#i like this pokémon home thing. what a neat trick

[goldensunset]

from one hot girl to another, the ultimate hot girl has traversed time and space

[elyvorg]

DETECTIVE PIKACHU IS EVEN BETTER THAN I EXPECTED AND I ALREADY EXPECTED IT TO BE GREAT.

I'd played the game, which was also generally better than I expected it to be but had some problems that made me kind of lukewarm on it by the end. Still, I knew that the game had potential that would work well in the movie if they did it right, so I had no reason to assume the movie wouldn't be pretty good. But man, they made use of even more of that untapped potential than I even realised it had in the first place.

That's not to say the game doesn't have some things going for it that the movie doesn't - I got invested in some of the side stories for individual chapters, and because of the longer game format, it got to spend more time showing off lots of neat ways that humans and Pokémon work together outside of battling. Those are things that were never going to really fit into a shorter movie, though, and in almost every other respect, particularly the main core of the story, the movie is so much better.

(Spoilers for both the movie and the game beneath the cut.)

So, of course, I went in knowing full well that Pikachu was Tim's dad. This is actually not explicitly revealed in the game for some utterly bewildering reason, but the hints at it are big enough and numerous enough that there's no way it's not meant to be the truth of that story. As soon as I saw trailers for the movie describing the deal with Tim's father - he went missing in an accident connected to the central mystery, Pikachu was his partner Pokémon - I knew the movie would do the same and, if it had any sense, would actually deliver on the twist and provide the closure that the game didn't.

But it works so much better in the movie than it would have even if they'd revealed it in the game because the entire core of the movie was about Tim's relationship with his dad. See, in the game, that's just not really a thing - they just expect you to assume that of course Tim cares about finding his dad because it's his dad, without any kind of going into what their relationship was like or why they hadn't seen each other in so long before this. The game's versions of both Tim and Pikachu (and what we hear about Harry) simply don't have any personal issues at all. Which is a huge missed opportunity on the game's part, because look how much potential that story has when done right! Not only does Tim have issues about being in his father's shadow and feeling like his father abandoned him for his detective work after his mother died, but Harry also has issues, both in what Tim and Pikachu deduce from Harry's apartment in that he did care about Tim after all, and in Pikachu himself, with his thing about how all he does is push people away and hurt them.

It's also really neat that the movie's villain works as a foil for this, first when you think it's Roger doing it because he couldn't deal with being overshadowed by his dad's awesomeness, and then when you realise that it's Howard doing it by getting so wrapped up in unhealthily dealing with a traumatic life event that he pushed away his son. It's just wonderfully cohesive in a way that the game really, really wasn't.

The clues pointing towards the twist are a bit different, possibly because of the nature of the things they had to change in an adaptation from game to movie. In the game, Pikachu still loves coffee, but they also make a point that Harry did too and that Pikachu didn't before the accident. And Pikachu insists on walking everywhere on two legs, refusing to ride around on Tim's shoulder even though Tim offers, which further hints that he's really human. In the movie, though, since they have less time to spend on the minutiae of mystery-solving because they're spending it all on the action scenes and the character drama, instead the presumably biggest hint that Pikachu is Harry is that Pikachu has the same issues as Harry. I am really curious to know when and how people who hadn't played the game figured it out, if they did so before the reveal.

Also, because I knew the twist, I was expecting Pikachu in human form to not be played by Ryan Reynolds, because I was assuming Tim's dad would be a POC like him. But Tim is mixed-race, and in the brief glimpse we see of his mom, she is not, so it follows that his dad could be white and therefore totally could be played by Ryan Reynolds after all. I wonder how many people, like me, didn't put that together until the moment we saw him in human form and therefore used the fact that Pikachu was voiced by Ryan Reynolds as more reason not to think he was Tim's dad.

(This does however beg the question - I know they'd never seen each other for like ten years, but did Tim really forget his dad's voice so much that he didn't recognise it coming from Pikachu? In the game, I just assumed that Harry's human voice would be different from Pikachu's voice because of this, since we never actually heard it because they never confirmed the twist grrr.)

I was a little confused by the ending making out like Tim was totally just going to go back home and leave his dad before he changed his mind, though. They'd already talked about how both of them wished they could have spent more time together! It should have been obvious to Tim the moment his dad was back in human form that he wanted to stay.

Also in terms of things similar to the game, Lucy was generally better than her game equivalent, Emilia, who was also a reporter for CNM (called GNN in the game, but close enough). Emilia was basically just doing her job and didn't have any personal drive to follow a big story, making Lucy much more interesting than her. Of all the things from the game they kept the same, they really didn't have to keep the eye-rolly extraneous romance between Emilia/Lucy and Tim, but at least in the movie it was just as unobtrusive and minor as it was in the game (in fact possibly even more so), so eh.

