though that being said there are over 200 stars in this game so I'm nowhere near finished. The second boss fight against Bowser is quite similar to the first, which is to say kind of lame. I remember they were a weaker part of the first game too. Bowser apparently took some tips from Cloud on how to beat Mario, but he must have forgotten that Cloud had never won against him as of 2010, and the fact that he keeps using Meteorain turns out to be his downfall.

I did the comet version of Chompworks galaxy, which was pretty diabolical - it's a variant of a level where you need to stand still, but it adds those shadow clones that follow in your tracks and hurt you if you stand still too long. The first level in world 5, Space Storm galaxy, was the first time this game extensively used those blue stars that you move toward with the pointer, which were around a lot in Galaxy 1. The map here is also much more open-ended than previous worlds and you can play the levels in any order. I could even skip just about all of them if I wanted to, given how many stars I've cleaned out from the previous worlds.

The last level I did was the hidden star at Upside Dizzy galaxy, where you have to burn a bunch of crates within 20 seconds as Fire Mario. I had already done an identical level earlier on, but it took me a ton of tries for some reason, so I ended up calling it just after I finally won.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Congrats on finishing Crash Bandicoot, LMS!

Day 6
59 Stars, 24 Comet Medals

After doing a comet mission on the second boss level (which I thought was a cool idea - I don't think the first Galaxy ever did that) and a hidden star where you have to lure a Goomba into a specific area, I've now completely cleared out the second world. As for World 4, I'm at the point where I can go straight on to the boss tomorrow. I did the Starshine Beach galaxy today, which an ultra-open water level with Yoshi. The Galaxy games are another example where the swimming mechanics are actually pretty good and I look forward to water levels instead of dreading them, though they aren't quite as much pure fun as the swimming in Majora's Mask I would say. The last level I did today was the Sweet Mystery Galaxy, which is the first one where you have both Luigi and Yoshi. It was a case where I found every possible ridiculous way there was to die, but I got through in the end.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Day 5
51 Stars (21 Comet Medals)

The first three worlds are almost fully exhausted now. The boss on the third world actually took me a really long time to beat. I don't think it's hard at all, I just played terribly for some reason. The last world I did was the supermassive Galaxy, which I thought was a fun concept. I've been playing as Luigi almost every chance I get. I also completed the galaxy based on that mechanic from the first game where you roll around on top of a ball by tilting the motion controls, which I found kind of stressful.

I'm finding it a little hard to write about the game, because I'll play a lot of levels at once and it'll be harder to remember as much in the way of specifics, but I'm enjoying it a lot so far. I don't think there have been any levels that I didn't find fun, and the level of variety is definitely commendable.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Ah, okay. My initial inclination was to play Minecraft on the PS4, but if there's enough interest in an online server that the 10 player limit could become an issue I don't mind going for the Java edition. That being said, POST HERE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN A B8 MINECRAFT SERVER.

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Day 4
37 Stars

I had a lot of housework to deal with today and could only play for like 40 minutes, but I beat the purple coin level from yesterday and finished up the rest of the currently-available comet levels, including another purple coin one on the tree slide that looked absolutely impossible at first until I realized that you don't have to get every single coin to win, just 100 out of a much higher number that are placed around the slide. I got 85 on my first try and then the full hundred on my second. With that done I've been able to fully complete a decent chunk of the galaxies in the first three worlds, which gives me a certain feeling of satisfaction. Afterward I had some time to play the ghost level in world 3, which was where I stopped after getting my first game over playing the second level as Luigi. I kept rushing things too much and falling to my death.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

BetrayedTangy posted...

Been awhile since I posted in here, but I am still working on Red Dead! I just got really distracted with Tony Hawk and Paper Mario, both have been infinitely more fun so far!

Sounds like you're having something of a similar experience with Red Dead to mine. On your top 10, though Dark Souls is a pretty hard game I would say the difficulty tends to get overstated at times. I personally don't consider it an unfair game outside of a few poorly designed sections. I'm looking forward to Doom too - I like how it focuses on a single style of gameplay and tries to make that as tight as possible. I think that's a nice contrast with a lot of other AAA games. I would like to try hosting a Minecraft server for this project, now that you mention it. I'll have to look into how that's done.

ctesjbuvf posted...

I do agree with the things you said about the hub and Rosalina, but I don't recall any of the Galaxy games being more open. Both were a lot less open than 64 and Sunshine. Odyssey too.

Yeah, I phrased that poorly. What I was trying to say is that you have a little more freedom as to the order in which you tackle levels in the first Galaxy. If you cleared out enough earlier levels in that one, you could pretty much skip entire worlds because the only requirement was how many stars you had. In this one it seems like you have to have enough stars to access a level as well as having found at least one star in all the galaxies that are behind it on the map. That being said, the best way to approach both games is probably to play the levels "in order," since that results in the most well-designed difficulty curve.

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Day 3
32 Stars

I completed the entirety of world 2 and made a little progress on 3. One level that I particularly liked was the twin falls one where you start out swimming, then freeze the ocean so you can wall-jump up a pair of waterfalls to reach the star. Then in the second level for that galaxy everything is still frozen but you go into an underground tunnel where there's still flowing water. I just thought that progression was kind of cool. I got 15 comet medals which finally spawned a prankster comet, and then got caught up knocking down comet levels one after another. I stopped on the purple coin level on that galaxy where you flip which platforms you can stand on every time you spin, after dying a few times trying to get through it. Out of the normal levels, I think the one that's given me the most trouble so far is the one with the Mario 64 style slide.

One thing I have noticed is that my wrist gets really tired from playing this game, so it's another one that's made me feel kind of old.

The music is unsurprisingly great. I'm glad that you get a little background percussion when you're riding Yoshi, like you did in Super Mario World. So far my favorite track is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaf2gUhy74o

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

ctesjbuvf posted...

This is my favorite game of the decade. Enjoy!

Wow, that's high praise! I know you're not the only one, though.

Lightning Strikes posted...

I think with time to sit on it, and reflecting after reading your writeup, RDR2 is a vastly superior game to RDR1 despite sharing some flaws. I'm interested in what you think of it eventually!

You're not the first person to tell me that, actually. I do think I'll have some of the same complaints toward the second one, especially how much time is spent just riding around on horseback. It definitely does look like it benefits from having more advanced technology behind it though. I can see things like the livelier base camp helping to make the game more compelling.

Gall posted...

A few final thoughts on Red Dead:

Definitely agree about Javier. I think three different villains was okay, they just needed to expand their roles in the story. I do think it was odd how unclear what Dutch was trying to achieve seemed, but maybe there was a certain intention behind that, like that he didn't know himself. RDR does leave a lot of room for the sequel to expand on the backstory, which I guess has its ups and downs. We'll have to see how it pays off.

Yeah, maybe after a point I should've stopped actually played Red Dead and just watched the rest on Youtube. That probably would've helped me get through it a little sooner. I'll keep that idea in mind going forward.

So we share an interest in Obra Dinn and Disco Elysium. Baba is You definitely looks cool and would probably be in my top 20 most anticipated at least. I've played Cuphead and thought it was excellent, but I wasn't huge on Octopath even as someone who loves Square RPGs. It will be interesting to give Trails a whirl since it's such a board 8 darling.

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I got up to 15 stars today, and completed world 1 in the process. My approach was just to clear all the available levels in each Galaxy before going on to the next. I had to go back for the comet tokens a couple of times. There are a few moments that make me think "oh, this was in the first game," like the beetle bosses, but I'm definitely having fun with it so far. The first boss was pretty cool. I like how it gets away from the usual Nintendo formula where there are distinct phases where the boss can attack and where you can attack. You can actually win the fight really quickly if you're skilled enough, which I think is a good thing to aim for in game design.

Maybe it's just my desire to insist that the version I have more nostalgia for is better, but there are a couple things I kind of miss from the first game. I think I preferred the hub world to the level map and I definitely like Rosalina better as a character compared to Lubba. The structure seems a little less open in this game too. Still, those are really minor details, and the level design and sense of variety are definitely as strong in this game as they were in the original.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Started up the game, I have three stars so far. Would've liked to play for longer but I'm too sleepy once again. Definitely a strong resemblance to the first game including basically the exact same Piranha boss in the first level. Yoshi was one of the big selling points for this game, which harkens back to good old Mario World for me, but the difference is in that game Yoshi was a very incidental power up while entire levels are designed around him in this one. Nothing wrong with that approach. Having him weaponize the pointer as his tongue attack is a good idea and I like how he joins you for the animation when you get a star.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Portal is definitely going to be a tough act to follow, but luckily the next game is one I've been looking forward to for a while:

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Release date: May 23, 2010
Previous experience with Mario Galaxy: Played the first one a lot, the second a little
My Expectations for Galaxy 2: A top-tier platformer

A lot of people my age are really nostalgic for the Nintendo Gamecube, but I've never actually owned one personally. I had to buy Gamecube games later on and play them on a backwards-compatible Nintendo Wii, which was the first console I'd had at home in years (I would play PS2 at my dad's house when I visited.) For a good few years after that, I didn't have a job and had to rely on a really small amount of pocket change for new games. I played the first Mario Galaxy when it was almost new. I remember finding it really difficult at the time, and specifically I have a shameful memory of being frustrated to the point of tears trying to beat the no-hits challenge against the rock ghost boss. That did make it cathartic to go back and take down that challenge on my first try as a grown-up, though.

Galaxy is a really easy game, but I was young and getting used to the Wii-based controls takes time. Since it was my main childhood console, I'm now as comfortable with a wii remote in my hand as I am with certain other similarly-proportioned objects, and Galaxy was one of the few games that actually implemented Nintendo's hardware gimmick really well. On top of that, it was varied in the best way, fast-paced and consistently fun, and it had a mind-blowing soundtrack. I have an innate distrust of anyone who doesn't get chills listening to the music for Gusty Garden Galaxy. Super Mario World was one of the first games I ever played (Just after Elmo's ABCs) and I'll always have a soft spot for it, but the first Mario Galaxy is my favorite game in the franchise, gammon soiree or otherwise.

But I only bought Galaxy 2 recently. My wii is actually chipped to play burnt games, so there is save data for the game on my console and I remember playing part of it, but those burnt discs were pretty crappy and just straight up didn't work a lot of the time. When I was cleaning up in the process of moving to my own apartment, I ended up throwing them all away. I saw the "greatest hits" re-release at my local game store all the time, and then just a few months before I started this project I found a copy from the first printing, which is what I'll be using to play it now.

