page information coming soon
this is a page where I talk about games I've played in 2024. check out the list below!
My knowledge of this game before starting it:
I love how the parts that make up this eye rotate around and sometimes glitch.
Also, I caught a rat. This is important.
Current party: Snivy (lv. 9), Rattata (lv. 3)
Rattata has learned Bite. I think she's gonna be good in the early game, as is tradition.
Also, I like this trainer class.
Current party: Snivy (lv. 12), Rattata (lv. 12), Pidgey (lv. 13), Koffing (lv. 11), Noibat (lv. 11)
The first gym leader has Spikes, Sucker Punch, and a special third move. Good taste. But I'm probably gonna want a party of six for this one.
Man, it's gonna be weird playing non-sicko games after this...
Current party: Snivy (lv. 15), Rattata (lv. 14), Pidgey (lv. 15), Koffing (lv. 15), Noibat (lv. 15)
Credit where it's due to Venam, her team had more than one strategy going on. But Grimer can keep her from stacking Spikes and building Rollout damage. And the accuracy drops from Mud Shot make it a lot more likely she'll miss and get a damage reset.
It wasn't the cleanest victory, but it counts.
Also, I met someone from the Help Center named Ayuda. Now that's a name.
Current party: Snivy (lv. 15), Grimer (lv. 18), Koffing (lv. 18), Trubbish (lv. 18), Noibat (lv. 17), Skrelp (lv. 16)
I'll probably cut back on the Poison types soon.
Also, I did a few sidequests and explored a cave with Melia. And then fought an edgy Nidorino so we could do more exploring.
And then we found a happy little structure with a statue of Arceus. That's a perfect place to have a nice, easy, relaxed battle. I don't think Melia was prepared for forest-boosted Leaf Tornado spam.
Then there was some loud rumbling and I saw an Absol on the way back. That's always a good sign, right? I mean, it's the coolest Dark-type Pokemon...
It turns out Team Xen is here! And this time they brought Shadow Pokemon. Good thing I played Colosseum.
After a few more fights, I got to meet Eli and Sharon. They're neat.
But then I got to meet this guy.
You know how in my filler text I talked about loving Evil McVillainface, who performs evil deeds and insults people? I think we've found our first Evil McVillainface of the game. And he's sure got the insulting people part down.
I don't have a lot to say about his team. Pretty tough but not as interesting as Venam's. Type:Null was cool, though. Oh, yeah, and it's easier to deal with than Mars in the cave.
And now to deal with that rift.
Current party: the rat is back!
Well, that could've gone better. Good thing Melia and Garbodor were there to save me.
And now it's time to head back to the lab again. Oh no!
At the lab I got to fight Madelis. This feels like one of those fights you can cheese and win if you really want to. But I didn't go for enough cheese to win.
And after losing despite my high-level strategy of using Yawn once, Melia teleports away. Team Xen starts searching the whole city for her, so hopefully I can yoink some more Shadow Pokemon. If they're gonna give me the most fun Shadow move (Shadow Sky) this early, I wanna use it.
Current party: Meowth/Servine/Rattata/Yanma/Psyduck/Geodude
And now it's time to rush off and find Melia... after I battle every Team Xen member I can find. Psyduck and I gotta clean up this town.
But before the next screenshot, it's time for a little tangent. Back in the day there was a Pokemon website called TRsRockin run by TR Rose. She had a page on bootleg Pokemon games. One of those games was the infamous Pokemon Quartz, which contains the following poetic masterpiece of a line:
"Argh! Fucking kid! You send my plan down to the WC!"
And I'm gonna be honest, whenever I see swearing in a Pokemon game, that line is my first thought.
My shadowy cloaked buddy is back to menace us. They claim Melia took a wrong turn in the mines and went deeper. And she's being chased by a Xen Admin.
Also, the caves are full of electric spiders that aren't supposed to be there.
We reach the bottom, and...
Well, if he's to be believed (and I mean, I like him enough to trust him), Melia is dead, as evidenced by her gnawed-up bag. But we'll see how that goes. It's time for another tangent!
Alright, so back in my RP days, and yes, this is on topic still, a character used another character's bloodstained jacket in an attempt to demoralize the protagonists. Now, I'm not saying Zetta would stoop so low, BUT...
Anyway, looks like it's time to deal with another rift. But this time, I have Venam to help (and my party doesn't consist of a Servine with low health and a Rattata).
Alright, that fight was a little choppier than expected. But in my defense, I'm pretty bad at type matchups. I've just got mad sick team building to help me in competitive play.
I think Galvantula is neat but those big eyes make Rift Galvantula look kinda cute. Not really what you'd expect from the boss of an area with "Lethal" in the name.
And in good news for anyone except me, Zetta has been placed in timeout. But hey, he got to call me an idiot one more time.
On the way to Sheridan Village, I met Nim. She's fun.
Also, this man is telling me to cheat. Very interesting. I might have to call the police.
And one fetch quest later, it's time to face Keta. But he sure made things hard for me. Fighting/Fire/a bit of Flying isn't a type combo my team was prepared for.