The part where Pikachu figured out how to use moves was probably one of the only similar parts that was maybe done a little better in the game - in the game he does so in a moment of peril where Tim is being attacked by the bad guy's Pokémon and he’s directly doing so to protect Tim. But in the movie, it's instead just when generally everyone is in danger (but he has no reason to believe Tim is specifically), giving it less of an emotional impact. And then suddenly he's not only capable of using them but just as good with them as the real Pikachu used to be to the point that he can hold his own against Mewtwo, which seems a bit of a stretch. I guess the movie writers just wanted to show off Pikachu doing the kind of thing Ash's Pikachu does, since that's what people would be expecting from a movie with a Pikachu in it.

While I was obviously not surprised by the biggest twist, I was surprised by several other things that didn't go even remotely how they went in the game. In fact, I really love the way the movie played with the expectations of the tiny handful of the audience who'd actually played the game and went in thinking they knew what to expect.

In the game, the main bad guy turns out to be a guy called Roger Clifford who's one of the higher-ups in GNN. So the moment someone with the same name who was in charge of a similar news network was introduced in the movie, I had a little laugh to myself and went "well, that makes this mystery obvious for anyone who's played the game, heh". But that was the trick! Roger is the only character in the movie with the exact same name as someone in the game aside from Tim and Harry. They had to have done that on purpose to try and get people who'd played the game to just assume Roger was the bad guy and accept that. I didn't question it at all when he was supposedly revealed to be the one behind it all only like halfway through the movie, because I figured they weren't planning to make it a huge reveal since those who'd played the game would already know anyway. But everyone who hadn't played the game was probably super skeptical about learning that so soon and so easily. The people who played the game and assumed they already knew the gist of the plot and had everything figured out were set up to be more surprised than the people who weren't!

Plus, the Ditto being used to make Roger look evil was a really neat use of a well-known Pokémon's unique abilities, and it didn't feel at all out of nowhere because everyone watching should have already known that a Ditto can do that (plus they briefly established near the beginning that Howard has a Ditto and that it could take human form). I didn't see it coming, but I wonder if anyone did pick up on that and figure that out.

And in the game, the main goal of releasing R everywhere during a big parade was simply to cause Pokémon to rampage in order to create a big scene that GNN could report on, so that it could become the most influential news network (which it wasn't already, because game-Roger didn't have a rich dad) for generically evil take-over-the-city purposes. While the movie version of Roger was supposedly motivated by the desire to ruin his dad's city rather than simply power, which was already more interesting than the game, it still made sense that the end goal would just be rampaging Pokémon and nothing more. So I really like that it turned out to be more than that - a plan to put humans' minds into Pokémon bodies is an even more interestingly messed-up-yet-somewhat-sympathetic goal, and it beautifully ties in to what was already happening to Harry, setting up the twist even further. I wonder how many people who hadn't played the game and hadn't figured out the twist up until that point had a big realisation moment when Mewtwo's ability to do that was revealed.

This also explained in hindsight an earlier part of the movie that had bothered me, namely that during the big R breakout in the battling ring, Pikachu somehow never got affected by it. It seemed awkwardly convenient that he never breathed any in, since the fact that I knew he was really human didn't change my assumption that he should have been affected by R because he's still physically a Pokémon. But actually, with how it was established to work, that does make sense - R is used to make Pokémon mindless enough to put a human inside them, and then once they're human, they're sane, even though R is still in their system. So a human already in a Pokémon body wouldn't be affected by R after all.

I like that they added in the storyline that Harry was the one who led Howard to Mewtwo in the first place. In the game, Mewtwo wasn't ever captured by anyone; the scientists who created R just used some of his cells, and Mewtwo only got involved and asked Harry (who was already on the R case) to help because he didn't like being partially responsible for this. But setting it up this way in the movie allowed for more intrigue, both in terms of giving Mewtwo every reason to be angry and vengeful even though he actually wasn't, and in terms of throwing doubt onto Harry and Pikachu, first with the notion that Harry was a bad guy who captured Mewtwo, and then that Pikachu was a bad guy who let Mewtwo escape to enact his revenge on Harry. Presumably the reality is that Harry initially just took on the job for Howard because it was challenging, since he kept burying himself in cases for the sake of cases to run away from his issues and might not have cared that it was kind of sketchy. Then somewhere along the way when he realised what was going to happen to Mewtwo, he regretted the whole thing and kept pursuing the case to make amends to Mewtwo - it was almost certainly Harry who ordered Pikachu to set Mewtwo free. I kind of wish they'd been able to go into Harry's guilt about that a bit more, but it makes sense they couldn't since he'd lost his memories and thought he was Pikachu (and he still managed to make himself feel guilty over Pikachu’s actions, so there’s that). I never remotely believed the possibility that either Harry or Pikachu ever had bad intentions, because I expected Mewtwo to turn out to be the innocent victim that he was in the game. (Although the opening did make it look like Mewtwo caused the crash, I never quite trusted that). But I'm curious about how people who hadn't played the game felt about that and whether they at least somewhat bought the possibility that Mewtwo was angry and vengeful and that Harry kind of deserved Mewtwo's wrath.