From what I understand, Galaxy 2 has the exact same engine as the first one, but most people who have played both seem to agree it's even better. I'm in for a treat if that's the case.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

I finished Portal. I thought that was absolutely awesome. By far my two favorite games from this project so far aren't even from the 2010s, lol. Maybe I should've done Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2010 Contest instead. Anyway, let's keep things moving right along:

Final Analysis: Portal

What I thought of Portal: Elegant, hilarious, and generally brilliant.
Would I play it again? Of course.
Did it deserve to make division finals (in GotD 2010?) Yes, it probably should've gone even further.

Perfection is a near-impossible thing to achieve in any artistic domain, but perhaps video games especially. I can think of a few movies that come close. Lawrence of Arabia, as long as it is, has no real flaws that come to my mind. 2001 is just about perfect as long as you like sci-fi. I would even say Akira is essentially perfect. Movies don't really have glitches and they don't have to mix storytelling and game mechanics, which can really be a tricky thing to manage. Let's look at my favorite game, Mother 3. Yes it makes me cry every time I re-play it, but the RPG mechanics were archaic even in 2006 with the inventory management especially being a drag, it's hurt by lack of choice in the character progression system and one of the major late-game story developments is conveyed through a monumentally long exposition dump. If someone told me that he thought it had beaten him over the head with its communist messaging I could understand where he was coming from. I could easily do this with most games I love. Shadow of the Colossus has frequent frame rate drops and texture pop-in, some of the Colossi suffer from blatant programming and physics errors, and it can be downright frustrating to play. Dark Souls has parts like the Bed of Chaos and the Tomb of the Giants that no one will stick up for. Majora's Mask had that well business, a lot of the sidequests like the shooting galleries and the Goron section on the moon are better off skipped, and constantly going into the menu to switch active items is an especially big flow-breaking problem because of all the masks.

Tetris tends to come up. It's about as complex as games can normally get without accruing a lot of minor flaws. That's why it's astonishing that Portal manages things like a linear story and a physics engine and is still really hard to actually criticize. I remember that it's still the only game the notoriously caustic Yahtzee Croshaw has failed to come up with anything to bash about, and honestly the best thing I can think of is that the Source Engine feels a little old and clunky. Now, that's definitely an effect of how short it is. I bet I'll have an easier time coming up with flaws in Portal 2 once I get to that. For now though, let me try and summarize what makes the first Portal so special:

First of all, a lot of the mechanics are just inherently fun. Launching yourself through portals, preserving your momentum, and desperately firing a new one just as your about to land doesn't really get old, and the level designers understood this well enough to make use of it. It can even be fun just to play around with portals independent of actual progress, like firing one above another and watching yourself fall forever or placing both portals on floors so you keep falling in and out. Taking down the turrets is a lot of fun. There's a certain satisfaction to dropping in behind them with a portal and snatching them off the ground (I was tempted to say "Nothing personnel, kid" to my computer screen) and although it doesn't matter from a results standpoint the game gives you a lot of different options to take them out. You can drop them through portals, you can grab them or push them over, and you can use portals to drop other things on them, including their own allies. You want the raw mechanics to have their own fun. On top of that, though, the actual pacing and the level-design are top notch. It does a good job slowly ramping things up and it continues introducing new concepts right up until the end.

Portal achieves something kind of rare in comedy writing, which is that it creates its own completely original logic and manages to make that charismatic and hilarious. You get caught up in it. That's why people felt connected to the Companion Cube even though its a generic object. It familiarizes you with its visual storytelling quickly enough to let you enjoy the small gags, like the cake icon on the last test chamber. The references to cake and the larger aperture science are clever and build upon one another. GLaDOS is a great central character. Her robotic misunderstanding of human behavior makes a good comedic device and so do her reactions when she starts losing control of the situation. Since it's a short game, it makes use of everything. The environment design, the enemies, and even the credits turn into narrative devices.

I think the final sequence was my favorite part. Although the game is tightly controlled and entirely linear, it evokes this feeling of breaking the rules. There's a huge contrast between the sterile test chambers and the noisy, industrial back alleys of the Enrichment Center, which are so broken down that you need the portal gun to get around. The game establishes glass walls as impassible obstacles and then lets you redirect rockets and shatter them, which is oddly satisfying. I also liked how you see weighted cubes moving through a long chute and then eventually break it to get one for a puzzle. The final battle against GLaDOS might be one of my favorite sequences in any game. It's clever, tense, and full of hilarious dialog.

It's been nearly a decade since I played Portal, but revisiting it made me sorry I hadn't done so earlier. If you've somehow gone all this time without giving it a shot, I highly recommend you do so.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy 2

"Well done, android. The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that android hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance." - GLaDOS

I just passed the part where you kill off the Companion Cube, which I think makes me further in Portal than I've ever been. As much as gaming pop culture did the whole Companion Cube joke to death, it really is a well-done gag. The big premise behind the first Portal is that this barely-sentient robot is trying to torment you with only a vague understanding of how humans work, so it tries to get you upset about killing the Companion Cube even though it's a non-sentient object and you spend about 5 minutes with it. There's a weird irony to that though because a lot of people legitimately did feel an attachment to the Companion Cube.

I found a couple of the ratman's little hideouts. I definitely appreciate how some storytelling is being done through small details in this game, between the environmental storytelling with him, lines like "The enrichment center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you" creating implications about the previous tests, and even the warning signs for the test showing a "heartbreak" warning in front of the incinerator.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Portal

Okay yes so in line with what I said I thought I would play until getting the Portal gun but that's really right at the beginning so I went until the point where you get the ability to fire orange portals, about 20 minutes in. I think I'm on test chamber 12. It's a good puzzle game so far. It's careful about gradually introducing new mechanics and escalating the complexity of the chambers. I had forgotten how smale-scale this franchise was at the start - just Chell running around a few sterile chambers while a highly robotic GLaDOS says vaguely-sinister things about the test center. I haven't really laughed out loud at the dialog yet but I have been chuckling along to most of it which is a good start, especially considering I've heard all these jokes before.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Portal

wallmasterz posted...

Great job finishing RDR. It was obviously the first real barrier you came to, so props for sticking with this project thus far. It continues to be a very enjoyable read. I look forward to new updates.

Thanks. Yeah, it does feel good to have the game out of the way. I'm actually really looking forward to giving Galaxy 2 a whirl, so hopefully I'll get the pace back up going forward.

Before that, though, let's revisit this idea of extra games. Thanks to Gall for helping me narrow down the list back in the ME2 times. I put a bit more thought into it and I've decided, admittedly somewhat arbitrarily, where to place the remaining games:

Portal 1 - Next Red Dead Redemption
God of War 1 - After Halo: Reach
God of War 2 - After Super Meat Boy
God of War 3 - After Dead Space 2
Nier - After Minecraft
Danganronpa 1 - Feb 11, 2014 (After DK Tropical Freeze)
Ground Zeroes - March 18 2014 (After Stick of Truth)
Trials in the Sky - July 29, 2014 (After Shovel Knight)
Dragon Age - Rainy Day Game

So yes, I've decided to play the GoW trilogy after all. It looks like they're easy to download on PS3. I actually have a copy of 3 lying around unused that's just been there for years. I've put them after every third game starting now, if only to get through them at a reasonable pace, and then Nier is right at the end of the 2011 games just to get a bit of a streak going where I increment that number in my signature instead of having it stagnate through extra games. The rest of the games are set for their original NA release dates. As for Dragon Age, I'll play that one if there ever comes a time when I've arrived at a game I don't own yet. Since it's long, it will give me a while to catch up on that.

All that out of the way, I can move on to the next game:

Portal
Release Date: October 10, 2007
I will be playing: PC Version, Steam
Previous Experience with Portal: Played up to the Companion Cube section
Expectations for Portal: Short and Sweet

Can you believe my inability to finish what I start even extended to the original Portal? It's been years since I touched it. The first time was on an absolutely ancient laptop that ran the game with unbearable framerate loss and frequent crashing. I struggled through for a while but eventually decided to pack it in and pick the game back up when I had a better system. That computer actually survived a while longer and could run Hearthstone quite smoothly, but now I'm two laptops further down the road and should be able to run a game from 2007 with no problems (I should probably get a real computer one of these days.)

I remember really liking it! I was in that age group that made "The cake is a lie" and "Still Alive" into memes. As obnoxious as that was, the game legitimately does have great writing - GLaDOS cleaned up for most of Best. Female. Villain. Quote. Ever. for a reason. I remember the puzzle gameplay being fun too. Placing a portal directly above another portal and accelerating to infinity is an iconic video game sidequest (it's even one of the fails in the aforementioned Henry Stickmin) and the general gameplay is elegant and to the point - there's no flower picking to be found in this game. I think I'll really like it. That being said, my Saturdays are usually busy and I haven't slept for around 28 hours, so I'll probably just hop on the game so I haven't missed another day of playing and then hit the hay.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 7/129
Currently Playing: Portal

Final Analysis: Red Dead Redemption

What I thought of RDR: Decent story, dull shooting and sandbox
Would I play it again? Probably not.
Did it deserve to lose round two? Yes.

"It's important to look at your game and say 'okay, fifty percent of this is riding a horse, twenty-five percent is storytelling and cutscenes, and twenty-five percent is shootouts. Is riding the horse really the best part of the game?'" - Videogamedunkey, Videogame Stucture Evolution

Here's a short list of the media I went through in the past month, while I played Red Dead Redemption:

- I re-read the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Sidell. Despite a slightly rough start with some amateur artwork and an overly stoic lead character, I thought this comic was really rewarding - it specializes in patient, long form storytelling. A lot of the story arcs take years worth of development to fully pay off, the characters undergo a lot of personal development, and the setting itself was fascinating. The stand-out character was Coyote, an unpredictable, constantly hilarious trickster with an enigmatic master plan that has yet to be revealed over a decade's worth of story progress.

- I read the first half of the Moomin series of books by Finnish author Tove Jansson, a set of absurd children's stories with the kind of philosophical undertones that make them engaging for older readers. So far these books maintain a really high standard of quality - Jansson is great both at coming up with funny scenarios for her characters and giving them a lot of depth and emotional range. The stand-out character in these books is Snufkin, the main character's laid-back, vagrant, park keeper-hating best friend.

- I played the newly-released Henry Stickmin Collection, which is a re-animated version of a set of comedy flash games about the misadventures of an bumbling stick figure thief (with an excellent exclusive bonus game.) I loved every second of it. There are a lot of really funny gags, the action escalates to hilarious extremes, and it's surprisingly great as a branching story. The stand-out character was Charles Calvin, a friendly, fun-loving, accident-prone helicopter pilot, to whom I became surprisingly emotionally attached considering he's a stick figure.

