Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 6 Part 2 - Bunnelby line to Skiddo line

Just because I get a joke, doesn’t mean I think it’s funny. That sums up Diggersby just perfectly.

I get Diggersby “haha instead of turning sexy like Lopunny it turns into a fat old man haha”, it’s a joke based on subverting expectations and humorous contrast. I get it. But it’s still a doofy, goofy ugly fat thing in that particular type of humorous Japanese caricature art style I dislike with a really obvious haramaki and I hate it. I do like the idea of a rabbit having huge hand-ears to dig with, pity it’s attached to a doofy, goofy ugly fat thing. A let down for this Gen’s Normal type com mon.

Bunnelbey’s inoffensive, I’d’ve swapped out the brown collar for white:

Just out of aesthetic preference but whatever.

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 6 Part 1 - Starters

Hey, it’s Generation VI! The French one!

One of the shorter Generations and the first for the Nintendo 3DS and the game that saw the serious finally jump into full polygonal (not Porygonal) 3D. Set in Kalos (Paris) (I actually played it for the first time over the 5 days I was on holiday in France which was just great), this was the generation of Pokémon X & Y, the games introduced one of the staples of these reviews if not (sadly), the Pokémon franchise as a whole – the temporary state Mega Evolution. which acted as a powered up form and a special attack and for me one of the funnest things the series has done, becoming a ridiculous form and unleashing massive amounts of power on poor Magikarp. They also introduced the nice virtual pet element Pokémon-Amie buuuut they did other things: they were the start of the series streamlining gameplay and making the core titles easier, they introduced the smallest number of new Pokémon so far, thier story and character were far shallower than Gen V and it improved and simplified breeding and IV training (making really good Pokémon for competitive play) which should have been an plus but annoyed hardcore competitive players and that’s not going into issues with weather effects, Pokémon Bank, Poké Transporter, the Global Trading Station and Global Link and the 3DS Clock.

Luckily the even worse reception that Generations VII and VIII got and the sheer amount changes they made have, plus the pandering to the Generation 1 fans, have caused X & Y’s stock to rise with the fandom, and it does very much feel like the last ‘classic-style’ Pokémon game before started frigging with things. And this was the generation of Hoenn Confirmed. Sheer fan demand prompted Game Freak to produce a set of excellent remakes of Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire – Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire – and these did not have the issues of X & Y, vastly improving the old games to the point that even I, a man thoroughly lukewarm on Gen 3, loved them. I mean they weren’t perfect and people still had issues but they were better.

And then there was no Pokémon Z, no third version or sequels to fix up X & Y – instead a whole new Generation was announced – Generation VII, Pokémon Sun & Moon aaaannd we’ll get to that. I enjoyed X & Y but honestly felt that I didn’t leave as  much of an impression as Generations 1 through 5, I felt like I breezed through it and the whole thing was nice but not that substantial, basically the Milky Way of Pokémon Games. I thought ORAS was great.

As for the Pokémon themselves? I remember it being a very definite case of quality over quantity with a shitload of really strong designs and really likeable ‘mons but few that immediately jumped into my all-time favourites list. I expect a lot of 5 and Gold 5 scores.

While veering just a little into the digital world stylistically if you get my drift, I do like where this line ends up, Chesnaught is a damn cool final stage for a Pokémon with a wise old warrior way about it (maybe it’s the beard). It brings balance to the line’s colour scheme, manages to have a segmented armour without becoming too busy or cluttered, has ginormous spikes and recalls one of my favourite prehistoric animals – the glyptodon – plus I’m really pleased for it because it finally grows elbows. It’s also a fairly original way of doing an armoured warrior, instead of a stereotypical ‘It’s Just a Flesh Wound’ knight or Conan barbarian we end with a kind of holy crusader vibe and that’s nice. The rest of the line kind of sucks though.

Chespin, while clearly having had some thought put into it, just ends up looking generic to me, it’s just a generic cute mammal with some generic plant looking green bits because it’s a Grass type and some generic ‘real animals wouldn’t have these’ markings, it’s almost fakemon levels of boring. It’s allegedly a hedgehog mixed with a chestnut shoot –this line does ‘bloom’ like a lot of other grass starters, from shoot to chestnut to split chestnut, it’s just a bit more subtle than usual – but it just looks so…yeah, generic is the best word. Quilladin is a fucking mess and shout not only have gone back to the design phase but been set fire to as it went. It’s both one of those designs where I think nothing works and one of those designs where the ‘mon looks derpy in the extreme, the colour scheme is awful – seriously those colours should never sit next to each other like that ever – the markings are just slapped on, the eyes upset me in my soul area, it’s a pile of shit.