Generally seeing Pokémon absolutely everywhere was a huge treat as well, of course, but that's a thing that was always going to be the case with this movie even if everything else about it was terrible. But it was not! It's a genuinely really good story that's getting mainstream attention, that happens to involve Pokémon! That's everything Pokémon always deserved but never had until now. If you'd told me several years ago that Pokémon would get a live-action film and it would be legitimately great in a way that even people who aren't hardcore Pokémon fans could appreciate, I'd never have believed you - I don't think anyone would have - but here we are.

[programaticallydelicious]

What’s the opposite of a hardcore game?

So I’m sure you can think of a couple of “hardcore” games off the top of your head. Dark Souls and Bloodborne are probably near the top for a lot of you. What defines those is an argument for someone else, and has been made a multitude of times.

I’m here to talk about their opposite. A lot of people, when asked what the opposite of a “hardcore” game is, would immediately jump to “Casual”. Something like Bejeweled, or Angry Birds. That...isn’t exactly correct. Casual games are targeted at people who can’t sink a great deal of time into a game in one sitting, A few minutes here, a few there, maybe an entire hour sometime. And with how the “casual” market is mixing in paid mechanics on mobile, there’s an argument to be had for them being an entirely different form of hardcore.

But I digress.

What is the opposite of a “hardcore” game? Is it an easy game? Maybe, maybe not. Is it a simple one? Not necessarily. Is it forgiving? Potentially. The opposite of a hardcore game is one that gives the reins to the player, and lets them control their own experience. I, personally, have never been one for hardcore games in the way the term gets bandied about. I don’t like games punishing me for my poor reaction time and variable coordination.

I like games that let me choose how to proceed. And to give a good idea of what I mean, I’m going to go through my steam library (not all 800+ games of it, just the ones with at least 60hrs of playtime), and explain exactly what they did that ensured they weren’t hardcore.

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (751 hrs)

Unsurprising, and easy to explain. Bethesda games, in general, give the player as much control as possible. Want to do the main quest? Have at it, nothing can stop you and if something does, just pull up the console and nuke it to death with the kill or disable commands. Don’t like something? Modding can fix it. Want something you don’t or can’t have? Modding can fix it. Want to shoot something? You can! Stab them? Sure! Want to pretend quests don’t exist and live as a hermit in the woods? I’ve done it!

I think you get the picture.

2. Fallout 4 (663 hrs)

Do you need to ask? Look above, I explained it there. Also, the VATS system is actually surprisingly cool to play with, and I really, really enjoy waltzing around overleveled in tricked out power armor as everything the bad guys throw at me winds up just plinking off and maybe killing them for me.

3. EVE Online (500 hrs (logged on Steam, at any rate))

This can’t be right, can it? The MMO known mostly for having a learning curve so steep it‘s a cliff with an overhang? Not hardcore? I’ve gotta be high!

No, it isn’t hardcore. EVE gives the player a fantastic amount of control over their experience. You can pick what skills to learn, what kinds of ships to fly, whether to produce, raid, lead, gather, trade, or mission run. Personally, I racked up most of these hours about ten years ago when I was doing a lot of asteroid mining on a second screen while working on stuff in college. It was slow, relaxing, and impressively predictable overall.

4. Starbound (214 hrs)

I have a love-hate relationship with this one. I racked up most of that playtime in the early beta, when the mechanics were wonky and unbalanced and the playstyle was still being worked on. I can’t enjoy this game anymore, because all I want to do is find a pretty planet and build a base I like on it. But the prettiest planets are pretty good at killing you, and the best materials to build with are rare, in places good at killing you, or incredibly expensive. I could build safely on a barren world, but...it’s a barren world.

5. Terraria (166 hrs)

I love this game, I really do. But I can’t play it with other people. I like having a safe home, and while you can make safe homes in hardcore mode, they’re a pain in the butt to design properly and the allowances you need to make to keep things out are less than appealing to me. Meaning I end up running two worlds with my character as a raider, and that gets...tedious after a while.