Aside from self-indulgently talking about things I like, the point of the above is that it was easy to find more compelling stories than Red Dead, and secondly that Red Dead needed a Snufkin, or a Charles - or a Mordin. Oh, there are some good characters. John Marston himself is probably the best one. But when Little My got hooked on a fishing pole in Moominsummer Madness and I turned the page to see by the illustration that Snufkin was coming into the story, I felt an instant rush of happiness and excitement. No one in Red Dead quite does that for me. A nice anchor character like that would've really helped motivate me to slog through the repetitive gunslinging and the endless horseback riding.

Well, I'm being overly mean to a certain extent. The shooting in RDR can be kind of fun. It's at it's best on horseback, when there's a unique challenge to both steering and aiming at fast-moving targets simultaneously. It might be the better shooter when compared to ME2, though that game has it badly beat when it comes to enemy variety. I appreciate how the gameplay and the theming work together, given that the constant random crimes and animal attacks help sell the feeling of living in a lawless frontier. Likewise, the section in Mexico does a good job simulating the feeling of being a stranger in a foreign country, understanding only snippets of the language, getting called offensive names, and dealing with the distrust of everyone around you. In general, the music, atmosphere, and setting are really detailed and well done, and although I grew tired of riding everywhere there it can sometimes be relaxing just to watch the scenery go by. The moment at the very end where you get one use of deadeye before the U.S. Army kills you off is a nice touch. We will actually be revisiting this kind of gameplay story mixing to convey futility in another game from 2010!

There are some persistent problems with Rockstar's game design. I hate having to mash the X button to sprint or keep up my horse's speed. There isn't much incentive to explore the larger world - if you come to a ranch, for example, you can't really interact with the farm-hands or loot the place or anything like that, which I thought did enough to make poking around the random corners of Skyrim fun. You end up staring at the mini-map for like 90% of the game - you use it for orienteering, spotting enemies, finding plants to gather, and just about anything else you can think of. A health meter would be really appreciated. The game's visuals are kind of indistinct to begin with and I often felt the need to squint to make out enemies, an issue that becomes all the worse when I got hit and the screen filled up with red fog. Crouching behind cover to wait for your health to regenerate is as much of a bore as ever. Dying out in the wilderness bites, probably more than it should in a video game, since you have to go miles back to your bed. Activities like gathering plants and playing Poker with AI are mind-numbing. I could go on.

Earlier in this thread I said that the story isn't complex so much as it is full of despicable characters. I admit that's an oversimplification. It has some complexity. John's family wanting to love him but feeling guarded because he's hurt them before is one example. There's some in characters like Bonnie, Dutch, and Agent Ross. John's own quest for redemption contains a little bit of it, since he's fighting the old outlaw instincts. Still, I do think Rockstar goes too far with making their characters evil or pathetic. I was mostly annoyed by characters like Seth, Dickens, or Reyes - and not in a way that serves the story! This was definitely a major factor in why I didn't connect with the game emotionally in the way I would've liked.

I think Red Dead Redemption exposed an unfortunate side to this project. I feel like I've been doing pretty well at choosing my own entertainment these days, but all the time I've had this big horse-shaped obligation looming over me. I'm probably being harsher on the game than it really deserves because of that. I would have stopped playing it if I had started it for any reason besides this project. Maybe I would've gone back to it later, or maybe not, but I probably would've looked back on it more fondly either way.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

My overall thoughts will be up later in the day, but before that, I want to try my hand at an impartial narrative analysis of RDR, so here goes:

It's easy to romanticize things with a little distance. Pirates are a good example of what I mean. Kids dress up as them for Halloween, cutesy versions of them show up in puppet shows, and they're portrayed as suave, charming characters like Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. People who lived in the Golden Age of Piracy might find that a little baffling, because the real pirates were illiterate, rapacious, and disease-ridden to a man.

Red Dead Redemption is about that concept. It consciously depicts the old west as a land of violence and ignominy and cowboys as immoral, greedy, and corrupt. At the same time, its characters have already internalized that romantic vision of the frontier, and they chase it, only to find ruin and usually death. The stranger missions around Sam Odessa and Jimmy Saint reinforce this theme, but it might be most visible with Jack Marston, whose western novels end up foreshadowing his own quest for revenge.

The title is misleading to a small extent, in that it's not about redemption so much as someone trying to redeem himself when it's ultimately futile. There's the government's obviously-hollow pardon that even John doesn't see any value in, but he's also trying to make up for his past just by living a decent life, and toward the ending he's trying to make up for lost time with his family. He talks a lot about escaping his old life and putting it behind him. But the idea is that he can't escape. It always comes back to find him in one way or another. In fact, it even entangles his son. We don't see what Jack Marston does as he grows up, but it doesn't seem likely that he became a writer. Agent Ross is the same way - he's supposed to be retired, but that old life catches up to him.

In typical Rockstar fashion, the writers aren't really impressed with anyone, so although the old west is a lawless hellhole, which even the mechanics reinforce since you'll get harrassed by bandits just minding your own business on the road, the "civilizing" eastern city-dwellers are all clueless racists with an unearned sense of superiority. The U.S. government is arguably the real villain, more so than Bill Williamson or Dutch. John Marston and Nastas have a certain degree of comraderie because they are both left out and talked down to by the federal agents, which is why they can speak plainly and comfortably to one another.

If it were only the west that was shown to be so horrible, you could hope that the cycle of revenge would end with Jack Marston, once the old gunslinger way of life died off. I guess ultimately RDR doesn't offer a solution as easy as all that - it just shows you some of the evil that men do, and a much lesser amount of the good, and leaves you to make of that what you will.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Well, it may have taken me a month, but I finally completed Red Dead Redemption!

The game's final chapter actually bears a bit of a resemblance to the first chapter of Mother 3: a tough rancher cowboy spends some time with the family, until his son runs away to chase a dangerous wild animal and he has to pursue. One parent dies, and the cowboy's son grows up with a broken family. It was a bold artistic choice on Rockstar's part to make a bear the final boss.

So after a bit of a reprisal of all the old ranch hand mechanics, the boys at the U.S. army decide to tie up the last loose end from Dutch's old gang and send a few hundred guys to take down John Marston. He manages to get his wife and son free at least, but after a dramatic last stand he gets filled with bullet holes and left to die. The game lets you explore the sandbox as a grown-up Jack Marston afterward, but the real purpose of that is to allow a final "stranger mission:" Remember My Family, where Jack hunts down Agent Ross and kills him in a duel as revenge. It's only once you've completed that mission that the credits roll.

Final Thoughts on Red Dead Redemption Coming Tomorrow.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

That's true. I think the most prominent character that the writers evidently want the player to like is probably Bonnie. For me, they more or less succeeded with her, which is part of the reason why I like the early sections a little better I would say.

As usual, I'm a bit behind the pace that I set out for myself, and only managed to do a few of the Marson Ranch missions tonight. The cow herding mechanics from the earlygame came back, with this section essentially being a day in the life of John Marston as he's trying to rebuild his ranch, which mostly fell apart in his absence under the guidance of a drunk man referred to as Uncle. John is in contact with the Macfarlane's ranch, buying cattle from them and then bringing them some grain, so it's nice to see those characters again. Most of the missions essentially just give the player something to do while Marston has long conversations with his family members. Unsurprisingly, his relationships with them are a little strained considering he's been away for so long. There's one scene where he tries to tenderly stroke his wife's face before leaving on some task and she pushes him away. Still, there's a decently-written sense of companionship between the pair of them. Overall, I like this part of the game so far.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Gall posted...

I think the main reason I didn't like the Mexico arc is how emotionally disconnected it is. The conflict feels pointless since both sides are portrayed so negatively, and even Marston himself seems to just want to get the whole thing over with. In the Fort Mercer arc you were building up a posse and witnessing the effect Williamson's gang had on the people, but here Javier Escuela just shows up at the end and immediately dies. And did I miss something, or did Landon disappear from the plot after the first few missions? I would've liked more of him.

On a more positive note, I can definitely vouch for Rayman Legends and Stanley Parable. I'll post my own excitement list later.

Yeah, I agree with that, and I think to a lesser extent it's a problem that I have with the entire game. I would say it doesn't have a complex story so much as one where almost everyone is just awful, which makes it a little hard for me to feel that sense of investment. Now that you mention it, yes, Landon only has a few missions right at the start and doesn't appear in any of the later ones, which I do think it a little odd. The encounters with Escuela and Williamson do feel pretty anti-climactic.

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Alright, a little late, but let's get to this.

There are a few more stranger missions to round up near the end of the game: in The Prohibitionist, you choose between assassinating a guy who keeps lobbying for the banning of alcohol or warning him that people want him dead. I picked the latter, but the game actually penalizes that choice somewhat heavily by increasing all prices throughout the West Elizabeth region if you take it. At least it's not such a big deal because the economy in this game isn't very relevant.

American Lobbyist is a really short one where you blackmail a politician to help another get re-elected. I guess it just serves to show some of the corruption in the eastern "civilized" parts of the country.

The Wronged Woman involves a pregnant woman who claims to have worked at the estate of a wealthy family, leading Marston to confront the man of that household, kill him in a duel, and rob his corpse for money for her. It turns out the woman actually invented the whole thing and just tricked John to make a quick buck.

In contrast to his former gang buddies Dutch does have a decent amount of presence in the story and I found the encounters with him over all more interesting. Two of the important facets of it are that John still feels a sense of loyalty toward Dutch and that he ultimately can't bring himself to kill him - instead, Dutch ends up jumping off a cliff when he's cornered. Either way, though, Marston is now free to go back home to his wife. I used today as a kind of break day but I'm hoping to finish the game tomorrow, though I may not have time for the Epilogue.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Dutch died. I have to bounce. Real update tomorrow afternoon.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

After a shorter session on RDR I finished up the long-running I Know You mission, which involves an odd man who claims to know John Marston giving him tasks that test his morality. In the end, he's revealed to be some kind of supernatural figure - maybe a ghost, but more likely some kind of immortal judge. I also finished off Lights, Camera, Action, where John helps out a man who is trying to found a film company, only to find out later on that he quickly went bankrupt. It doesn't break his spirit, though.

I had enough time to get introduced to the two quest-giving NPCs for this portion of the game. The first is Agent Ross, one of the government figures who is coercing Marston into hunting down his old pals. He's just a total dick. He mostly goes on about how much of an idiot John is. He also shows a patronizing attitude toward Nastas, an Indigenous man who worked as an informant - his method of treating these two men is fundamentally similar.