You can see what I mean about the elbows thing, right?

Examples of Crap I Waste Other People’s Money On Christmas 2019 Edition

I’ve been ill

I was ill for 14 shitting, fucking, arsing, pricking, bleedin’ weeks!

But now it’s time to publicly say thank you to people anonymously for the cool stuff they gave me at a gift giving celebration. Look I enjoy these if no one else does. I’ve whittled it down to 8 for your sake - look grateful - but I could have written about EVERYTHING I got this year – someone bought me a 3D puzzle of a dragon, an anatomical model of a mammoth, a light up skull, a soft toy called a ‘Fuggler’ which I think speaks for itself, Space Jam socks, Ninja Turtle glasses (for drinking, not reading), a Freddy Fazbear that shits slime from a Kit-Kat packet and a book simply titled ‘You Are So Awesome’ (it’s true, I am), that’s a lot of things I should be talking about and none of them are any less cool than what follows.

I had a nice Christmas by the way, it was quiet so I thought it might be depressing but it was really fun – and the Tiger That Came to Tea is bloody weird. Just fyi.

T-Rec!

There are exactly four things you need to know about this:

·          It has the best name

·          It records your voice AND is a torch because toy designers are like that

·          My friend recorded her singing Baby Shark on it which I can speed up to Chipmunks-on-Amphetamine-Sulphate fast and slow down The-Big-Show-doing-an-interview slow with T-Rec’s calf dial

·          My friend’s mum (who gave me this, thanks!) bought the exact same present for her 1-year old grandson

Quick Crappy Pokemon Reviews: Generation 5 Part 14 - Round-Up

 

I’m gonna do something a little different for this round -up, my overall thoughts on this gen are easily summarized and i’ve go through them a few times by now anyway: the entirely new Pokedex was a good idea squandered by the use of ‘eqvivalentmons’ to just give us very similar substitutes for a lot of the Pokémon that Game Freak always used to fill different location is the game BUT despite that the new Pokémon were primarily very consistent in how strong they were as designs.

HOWEVER it was while writing a more conventional version of this round-up I wrote ‘I could have cut the Pokedex down…’, stopped and changed my mind about what we’re gonna do here.  Here is my cut-down Gen V Pokedex:

My thinking was this: keep all of the standard ‘mons that a region needs (Starters, Legendaries, pseudo-Legendaries, com mons, cats, fish, bugs, pikaclone, Fossil Pokémon), cut out most of the Equivalentmons (but not all, you always seem to get a couple of ideas repeated in later ‘Dexes, so ones I liked a lot I kept), cut out all the extraneous Legendaries, then just keep all the lines I like plus a couple of popular ones I don’t mind because there’s always gonna be one or two lines you’re not crazy on in every generation. And I still ended up with over 80 cartoon aminals which should, I think, prove that this generaiton is pretty consistently good (and had way to many equivalentmons), both of which you're probably fed up with me saying by now. I tell you what it also kinda proves, at least to me, is that this generation had a really god set of 'standards' - becasue other than Dewott and the cats I'd've still left all of those in this 'dex even if they weren't kept solely for the reason that they 'have to be there each generation, even the fossils - as dissapointing as the turtles are they're still nice turtles.   

 Anyway....

My Gen 5 Favourites

A whopping 8 Gold Sixers for this generation and the first time in 5 gens that two Pokemon from the same evolutionary line have made this list, that's how much I like the Trubbish line, haters to the fucking left, PLEASE.

My Overall Favourites

It’s worth pointing out here that not all Gold Six scores are equal and while everyone who got the Gold Six score utterly deserved it, most of the Gold 6ers in this generation are on the lower end of the Gold Six spectrum

My Gen 4 Least Favourites

Despite being a pretty consistently good generation there was seven 0 scores, Klinklang being the 7^th

My Overall Least Favourites

The Cutest

God. Damn. What a cute generation! This list could easy be treble its length

The Most Badass

This list could be at least double in length too…

The Most Creative

Victini? Hell yes, Victini! All those V-things combined? That’s some Alan Moore level shit

Most in Need of Evolutions

I just want the Woobat and Minccino lines to perfectly match their equivalents and that means they need to be three stages, undiagnosed OCD for the win!

Most in Need of Mega Evolutions

Because Gen 5 was so horrendously ignored for Megas, I just picked Pokémon from this generation the way Game Freak did for the others; popular ‘mons and the odd ringer, and Garbodor.

Gen 4 Pokémon I’d Most Like to Own

I’d like to point out again that I know that owning Chandelure is very impractical but it just goes with all my décor

God that went on didn't it? Sorry about that.