I once built an entire village for all of the NPCs in the game (there were fewer at the time), only to watch them die over and over because someone went to hell and killed the wall of flesh.

6. Space Engineers (143 hrs)

Do I really need to explain this one? I made a bunch of voxel spaceships, in space. Was fun, and neat, but last time I poked my head in it was still lacking in things to do long-term. Too much control, not enough content, basically.

7. NieR:Automata™ (126 hrs)

This can’t be right, can it? After all, it’s a twitchy action-RPG with a philosophical bent that feels like the illegitimate bastard lovechild that Nietzsche and Goethe abandoned in the dark forest at midnight on a new moon. (In short, it’s that impossible thing known as an object made purely of edge)

But it is. The game has a massive variety of potential play-styles and difficulties, from “all but literally does everything for you” to, well, bullet hell. And the chip system lets you suit all sorts of preferences (the taunt/crit build is OP as all hell, but I ran with a berserker build that boosted speed and healed me on damaging or killing enemies). The game is as punishing as you allow it to be, and Platinum Games did a fantastic job of that.

8. Subnautica (110 hrs)

I’ve beaten this one multiple times. It actually gives you a lot of control in terms of where and how to build, and how you go about progressing. But the truly great bit of control the game gives you is that it never forces you to progress. You move through it exactly as far as you want to, and it does a great job of getting you to want to.

Sadly, it has two things that really break that. Two enemies, specifically. Warpers, and crabsquids. Warpers can be avoided, are localized, and can become a non-issue by progressing far enough.

Crabsquids are seething gelatinous bundles of undiluted killjoy who prevent me from safely building in my favorite biomes.

9. Stardew Valley (94 hrs)

I really think this one is self explanatory. If it isn’t, it will be as soon as you play it.

10. ARK: Survival Evolved (93 hrs)

This game doesn’t belong on this list. Too much of the time listed was spent fighting the mechanics/trying to get things to work, as opposed to playing the game. It’s neither hardcore nor its opposite.

11. Plague Inc: Evolved (63 hrs)

My favorite thing to do in this game is running the neurax worm. The Christmas scenario in particular is great. This game is an RTS with short playtimes, immediate feedback on choices, and fantastic levels of replayability. Combine that with their scenario editor, difficulty settings, and the huge variety of things you can play as, it makes it as my favorite non-RPG on Steam.

Some non-Steam mentions that are self-explanatory: Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda: BotW (I enjoy the other games too, but they don’t qualify for this), Age of Empires II (I abused the shit out of a bug in the scenario editor), Pharaoh/Caesar III, and the number one timesink of any game I’ve ever played: Minecraft.

In summary: The opposite of a hardcore game is one that gives the player enough leeway to make their own decisions. Not necessarily by giving them multiple choices or paths, but allowing them to proceed at their own pace, potentially with their own choices of mechanics and/or difficulty. And most importantly, it doesn’t punish the player for those choices.

[caboshone]

My friend and I came up with a crack OP theory and I couldn't resist drawing it.

So our theory is that the D in one piece stands for Ditto, as in the pokémon.

One day a ditto caught sight of Palkia, the master of Space and thought, "what a neat trick" before turning into Palkia and traveling to an alternate dimension. Just like that. Once in this new dimension, Ditto Prime or DP split into two and had a son and named it Monkey D. Dragon. Monkey, for the weird hairless kind that both this world and DP's home seem to share; D for himself, Ditto; and Dragon for the pokémon who's abilities allowed DP to travel to this new world. DP then leaves to fully explore the world and makes many more mitosis babies along the way. Forty odd years later Dragon has a mitosis baby of his own and calls him Luffy. No one knows why, it's just a weird name. Anyway, Luffy's dream is to become the king of the pirates and much like his father(?) And his grandfather(?), he does it to prove the superiority of the Ditto. DP passed on the history of the original world to Dragon and Dragon did to Luffy (how isn't important, shhh and listen). The history of oppression and fear that pokémon lived in, especially Ditto, as rare and valuable as they were. The world government was doing the very same thing to the people of this world, despite their identical species and the Ditto would stand for none of it! The goal of bringing the world government to their knees was birthed and the Ditto, now known as the D's, would be the ones to achieve that. Not long after the D's started this quest en masse, the WG discovered their true identity through the torturing of untrained D's. These poor D's told of their joint history and how their ancestor came from another dimension. The WG wanted this power for themselves and so, they began to round up any D's they could get their hands on to grow their knowledge of this dimensional travel, but the D's would not stand idly by and let this come to pass, risking their fellow pokémon's safety even more. Oh no they would not. And so, the D's stand against their great opponent, not only to protect themselves and their families, but to protect both this world and their home one.

~FIN~