The other quest-giving character is Harold MacDougal. Now this guy I like. He's definitely got some charisma going for him and it's fun to have a quirky scientist type in the mix. One of the first things he says to Marston is "would you like to partake of a syringe of cocaine?" which got a laugh out of me.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

With all the grousing I've been doing about Red Dead Redemption, I feel like this thread has become a little more negative than I want it to be. To try and rectify this situation a little, I've decided to do a little bonus feature: the top ten games I'm most excited to play for this project. I'm omitting any games that I've already played.

10. Nier: Automata

I've heard the combat system isn't as good as Bayonetta's, but with all the hype around this game's story I just have to find out what it's like. I'm also curious about the 3-playthrough structure, even if I'm a little skeptical that it was needed.

9. Bloodborne

I wanted to play this game the day it came out, but I didn't have the cash to buy a PS4 back then. Dark Souls is one of my all-time favorite games, so a similar combat system and Lovecraftian themes complimenting the excellent storytelling make me almost certain I'll love this one.

8. Rayman Legends

This basically looks like more of Rayman Origins, which I thought was fast-paced, really well presented, and just generally excellent.

7. Shovel Knight

I could've replaced this with Hollow Knight or Celeste, but I decided to go with Shovel Knight in the end. I love these kinds of indie platformers and this one looks really well made and a lot of fun.

6. The Stanley Parable

Everyone I know who has played this says the writing is fantastic and it makes great use of the "walking simulator" format, so it sounds right up my alley. I've been meaning to play it for ages.

5. Disco Elysium

The first two Fallout games were the last games I played before starting this project, and I absolutely loved them. I'm looking forward to revisiting the old isometric RPG genre, and I'm also really interested in this game's unique spin on the concept, with stats mostly being related to abstract concepts and mental stablity.

4. Night in the Woods

I actually know almost nothing about this game, but the cute art style and emphasis on characters and dialog make it seem like it's for me. I feel like this will be one of those games that I just find deeply compelling for reasons I can't fully articulate, similar to Owlboy.

3. Super Mario Odyssey

Odyssey looks absolutely phenomenal. It and BotW were the games that pushed me to get a Switch, because they both seemed like jaw-dropping must-play games. Life came up before I could get around to it.

2. Portal 2

Okay, I'm cheating a little, because I have played part of Portal 2 - enough to know how great the writing is. This game is more or less legendary by now, and even as someone who loved every minute of Persona 5 I was rooting for Portal to win its division.

1. Return of the Obra Dinn

I don't know for sure if I'll enjoy Return of the Obra Dinn as much as something like Portal 2 or Odyssey, but its unique concept makes it the game I'm most interested in playing. I have played this developer's previous game, Papers Please, and thought it was awesome.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

John Marston has completed his adventures in Mexico. One more stranger mission got wrapped up in the process: Eva in Peril, which is the story of a prostitute John Marston can help by paying off her pimp. She says she's about to go to a nunnery, but runs off instead and ends up getting murdered at the hands of the same man, whom John kills in a duel. I also triggered the start of Dedalus and Son, but since that one requires gathering 10 red sage I've already made up my mind not to complete it.

De Santa and Coronel Allende made the mistake of trying to betray John. Abraham Reyes actually has to save him resulting in a mission where all your weapons have been stolen and you have to get them back before shooting your way out of the place. It's not really the same as the sections of Chrono Trigger or especially Metal Gear Solid 2 that use that concept, where you're really vulnerable for an extended period of time. You kind of just sprint across a small area and get all your guns out of a chest.

The resistance decide to make use of the fact that they have a video game protagonist on their side and have John do things like single-handedly take over a train swarming with guards or use deadeye to shoot a guy manning a gatling gun. After a couple missions with them, he tracks down Javier Escuela, who talks about the old days for a bit before running off. I guess you can choose between capturing him alive and killing him, but I chose to put him down.

While storming the Colonel's villa, our quest giver Lusia dies trying to save Reyes, who still doesn't even remember her. In any case, both the Colonel and Bill Williamson wind up dead in the assault, and Marston leaves the rebellion to try and conquer the rest of Mexico on their own.

Allende and Reyes basically parallel one another, especially in that both of them are lecherous bastards. Reyes also shows a distinct elitist side, refusing to even entertain the idea of marrying a peasant like Luisa. It's hard to imagine the new leader being a Hell of a lot better than the old one, which I think is deliberate on the part of the writers.

I keep trying to catch a white horse when I see one. The last one I encountered was running along a cliffside and fell off when I tried to lasso it. This time, I successfully caught one, and then as I was riding back into town I got a random encounter where a woman asked me to take her back into Armadillo. I decided to accept, and when I completed that mission the game de-spawned my white horse and gave me back the one I had previously hitched. Oh well. I'm at McFarlane's ranch now, and next time I play I'll try to complete the entire section based around tracking down Dutch.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Alright, I can cross two more stranger missions off the list: Poppycock turned out to be about opium smuggling. You can either keep the $1000 that the deal was worth or give it back to the British guy who hired you for a bit of honor and fame. It's probably better to keep the cash, but I ended up returning it. I should still have all the money I need from my Liar's Dice winnings.

Funny Man is about a guy who has headed out to the wild west to try and find inspiration, apparently as a joke writer for a newspaper. You keep finding him tied up in the middle of bandit strongholds, until eventually he realizes he's not cut out for the frontier life and goes back to the city. This one does have a complete character arc, and it's nice that it doesn't end with John Marston finding the guy's corpse in one stronghold, which would've been in line with most of this game's storytelling, but I guess the whole narrative here just feels a little underwhelming. It's also one of the strangers that takes the most work, since clearing out the strongholds is a bit of a pain.

Along with those, I did de Santa's next mission, which turned out to be a turret level with a train-mounted gatling gun this time. There's still a ways to go on the Mexican session, but I'm past its halfway point and then some.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

I actually made some significant progress today, finishing up all of Landon's missions as well as Luisa's, or at least all of those I can do without finishing up more of De Santa's. This meant meeting Abrahim Reyes, the leader of the local revolution. As soon as the game started establishing how devoted Luisa was to him I guessed it would turn out that he doesn't care about her, and my expectations were confirmed almost immediately upon meeting him.

For the sake of finishing the "Poppycock" stranger mission, I had to do a little sidequest where you help the army take out a rebel stronghold. I honestly wanted to just skip it and go straight for the treasure chest objective, but I got shot when I tried. It was kind of annoying because every time I died I had to trek back to the area of the map it takes place in, but I persevered. I doubt the story element of the stranger mission will be worth it, really.

I finished off with de Santa's mission where you have to retake a fort from the rebels. I will say that I kind of like how Marston is playing both sides of this whole dispute to try and find his outlaws. It's a good idea to use a neutral observer main character to show the conflict to the player. I do find myself becoming more and more tired of actually playing this game though, so I'm looking forward to being done with it. With any luck, I'll be free most of the weekend and I'll make a run at finishing it.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

I played one of Landon's missions today, which involved rescuing a hostage. I've realized that the majority of the difficulty in this game comes from either having to shoot fast-moving horseback targets or just trying to ride and aim at once, so as a cover based foot mission it made a good chance to fill my deadeye meter back up. After a long ride back into town following the mission it was 9:40 and I didn't want to risk starting another one and having to leave for the overtime shift I have tonight without finishing it.

I think I actually like the Mexico section a little better than the later parts of the New Austin section so far, if only because Landon and de Santa are more interesting to me than someone like Seth or Irish, so the writing around them feels a little more satisfying.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Gall posted...

It's too bad that the gameplay isn't as engaging. The bullet time mechanic looks pretty fun but I guess it's not.

When it comes to the bullet time, I think it doesn't really change the gameplay much and mostly functions as a crutch for less skilled players, so as you can imagine I use it a lot. Do you know what the title of the last stranger mission is? Is it The Wronged Woman?

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Today I spent some time riding around Nuevo Paraiso and met the two major characters John will be working with in Mexico: Vincent de Santa, a captain in the Mexican army, and Landon Ricketts, an old American gunslinger. They both talk a lot about their different approaches to sort of cleaning up the area, which is in chaos due to bandits and revolutionaries. Santa is more in favor of ruling with an iron fist while Landon is a bet smaller scale in his approach and seems to hang around a single town helping them deal with highwaymen. He teaches John Marston some tricks with a gun, which changes the bullet time mechanics so you have to manually place shots with R1 instead of them automatically triggering whenever the cursor is on a target, which actually seems like a distinct downgrade to me but I guess I'll see. Vincent's first mission is a train level that I found kind of tough and had to try a good few times. Once again, I probably shouldn't be playing this on hardcore, because I'm starting to find some missions kind of frustrating.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

A little ashamed I missed three days in a row. Like I said, it's been a bit of a rough couple weeks for me.

I finished the stranger mission California today, and made progress on some of the others. California is the story of a man called Sam Odessa who is trying to make his way west, but after being too proud to accept help from John, eventually goes insane and dies out in the desert. He leaves a letter to his family lamenting how he has thrown his life away in search of a vain pursuit, which is something of a theme of the game's storytelling. I think I would've liked his arc better if it were actually possible to help him in some way, speaking personally. Maybe that's just a testament to what I find satisfying in video games though.

I also finally made some story progress. Between skipping the cutscenes and knowing my way around the combat arena I caught up to where I was in Irish's mission super fast. It was the last one I needed to do before the big assault on Ft. Mercer, which is basically a turret level, almost akin to the maps at the end of some Left 4 Dead campaigns where you mow down loads of mindless zombies with a machine gun. Williamson himself escaped to Mexico, though, and John Marston is now pursuing him there. He crossed the border by way of a long river, and an uncanny number of enraged locals attacked his raft for harboring Irish (or "the rat" as he is apparently known in Spanish.) That was one of the harder missions so far because, like the horseback shooting sections, you can't really retreat to cover and regain health. I had to rely a lot on the bullet time to get through.

So yes, I have to admit this is the first game of the project I've grown tired of partway through, and I would probably drop it if I wasn't playing it for this topic. I think it's partially because I've been reading some comics lately - especially Gunnerkrigg Court, which reminded me a little of the problems with RDR's method of storytelling. I just don't think the narrative gains that much by being broken up by these long shootouts and riding sequences. I also get a little tired of following an NPC at the start of every mission, especially when they're moving at a slow walking pace. Dying in this game can be really demoralizing, especially outside of missions, where it can mean having to ride across a huge section of the map to get back to where you were. This has been especially bothersome when heading into the very enemy-dense bandit strongholds for the sake of the "Funny Man" stranger quest.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

This has been one of those weeks where I have trouble getting out of bed. I booted up Red Dead for a little while, but the only productive thing I did was play the Liar's Dice minigame for a stranger mission. I found it pretty boring. It's a bluffing game against pretty simple AI. Once the number of dice gets lower you can usually just spam the "dead on" button, since the AI will only bid the type of dice it has. The game temporarily increases the cost and winnings for the minigame with this mission, so you can exploit that to make a lot of money. I won twice and turned my ~$200 into $1,000, which is probably all I'll need for the rest of the game.

I also started Irish's next mission, but I was cutting it too close in terms of time, which made me rush, lose a couple times, and wind up having to turn the game off partway through. I'll have to restart it next time I play.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Barely had time to play today.

Red Sage grow out in the Rio Bravo region of the game's map, which is also known as Cougar Country. The furry bastards are always aggressive and can one shot your horse - a fact I learned the hard way. The experience definitely taught me a new hatred for the wildlife in this game, and I've opened fire on all the wolves I've seen since. Fortunately, there was a man and a woman sitting on horseback near a pond, so I snatched the guy's mount and saved myself a very long, slow trip back to town. I didn't even get a bounty for it.

With three desert sage, three red sage, and three wild feverfew, you can complete the stranger mission Flowers for a Lady, where an old guy asks you to gather a bouquet for his wife. I actually did remember this one from last time I played - his wife turns out to be a corpse. Typical.

By the time that was done I was too close to work to be able to start another mission, but I did have time to help a random stranger whose horse had been stolen near Thieves' Landing. The thief backed himself onto a narrow dock, which made him easy to lasso off the horse, but once I did that the horse jumped into the water and died. It must have really not wanted to go back to that owner.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Alright, after a weekend off I got back in the saddle with RDR and crossed off a few of Seth's and Irish's missions. I'm knocking on the door of the Ft. Mercer assault now, but it won't be the first thing I do when I play tomorrow. I did Seth's mission where you finally track down the treasure he's been looking for all this time, which predictably turns out to be something with very little value (a glass eye, in this case.) With Irish, I did the mission where you pick up a gatling gun. Both scenarios involve a whole lot of shooting. I find the cover mechanics less restrictive in this game than in Mass Effect, at least. I usually waddle around outside of cover just shooting people when they pop up in this one. The Irish mission turns into a mine cart level where you're pushing the cart and shooting at the same time, but in practice that's kind of just an easier version of the horseback shoot-outs.

I'm starting to feel the same shooting fatigue I experienced with ME2. This game's engine actually can do a lot of things that aren't shooting, but the missions still resort to it most of the time. It feels a little odd because something like a treasure hunt doesn't really need killing to spice it up in my opinion. I also think there's a bit of a weakness in the writing in that killing a bunch of minors to suit John's ends undermines the "redemption" aspect of the story a little.

I didn't finish any stranger missions, but I just need one more red sage to knock off one of them, so I'll be searching high and low for that tomorrow.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Along with a lot of riding back and forth between towns, I've nearly completed the first major "arc" of the game. I can only take on missions from a couple of Dickens' cohorts at this point. The most important mission I did today was probably the one where Mrs. Macfarlane (I always want to call her Beth Macfarlane, even though it's Bonnie,) gets captured by some gang members in retaliation for us capturing one of their pals on a mission with the Marshall. There's a part where they hang her from a gallows and you have to shoot through a bunch of guys to rescue her in time, which is a good setpiece. It didn't cause the kind of emotional reaction in me that it might have been aiming for though.

One thing I'm noticing a little bit is that things tend to escalate a lot for the sake of the game mechanics. What I mean is especially visible in one mission with Dickens where he tries to sell some phony elixir and gets caught, which leads to a huge shootout on horseback with a small army of enraged townsfolk. The severity of the reaction feels more like it was written because it's a shooting game rather than because it makes sense in context.

Today I finished the stranger missions Water and Honesty, Let No Man Put Asunder, and Who Are You to Judge? The first is a surprisingly straightforward one where you flip a property for a small profit, the second is a kind of predictable story where an old woman is crying over her missing fiance and it turns out that he's been dead for years and she's delusional, and the third one involves finding a man's missing lover - which turns out to be a horse.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

ZenOfThunder posted...

i fell behind on this topic and I am ashamed, need to dive right back in, happy to see you guys are still at it

Well, to be honest, I don't expect anyone to follow this topic religiously. That would be a pretty big undertaking in and of itself. It has a good format for you to come in and out when it works for you.

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Bad news: you can't load from a mid-mission checkpoint in this game. No surprise, really. I had to restart the Marshall's mission, but I got through the part that gave me trouble last time on the first attempt today. Marston meets his old buddy Bill on that mission, but they only exchange a few words before the latter sics some cronies on John.

I also did Bonnie's mission where you break in horses, which I had been dreading because I had a memory of briefly playing this game a few years back on that exact mission and being totally unable to do it. This time around, though, I thought it was really easy. Last time I was probably tilting the analogue stick in the same direction John was facing, rather than the opposite to balance him. Luckily, my brief stint with Death Stranding trained me to come back to this. I took the time to do her mission where you guide a herd of cows through a storm too, which was probably the most stressful part of the game so far.

I completed two stranger missions: American Appetites and Jenny's Faith. The former is about some cannibals killing people in the hills on the north end of the map. It's kind of repetitive: you hear someone talking about a missing family member, ride out to the hills, and find a blood spot. On the third time, you find the cannibal instead. Weirdly, the game gives you the choice between saving a would-be victim and letting the cannibal eat him. Don't really see why anyone would pick the latter. Jenny is one of the characters from the train in the intro movie and her story is kind of an ironic one about her being such a religious fanatic that she refuses help from John even though she's dying in the desert. It kind of brings to mind that old joke about the guy in the flood who refuses to get on a boat because he thinks God will save him, drowns, and gets upset when he arrives in Heaven, and then God tells him He sent the damn boat. I can't say I found either little sub-plot too interesting or satisfying, really.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

I had to deal with a lot of chores around the house today, so I didn't get to play quite as long as last night. I met Nigel West Dickens and died about 6 times on his first mission trying to aim and ride at the same time, before realizing the game pretty much steers for you if you're aiming. I think Mass Effect lured me into a false sense of security when it comes to my shooter skills, because I picked Hardcore mode in this game and the results so far have been pretty embarrassing. For lack of time, I had to stop partway through one of the Marshal's missions, just after a point where you have to shoot a man using a hostage as a human shield and get an instant game over if you hit the hostage, which gave me a lot of trouble. I hope you can load from a mission checkpoint, because I'd rather not restart that one. I'll find out tomorrow.

Also finally made it to the mission where you heard cows, which was actually the most interesting and important mission of the session, since the dialog gets into Marston's backstory and motives. To summarize, he was an orphan who spent a lot of his youth with a gang, settled down with a wife and son, and has now been roped in by the government to hunt down one of his old buddies, which was the guy who shot him at Fort Mercer. Aside from the fact that no one liked the first Red Dead, that's where the "Redemption" part of the title comes from, and it's in service to this theme that Marston is generally a better person than most GTA protagonists, and the game is pretty heavy-handed about discouraging law-breaking, to the point of locking you out of half the content if you're a wanted man.

I don't think I'll spend much more time terrorizing the wildlife or gathering flowers, because it's kind of boring and I don't see much point.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

BetrayedTangy posted...

I really liked your write up on HeartGold it kind of sums up my thoughts pretty well too, especially on Pokemon as a whole. However I feel like the Johto games are some of the weakest. Over this past year and a half I played a ton of Pokemon and honestly the problems you mentioned feel at their worst in Johto.

Half the Gym Leaders have some pretty frustrating tactics, mix that some really poor level scaling and it winds up being more frustrating than challenging. I don't mind the idea of a challenging Pokemon game, but I feel like it's important to give tools for either grinding or strategy. Which I found to be severly lacking.

Now I may be in the minority with this opinion, but I'm not a fan of the addition of Kanto. I like seeing how it changed since Gen 1, plus the fight against Red is dope, but I think it hurts Johto, as well as the game's legacy as a whole. When it's being discussed Kanto is usually the main thing that's brought up and I feel like it wouldn't be as well remembered without it.

Regardless of my negativity though, Pokemon is still Pokemon and at its core I'll always love building a team and finding new favorite Pokemon. I would just rather play the better games.

Also I'm really hyped for Red Dead, it'll be my first time playing, even though I already know the ending as well

Yeah, I think you may be right about the level scaling issues and annoying strategies being more prominent in the Johto games than most other generations of Pokemon. I don't think I would want Kanto removed, but I can see how some of the design around it was questionable. Having two regions in one game is definitely one of its main distinguishing characteristics, and I agree it gets brought up more than anything else when people talk about this one, but maybe that just shows how repetitive the series is, to the point where it's hard to come up with much to talk about for any individual installment besides such big/obvious things.

Gall posted...

Because Red Dead 1 still isn't on PC, I will be watching a video of all the cutscenes:

Checking out the video, I'm glad it includes all the parts where John is walking around with an NPC in gameplay and they're talking, because one thing I'm noticing so far is how much of the storytelling is done outside of proper cutscenes.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Surprised Sawyer wasn't up there, he seemed to be crucial a lot of times.

It was an enjoyable run. Took a lot of time but such it is. Really appreciate how your write-ups were done.

I didn't include Sawyer because he was already ranked on the Johto list, though thinking back that was a little weird. He was definitely still my win button early on in Kanto. If I did an joined ranking of all the Pokemon I used in both regions, he would probably be first.

Thanks for the compliments on the write-ups for Pokemon. It was probably the most exhausting game to write about because of the format I took, so I like to think it was worth it.

---

I played a couple hours of RDR today. It opens up with an intro where John Marston comes to town on a train, rides out to meet his old friend at a place called Fort Mercer, and promptly gets shot dead. The people in a small frontier community rescue him and he does some simple tasks for them in return, which double as the tutorial missions. This opening feels hauntingly similar to another game I'll be playing for the 2010 section of this project!

So far, main quest-giving NPCs in this game are Miss Mcfarlane, who's missions are all menial ranch-hand jobs like patrolling her ranch for Coyotes or driving her around, and a Marshal who has us shoot guys. I've done a couple missions for each of them, and started up a few stranger missions and bounties, which are the game's major sidequests. I've also spent a worrying amount of time terrorizing the local wildlife. So far the controls are definitely awkward, but one thing I definitely appreciate is how well-realized the setting is. Although I wouldn't really know, it seems like a good amount of effort and research went into that aspect of the game. Writing seems solid. I'm surprised by how amiable Marston is, because I feel like the protagonists in Rockstar games are usually pretty aloof.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Alright, at long last, it's time to move onto the next game!

Red Dead Redemption
Release Date: May 18, 2010
I will be playing on: PS3, GOTY Edition
Previous Experience with RDR: Went to Mexico
What I expect from RDR: A pretty sandbox and a lot of transit.

"Eyy Partner! It's me, John 'Demption from the game Red Dead Redemption!" - Videogamedunkey, "Red Dead 2 (free version)"

I must have been fifteen years old the last time I really played Red Dead Redemption. I had to buy a copy for this project, because back then I played my brother's copy on his XBOX - this was also the reason why I didn't finish the game, if I remember right. My chances to play it were kind of limited since it wasn't my own copy. I remember really liking what I did play of it. That was back when I was new to story-heavy games and wanted anything I could get my hands on that was full of cutscenes and dialog. I remember finding the simple act of riding around the desert absorbing because it was a visually impressive setting, and I liked how a lot of the side-quests had little self-contained stories.

People don't have good memories, and I'm clearly no exception, because a decade later I can remember those qualities but next to nothing of the specific storylines, snippets of dialog, or any particular pretty locations. I remember how it ends, since that was a talked-about moment at the time, I remember the controls being kind of crappy, and I remember that you spend the first few hours of the game wrangling cows, so I have that to look forward to. I can also recall spending a lot of time riding beside on NPC along the road just listening to them talk with old John 'Demption. I liked that as a teen, but I don't think I can say it's terribly good game design. I think I'll still like it, but I wonder if it won't show its age a little.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Final Analysis: Pokmon Heartgold Version

What I thought of Pokmon Heartgold: Sometimes relaxing, sometimes frustrating
Would I play it again? Sure.
Did it deserve to make division finals? No.

I've played my fair share of Pokmon games in my day, but Heartgold was the first time I really spent much time with the franchise in the last few years. Thinking back, the last full playthrough of any Pokmon game I did might have been in Mystery Dungeon: Red around two years back. Returning after some time away can change your perspective a bit, and I think the biggest thing I gleaned this time around was as follows: "Pokmon has way too much bloody RNG."

Playing one of these games in single-player can be a kind of zen experience. It uses very little brain-power. You mostly just run around KOing everything in sight with the same one or two moves, usually in one hit. Most trainers will have vastly under-leveled Pokmon compared to the player's, even if you use a full team. That might be when the game is at its best. That kind of relaxing quality definitely goes away when you get hit with confusion and have to watch helplessly as your Pokmon hurts itself three times in a row, or when Koga's Muk gets a minimize off and then you miss, and things fall apart from there as it slowly gains back the damage your rare hits do with its black sludge. I happened to watch a little bit of Pokmon speedrunning while I played, and it looks like a truly masochistic pursuit: a run of several hours can be ruined by a poorly timed critical or status element.

Catching legendary Pokmon sucks. You do everything you can to weaken them, and then you send out a Pokmon that walls them and mindlessly chuck Ultra Balls until one finally catches, which can take a shocking amount of time. I ended my own run with Pokmon like Entei and Lugia uncaptured because I was just sick of it. I can understand that the chance needs to be low so that legendary encounters don't feel anti-climactic when you catch them on the first try, so here's my proposal for a fix: with each Pokball you throw, the chance that the next one will capture is slightly increased.

The individual games in this series can feel a little interchangeable, but one thing I do appreciate about Gold/Silver in particular is how it follows on from the first game. I think ideas like Blue succeeding Giovanni as a Gym Leader, Cinnabar Island's destruction in a volcanic eruption, and Red as a super-boss were pretty cool. I think I would like this series better if it did things like that more often. The amount of content in these games is also nothing to sniff at: as was discussed in this thread, the original games were pushing up against what could fit on the Game Boy's cartridges.

Pokmon was definitely a speed bump for this project. I think it was the first time there were days when I didn't play at all, and the overall amount of time it took me to finish was excessively long. Although grinding for Red was a drag, I don't really blame the game for that. I think it just came during a time when I was feeling a little depressed and having trouble with motivation. Still, when I look back on the games of this project, I'll be surprised if it makes the top half.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

Alright, let's get this show on the road. I'll be using the same format as last time for this round of rankings:

1. Messiah (Suicune)

Not too surprising for a legendary. Suicune was definitely essential for most of my late-game strategies. He was the best for grinding on Mt. Silver, an important part of my strategy for the second Pokmon League, and probably my most important Pokmon against Red.

2. Tybalt (Tyranitar)

A lot of the new Pokmon were implemented oddly in Gold/Silver, but Larvitar got the worst of it. In Red, you could get a Dratini when you first arrived in Celadon, which would give it a long time to level up to Dragonite at the end of the game. In Gold, they threw that kind of high scaling Pokmon in the very last area of a 40 hour RPG at a super low level. All you can really do with Tyranitar in the originals is fight Red, but for what it's worth, he was really impressive once he evolved, and a crucial part of my Elite Four and Red strategies.

3. Alyosha (Espeon)

I think I like Espeon better than Umbreon for single-player. Think of him as a slightly weaker Alakazam. He's fast and hits hard with psychic, but gets knocked over by a stiff breeze. Most of the time that was good enough. He helped a lot against Bruno and took down Red's Venusaur.

4. Cerberus (Houndoom)

Pretty good offensive Pokmon. Dark Pulse is a TM and he learns Flamethrower by level-up, so I was pleased with his movepool. His stats might be a little more balanced than I'd like, since physical attack is high but I ended up using him as a strict special attacker. Availablity hurt his cause a bit, because he was still catching up when I fought Sabrina and Erika.

5. Thor (Ampharos)

I really wasn't planning on using an Ampharos, but poor planning on my end left me without a status user when trying to catch some legendaries, so I added him. He did help a bit in the last two battles.

6. Brunnhilde (Snorlax)

Snorlax is kind of cool, so I thought about trying it out, but this one was a huge choke artist. If I ever play Diamond again, I think I'll train a Munchlax. About the most useful thing this guy did was use rock climb on my first path up Mount Silver.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption

After four days of training, Dylan finally managed to beat the Elite Four again. Tybalt was a huge help against the first two, Alyosha and Messiah handled Bruno, and he had to use a mix against Karen. Messiah mostly soloed Lance's team with Ice Beam, and Thor had just enough health to survive one hit from Gyarados and counter with a fatal Discharge. When he won, Lance repeated the same speech he had given last time, and Oak and his co-host even showed up again. It was really weird - as if they had forgotten the last time this happened. He did like getting the chance to register his new team at the Hall of Fame, though.

He felt emboldened, and decided to take on Red again. Thor had to learn Rock Climb so he could make it back to the peak. Tybalt survived Pikachu's Iron Tail and one hit KOed it with Earthquake, despite a 30 level gap in Pikachu's favor. Blastoise missed its blizzard and focus blast often enough for Thor to take it out. Lapras was the hardest to deal with. He had to wall it off with Messiah until it ran out of PP for all its moves and knocked itself out with struggle, while Red and Dylan both threw around full restores. Snorlax ultimately lost to Tybalt thanks in part to the defense drop from Crunch, and Charizard was helpless against him, dealing very little damage with dragon pulse and falling to one Rock Slide. Venusaur was the least impressive of all: it was slower than Alyosha, failed to OHKO him with Sludge Bomb, and fell to two uses of psychic.

Red didn't say anything. He left the mountain, moving so fast that Dylan couldn't tell where he had gone. There was no arguing about it now: he was the best trainer in either Kanto or Johto.

As he sorted through his backpack for hyper potions to refresh his team with, his hand touched something. He pulled out his notebook and stood there in the snow, flipping through it. There was nothing there except simple drawings and scrawled notes. It had been a long time since he had added anything to it. He flew back home, went to his room, and tucked it away in the drawer of his desk.

Final stats:
Pokdex: 273 seen/ 111 caught

Team:
Tybalt (Tyranitar) lv. 58
Teddy (Meganium) lv. 53
Cerberus (Houndoom) lv. 54
Messiah (Suicune) lv. 61
Alyosha (Espeon) lv. 57
Thor (Ampharos) lv. 55

Rankings for the Kanto team and final thoughts on Pokmon Heartgold coming soon.


---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Training log: Day 2

Pure grinding at Mt. Silver and the League. Tybalt evolved to Tyranitar. Tried the League again and lost to Lance's Gyarados with Dragon Dance. Thor is almost ready to take it on.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Yes, you are right about the Kanto legendaries. I didn't know that Viridian Forest was absent from the original Gold/Silver, but that's funny. Could you even get Pikachu in those games, or did you have to "time travel" and trade with Red/Blue?

---

Training log: Day 1

Spent more time at Mt. Silver. The outside area near the start seems like the best place to train. Returned to the power plant and caught a Zapdos. Thor weakened and Tybalt walled. 130 Ultra Balls. Tried the stronger Elite Four, lost to Bruno. Tybalt is lv. 45. Slow progress for the rest of the team.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

I did notice that there's a lot of post-game content in Kanto now, including rematches with the gym leaders among other things, which is nice.
---
Mt Silver was a long ascent, one that required teaching Snorlax Rock Climb, but Dylan made his way upward. A rare Pokmon called Moltres was nesting in the cave. Without any Pokmon to inflict status effects, catching it was a struggle, but he managed. He also found a small, low-level Pokmon called Lavitar running around. He didn't know how it managed to survive here, but he caught one and called it Tybalt. It must have had some kind of hidden potential.

Red was standing on the summit, facing outward. Dylan stood and watched him for a while. He didn't move. It was cold up here. He wondered what Red could possibly want to do here for so long. He walked up to him and said hello. Red didn't say a word, but sent out a Pikachu. Dylan tried to outspeed and KO it with his Gengar, but it proceeded to sweep his entire team, dealing more damage to itself with Volt Tackle than any of Dylan's Pokmon could hit it for. He ran back to the Pokmon Center in disgrace. He was going to have to do a lot of training.

There were still some strong Pokmon to catch, so he took out Thor the Flaafy as a Thunder Wave user. He also added Tybalt to his team. He spent a long time training on Natu at the Ruins of Alph, which at one point caused his Suicune to gain 15 special attack on one level up. Then he spent a little while practicing at the base of Mount Silver before returning the the Seafoam Islands by way of Fuschia City. Thor evolved to Ampharos and Tybalt to Pupitar. The sea route there still had a lot of trainers he hadn't battled. Thor could hold its own against them now. There were a lot of trainers at Seafoam who used the inconvenient water/ice type, forcing him to respond with Espeon instead of Houndoom. At the bottom he found Articuno. He weakened it to red health and paralyzed it, but still took over 60 Ultra Balls to finally catch it. Messiah did an admirable job walling it until then.

Pokdex: 256 seen / 106 caught

Team:
Thor (Ampharos) lv. 39
Messiah (Suicune) lv 54
Tybalt (Pupitar) lv. 31
Abe (Pigeotto) lv. 19
Alyosha (Espeon) lv. 52
Cerberus (Houndoom) lv. 51

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Yes, that's a good way of putting it!

---

After defeating Brock, Dylan went south through Viridian Forest to the city of the same name. The gym was abandoned and the town quiet, except for an old man who openly bragged that he used to be great at catching Pokmon (he didn't say how he was at battling.) He asked Dylan if he believed him and Dylan admitted that he did not, which caused the man to start ranting, using words like 'impertinent.' Dylan just walked away. He was more interested in Pallet Town, which was Red's hometown. In fact, when he arrived, there was a house with a sign out front that said it belonged to Red. That seemed a little self-centered, but Dylan wasn't really one to talk. He went inside and found Red's mother, who told him that her son had been away for a while and she didn't know where he was. She didn't comment when Dylan went upstairs to see Red's room. It was very ordinary - quite similar to his own. While he was in town, he visited Professor Oak at his lab. Oak just told him to come back when he had all eight Kanto Gym Badges, so he sailed south, to Cinnabar Island, where the next gym was supposed to be.

He found the island in ruins, with a Pokmon Center as the only sign of civilization. There was a guy named Blue on the shore, who told him that the island's volcano had erupted one year before - and confessed to being the Viridian City Gym Leader. He didn't seem willing to return to his job just yet. With nowhere else to go, Dylan went on to the Seafoam islands, and found the next gym hidden there. Most of the gym trainers went down to Messiah easily enough, but things got trickier when it came time to fight Blaine, the leader. His Pokmon used Sunny Day, which led to a struggle between sun and rain. Dylan managed to set up Rain Dance and then beat Blaine's Magcargo, but his Magmar was faster and would use Sunny Day at the start of any turn where the rain was around. With the harsh sunlight in effect, Surf didn't deal much damage, so he tried switching to Cerberus, which could resist fire type attacks and counter with Dark Pulse. Dark Pulse didn't deal any more damage than Surf, though, and Magmar's Overheat surprised him and knocked out Cerberus from over half health. At that point, he just sent out Sawyer and had him wreck everything.

When he went back to Cinnabar, he talked to Blue, who was impressed enough with his 15 badges to go back to his gym and await Dylan's challenge. He was the most impressive trainer Dylan had faced yet, with a full team of six at high levels and with varied types. Blue led with Exeggutor and Dylan with Cerberus, which nearly one hit killed with Flamethrower and forced out a Full Restore. Using Dark Pulse, Blue did not heal, but his Pokmon still fainted in two hits. He followed up with Rhydon, and Dylan switched to Teddy and one hit KOed with Petal Dance, but that left him unable to switch out as Blue's Arcanine came out and burned Teddy to the ground. He switched to Messiah and used Rain Dance + Surf. Blue's Machamp was very resistant against both Surf and Psybeam, and took down Messiah and Alyosha both. Sawyer finished it off before nuking Blue's Gyarados and Pigeot with Thunder. There was a certain exhiliration in finally finding someone else who knew what he was doing, and he felt a lot of respect for Blue. Now he wanted to find Red even more.

Professor Oak called him and asked him to come visit. After a short bike ride, Oak gave him the HM for Rock Climb and told him that he would be admitted to Mt. Silver. He decided to go there next. He returned to Viridian and then went to the Pokmon League on his bike, where the guard let him take the path west. He traveled through Route 25 and into the mouth of a cave, and then stepped onto Mt. Silver.

Pokdex: 247 seen / 96 caught

Team:

Cerberus (Houndoom) lv. 48
Alyosha (Espeon) lv. 49
Sawyer (Gengar) lv. 55
Messiah (Suicune) lv. 49
Teddy (Meganium) lv. 53
Brunnhilde (Snorlax) lv. 50

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Gall posted...

So, how many times have you been to Kanto now? And how does this version compare?

Truth be told, I've never really played the Kanto section of the original Gold/Silver. I lost my copy of Gold once I got to Lance originally and didn't play it again until years later, when I reached Sabrina and stopped because I had been training Pokemon like Furret and Beedrill that just sucked too much to keep bothering with. In comparison to Kanto in Red and Fire Red, it's a lot faster and a little smaller. I was kind of disappointed to learn that the Power Plant, which was originally a big optional dungeon in those games, is just a small single room in this one. Since you already have all the HMs by the time you show up in Kanto, you can really just go straight to the Gyms if you want and skip large portions of the region. I think that's okay, though, considering you get an entire 'extra' region in this game compared to every other Pokemon game.

---

To the north of Cerulean City, Dylan found the local gym leader on a date with a boy. Her date ran away when he saw Dylan - he didn't know why, no one had been afraid of him before. The girl introduced herself as Misty and kept calling him a pest, but she returned to her gym, which was just a swimming pool. He expected to clean up her whole team with Teddy, but it choked against her Starmie by hurting itself in confusion and then getting frozen by Ice Beam, so Sawyer had to finish things up.

Once he had the Cerulean City gym badge, he went back to the cottage north of town and found Suicune waiting for him. Eusine arrived just afterward and gave Dylan his blessing to catch the legendary Pokmon. For a moment Suicune just stood watching him, exerting a calm presence, and then it began fighting, charging around the meadow launching attacks at frightening speed. Its moveset didn't make much sense though. It had Rain Dance, but its only attacking moves were Aurora Beam (Ice) and Gust (Flying,) so it couldn't gain any benefit from that. Dylan brought back Cupid to help catch it with Stun Spore and Sleep Powder. First, he had Alyosha weaken Suicune and lower its accuracy with Sand Attack, because one Aurora Beam was more than enough to knock out Cupid. Once it was safer, he switched in Cupid and used Sleep Powder and then threw Ultra Balls until one finally worked. After watching Suicune run on water, the nickname felt obvious - he called it Messiah.

With the power plant repaired, the radio station in Lavender Town was working, and a man there gave Dylan an upgrade to his Pokgear as a reward. It let him tune into a Pok Flute station, which he used to wake up the Snorlax to the east of Vermillion. He caught it on the first Ultra Ball, and named it Brnnhilde. Now that it was out of the way, he could go through the Diglett Cave and onto Pewter City, where he visited the local museum and faced the rock-type Gym Leader Brock. Teddy took out Brock's Omastar and Kabutops, and the rest of his Pokmon made an easy debut for Messiah, who could one shot them with Surf.

Pokdex: 229 Seen/ 94 Caught

Team:
Messiah (Suicune) lv. 45
Cerberus (Houndoom) lv. 43
Brunnhilde (Snorlax) lv. 50
Alyosha (Espeon) lv. 43
Sawyer (Gengar) lv. 54
Teddy (Meganium) lv. 51

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Trying to raise Cerberus in the Saffron City gym, Dylan kept exposing his Pokmon to moves like Hypnosis and Confuse Rayon switch-in. It could lead to frustrating situations, where they would hurt themselves multiple times in a row or sleep for far too long and wind up fainting - and he couldn't do anything about it. He decided the situation couldn't continue, and flew all the way back to Johto to give Mr. Pokmon the red scale in exchange for an Exp. Share. If Cerberus held it, he could level up without needing to participate in a battle, which was much more convenient.

Sabrina's Pokmon feel easily enough to Sawyer's ghost-type attacks, and he headed onward to Celadon city. At the department store, he bought a Dark Pulse TM for Cerberus, which had more special attack than physical but mainly learned physical moves. He was curious about the local casino, but it turned out to only contain the same annoying voltorb game as the one in Johto. The Celadon gym specialized in grass types, so it was a good chance for Romeo to come back into the limelight - but he failed to sweep Erika's team due to poor luck with status effects, and Sawyer had to finish things off. He took the shorter bike path south to Fuchsia City, where there were a lot of scary-looking bikers, but they all turned out to be really nice. A lot of them asked for his phone number.

Dylan wasn't interested in trying out the catching game where the Safari Zone had previously been, so he just went straight onto the Gym. The leader, Janine, was Koga's daughter and shared his poison tactics. She had her gym trainers disguise themselves as her, including one boy who seemed a little insecure about it. Dylan meant to fight them all for the experience, but accidentally spoke to the real Janine before some of the others. He managed to beat her by having Leviathan set up with Dragon Dance against her Ariados and then run over her team with waterfall.

To get his new Pokmon up to speed, he spent a long time going to all the nearby areas and battling the trainers there. On the path between Fuchsia City and Lavender Town, Cerberus evolved to Houndoom and finally became strong enough to start fighting for himself, so Dylan switched him to the lead position and gave the exp share to Alyosha. Suicune appeared again in the water on this route.

After all that training, he arrived in Cerulean City, where the gym was deserted and most of the fuss was about the nearby power plant. The place had a poorly-chosen location: he had to surf a long distance just to reach it. He knew no one else would fix the place, so he would have to take a stab at it. That was just how things seemed to work. A crucial piece of the machinery had been stolen, and the workers asked Dylan to look for the thief, although they already knew he was in the Cerulean Gym. The thief was a Team Rocket grunt with a heavy accent. Dylan chased him to the bridge north of town, where they had a Pokmon battle. Cerberus defeated his Golbat with two uses of Dark Pulse, and he gave up the part. He didn't know that Team Rocket had disbanded, and when Dylan told him, he vowed to leave and rebuild the Team in his home country. Dylan thought he should just give up.

Pokdex: 219 seen/ 91 caught

Team:
Cerberus (Houndoom) lv. 41
Romeo (Typhlosion) lv. 43
Teddy (Meganium) lv. 49
Leviathan (Kingdra) lv. 52
Sawyer (Gengar) lv. 54
Alyosha (Espeon) lv. 40

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

You have to own all the original capitals.

I recommend trying out a conquest victory when you get Mongolia or the Huns. Their unique units are awesome. The Keshiks are basically the same as the camel archers and let you form a big horde and run around the map killing everything in your path in true Genghis Khan style.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Beat Sabrina, Eirika, and Janine today. Feeling pretty tired, so I'll try to update in the morning.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

BetrayedTangy posted...

Poor Cupid, Victreebel is actually quite good, he was actually the 2nd best member of my Blue team, which is saying a lot because I had an Alakazam as well!

It's a shame he couldn't be better here due to Gen 2 locking half the content behind Kanto.

Yeah, I would be willing to try Victreebel again if I played Gen 1 or something. The design choice behind relegating so many Pokmon to the post-game is baffling to me. I thought of using Jolteon, Houndour, and Suicune at different times, and felt like the game was cock-blocking me when I found out you can't get any of those until you beat Lance. I think that with water, thunder, and fire stones it might have been intended to help players realize that Umbreon and Espeon exist, but I don't know why Leaf stones get caught up in that. Maybe for Bellossom's sake or something.

---

Dylan was the champion now, but he didn't really want to spend all his time hanging around the Pokmon League waiting for challengers. He asked Lance to keep on doing that for him, and Lance agreed. Dylan went back home and spent a few days just relaxing, sleeping in late, playing Wii, and fishing in the water outside New Bark. Three days after his return, he came downstairs and his mom told him that Professor Elm wanted him for something. He felt like he owed Elm a lot, so he heard him out. Elm gave him a ticket to a ship that was traveling from Olivine to Vermillion City in Kanto and asked him to go to that region and find all the Pokmon that lived there for his research. Dylan didn't mind: it would make for something to do and he wanted to meet that trainer named Red who had been champion before him. Apparently he lived in Kanto.

Professor Oak was waiting at the docks, and gave Dylan a national Pokdex, which could store data on all kinds of strange Pokmon he had never seen before.

The S.S. Aqua was a shockingly luxurious cruise ship. Dylan had a room to himself with a complimentary P.C. and he found game consoles in some of the cabins. Most of the passengers were trainers and he spent the bulk of the voyage battling. He had decided to try using some new Pokmon and was training Alyosha for the time being, with his old powerful Pokmon as support. A little girl asked him to play hide and seek. He thought it would be fun - it had been a long time since he had played - but she didn't seem to understand the game. Instead of hiding, she just ran off and stood in the middle of the hall a short distance away. Her father thanked him for humoring her, anyway, and while they talked the captain announced that the boat had hit shore.

Vermillion City wasn't too much to look at. There was a construction site in the north of town. It seemed like the project had been stalled for a long time. The chairman of the local Pokmon Fan Club talked for a while about a Rapidash and then gave him candy as a reward for listening, which felt a little bit patronizing. The way he talked reminded him of Picnicker Liz from Johto. He wondered if they were related. On the east side of town, a Snorlax was sleeping and blocking the road, so he couldn't pass that way. He didn't really want to wake it up in any case: it looked so peaceful. It was big enough to be scary, but it was really very cute.

He decided to challenge the local gym. It was all electric trainers with a leader named Lt. Surge. What definitely evoked his military connections was that before they could battle, Dylan was obliged to sift through rows and rows of trash cans to find a hidden switch. Once he pressed the first one, he had to guess which of three or four nearby cans had the next switch, and if he got it wrong the switches would move and he would have to start over. It felt like the kind of thing a drill instructor would make new recruits do because he got a sick thrill out of watching them suffer. Lt. Surge liked accuracy manipulation. He used paralysis, double team, and a move called mirror shot that did a little damage and lowered accuracy. Dylan was lucky enough to get through okay, mostly using Sawyer.

In the north, the road to Cerulean was blocked off, leaving him no place to go except on to Saffron City. He was tired by the time he got there, but his Pokdex told him that there were some nocturnal Pokmon nearby, so he thought he would catch some before sleeping in the Pokmon center. He caught a Murkrow and a Houndour, which he named Cerberus. Tomorrow he would challenge the gym.

Pokdex: 187 seen/ 85 caught

Team:
Alyosha (Espeon) lv. 25
Sawyer (Gengar) lv. 51
Romeo (Typhlosion) lv. 40
Leviathan (Kingdra) lv. 49
Cerberus (Houndour) lv. 15
Teddy (Meganium) lv. 47

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

Yeah, I think it's mostly a matter of levels. It seems like a small level advantage can make a really big difference in Pokmon, so fighting Dragonite at around level 50 with a team in the high 30s - low 40s is pretty rough. I did also make a mistake by picking a Kingdra as my main ice-type attacker, since it's weak to dragon.

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Dylan spent a long time sitting on the steps of the Pokmon League. Lance's team was so much stronger than his. They could take his Pokmon down in one hit where he needed three to return the favor. There was just no way he could beat that. He would have to train more.

He went back to Victory road, and decided to train Sawyer, Leviathan, and Teddy up to level 47. The other three were already strong enough to do their jobs. It was a long, tedious process. Fighting mostly rock-types and Golbat meant big gains to defense and speed - at one point, Sawyer gained 8 speed on a single level up!

The training made a big difference. The Elite Four became absolutely trivial, and he won his battle with Lance using a similar strategy to before. Leviathan could now survive two Rock Slides from Aerodactyl and take it down in one Surf, which let him reserve Teddy and reflect for the Dragonite. Sawyer fainted to a dragon rush crit, but he was lucky enough to land a Blizzard on one Dragonite with Kingdra and beat it in a single hit. Leviathan learned Dragon Dance midway through the battle, which let it set up against Charizard, one shot it with Waterfall, and then take out about half of the final Dragonite's health with Dragon Pulse (having deleted Blizzard for DD,) allowing Sawyer to finish without much difficulty. He wondered why Lance hadn't adjusted to his strategy at all, since they had fought before. Maybe he was busy with his duties as Champion.

Lance congratulated Dylan on his victory, and Professor Oak arrived with his radio co-host, who asked to interview Dylan. He would've been happy to do it, but Lance pulled him away into a room with a Pokmon Center-like machine which recorded his championship team. He had done it!

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Alright, I'm gonna rip off Tangy's format and post a team ranking:

1. Sawyer (Gengar)

Gengar is a glass-cannon type Pokmon, but that tends to be strong in singleplayer. He could take down most enemies in one hit, rendering his lower defenses irrelevant. He also had access to a lot of nice coverage moves, of which I opted for Thunder. He was the backbone of most of my strategies in the latter half of the game.

2. Romeo (Typloshion)

He definitely does struggle more with the prominent types later on, but I still thought he was pretty good. He was definitely the most important Pokmon I had earlygame. Losing Flame Wheel at the daycare might have been a blessing in disguise, because Fire Blast let him one shot enemies like Morty's Piloswine. He could often take down 'neutral' targets in one hit with it too. He cleaned up a decent number of Pokmon in the Elite Four.

3. Leviathan (Kingdra)

While not as impressive as Gengar, Kingra's special attack and speed still got the job done in most cases. Water types are lucky since they get two solid moves as HMs. Kingdra gets Dragon Dance but no physical Dragon type attack, and though it has good special moves it can't learn calm mind or nasty plot, so it's a bit limited in that sense. Still, it's much bulkier than Gengar, and has high stats all around.

4. Teddy (Meganium)

Starting with Chikorita was a little rough for Ronald, since both of the first two gyms are good against it. That's why I had him use a Pidgeotto. I was pretty impressed with him later on, though. His durability was really impressive and he could one shot most of the things I needed him to with Petal Dance, as well as providing some nice utility in the final battle.

5. Ivan (Umbreon)

Ivan was pretty good. He could tank hits like a champ, but his offense was a little lacking, so it could take him a long time to bring enemies down, even if they didn't present much threat to him. He was stuck with the 40 power Pursuit for a really long time. I used him with Rest and berries, but there's no real point in singleplayer when you can just throw around Hyper Potions.

6. Isis (Nidoqueen)

I've used Nidoking before and he was really good. Nidoqueen is more or less the same, but just like the King she relies on TMs for Earthquake and Poison Jab. I didn't find either, so I had to settle for Dig, which was a bit of a letdown.

7. Cupid (Weepinbell)

I think leaf stones are mostly relegated to post-game in this. Bellsprout is also a bit let down by the physical/special split, because he gets growth to raise special attack but his only offensive move is vine whip for a long time. He was mostly useful as a stun spore/sleep powder bot.

8. Cedric (Noctowl)

Poor guy. Low stats, lots of cool psychic moves but no stab to utilize them with, and no real access to moves like Aeroblast that benefit from his higher special attack. It was just a little harder to get much out of him compared to the others.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version

The first member of the Elite Four was a psychic user named Will. Some of his Pokmon had coverage moves, like Ice Punch on Jynx, but they still couldn't really touch Ivan, who proceeded to beat the whole team on his own, except Slowbro, which used Curse, prompting him to switch to Teddy and finish with Petal Dance.

Koga used some bug types that Romeo could instantly take down with Fire Blast, and Sawyer resisted his poison type attacks and then struck back with high-power Ghost Balls and Thunder for his Crobat.

Bruno's fighting types were helpless against Sawyer except his Hitmonlee with Blaze Kick, which still lost with a little help, and his Onix was just free experience for Leviathan.

Karen's Umbreon was where Focus Blast came into play. Her Murkrow fell to one Blizzard, and her Houndoom went down to two surfs with a switch out and some healing in the middle. Her Vileplume was harmless and her Gengar had a cripplingly strange moveset with no strong ghost type attack. Ultimately, all of the Elite Four went down without much trouble, which was unsurprising against the trainer who had captured Ho-oh. Now all that was left was the Champion, which he assumed would be Red.

Instead, he found Lance, the dragon-trainer he had met at the Rocket Base in Mahogany. As his lead, Lance used a Gyarados, which Sawyer easily cleaned up with Thunder. Next was a high-level Aerodactyl, which could take down Sawyer with one Crunch and Leviathan with two Rock Slides, while surviving a Surf. Teddy had just enough health and defense to survive one attack and use reflect, allowing Kingra to finish the job - except that Lance switched to a Dragonite after the first Surf. Sawyer couldn't take a Dragon Rush, but it was faster, so his best recourse was to whittle it down with Shadow Ball and sacrifice his other Pokmon to revive. Sawyer was holding Bright Powder so the move would sometimes miss, and Teddy could set up a second reflect to help a little. He struggled through the first two Dragonite and finished off Aerodactyl at the cost of most of his Pokmon. Lance's Charizard knew Dragon Claw and could take down Leviathan, but Sawyer finished it off with Thunder. That left one Dragonite, which used Outrage instead of the less accurate Dragon Rush. After sacrificing the rest of his Pokmon, it came down to a weakened and confused Dragonite against Gengar. If Sawyer scored a critical hit, Dragonite hurt itself in confusion, or it missed with Outrage, Dylan would win. Confusion on its own was a coin flip, so the odds were in his favor.

Sawyer used Shadow Ball!
The Foe's Dragonite is confused
The Foe's Dragonite used Fire Blast!
Sawyer fainted!
Dylan is out of useable Pokmon.

He had lost. He couldn't believe it.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version