Damn, he's got hands.
Eventually, I did something I've almost never done before: put Servine in the PC.
And then a bit more team tweaking later, I managed to beat him with only a little cheese.
And by a little cheese, I mean a lotta Protect abuse to bait Fake Out and try to keep Lucario from hitting me.
But hey, he fell for it!
I don't have any screenshots of what happens next, but he walks into a door behind the waterfall.
Hey, wait a minute! That knucklehead left without giving me a badge!
So of course I'm gonna chase him. And it turns out that what's supposed to be a peaceful mountain is now a volcano.
And Aelita gets captured. What is this, Code Lyoko?
Keta and I proceed to steamroll every trainer in the base on the way to fight Madelis. And on the way, I found an Up-Grade, which bodes well for my Porygon-Z dreams.
Madelis says she's created the most powerful Shadow Pokemon there is. I don't really understand how that's gonna work in a volcano, though. I mean, if anything, Kyogre's probably not gonna be so effective here.
A lot happens after this. Aelita and I get teleported away. We fight Rift Volcanion, who gets a cool fire and water design. And then we make our way back. And get teleported away again. But only after Keta sacrifices his life to save us from Mewtwo.
And I get treated to a cutscene. It starts like this:
Current party: Solrock/Servine/Raticate/Yanma/Xatu/Graveler, all level 25.
There's a character who my exact response to was "Edgy 👀" and I was told I'd like him.
Okay, so when it comes to insulting people and generally causing problems, Zetta, who I like a lot, is a solid starter on a championship team. You know, maybe like a Jamal Murray type. He's good at what he does, don't get me wrong. I'm sure he can take home a trophy someday.
Geara over here though, he's on another level. In the span of just this one cutscene, he's managed to trash everyone in this room. He's no solid starter at all. He's Michael Jordan and it's the 1993 Finals.
Current party: no change
Aw man, someone's covering Gearen City in ghost trees! I guess I've gotta go back and sort that out. Sounds like the trees are coming from the sewers. And there's a door that leads to... a mansion?
But it's a mansion run by someone with good taste. I mean, you've gotta have good taste to have a giant statue of two Absol in your garden. And the interior's painted with the very solid choices of black, red, and white.
The manor's owner is Indriad Theolia. That's what we in the business call "a damn cool name." And it kinda looks like he's wearing a sick poncho in his sprite. I hope he really is.
To make a long story short, he's gonna steal our souls for breaking into his house. And it seems to be working out pretty well for him until his daughter Marianette saves me. That's what we in the business call "a damn meaningful name." Anyway, she proposes that we put her soul on the line in a bit of double-or-nothing for my friends' souls. And now I've got three trials to go through. Oh, and she's nicknamed me Willow now because I look like a tree. I'll keep that in mind if I ever need to hide in some foliage
But the trials are pretty easy. Except the maze, where I kept overshooting my turn. But it's not like I had to do it on the first try. Or the fifteenth.
For trial number three, I get to swap over to controlling Maria while the room my player character is in fills with water. It's a lot of running around and pushing objects, but it's simple even with the timer.
Indriad, our trustworthy poncho-wearing friend, decides to play the loophole game after this trial. So I try to sock him in the face. It doesn't work.
Trial number four out of three is a gym battle against Maria. But I'm prepared. She might be tough, but I have a secret weapon. And even if that doesn't work... Well, you'll see.
Her unique move is pretty sick. It's like Hidden Power, but different.
Maria's got a bit of Baton Pass in her team with some serious setup moves. Right at the start, she loves to massively boost her defense with Cosmic Power. Then, she's got all the time in the world to stack Nasty Plots. She's pretty tough, even with my secret weapon. So I had to deploy something even worse. Meet Mr. Crime:
Mr. Crime knows Mimic. If you use the move Mimic, you're up to something devious. Mimic isn't a move people of honor use. Mimic is a move for scoundrels and sickos. So here's the plan: set up a Substitute turn one. Lock her Delcatty into Cosmic Power turn two. Mimic Cosmic Power turn three. Then boost the hell out of my defense and start mashing Psybeam. If all goes well, I'll get those +6 defense boosts out of here.
It worked. I think Indriad wanted some more skilled battling because he's still gonna sacrifice our souls. But he gets what he deserves for trying that.
And now it's on to Chapter 4! This one was pretty short, huh.
Say, wasn't Melia gonna be the Normal-type leader? And don't Maria and Melia sound kinda-- hey, wait a minute, is that Geara again?
It's time to watch Geara thrash Madelis. Geara is so powerful that the eleven images of him in the last post broke the layout on mobile. We'll see if I can contain him this time. (For those keeping score at home: there are fifteen images of Zetta across the two posts he appears in).
And after that, he drops this cold line.
And it sounds like he's gonna be the next boss.
And of course, he can't leave without one more insult.
It's time to go to Goldenleaf Town! It's a bit to the south of Sheridan.
And there's a carnival on the way! No fun rides, though. But there is a locked gate. And a lot of Bidoof walking in front of me. And everyone is telling me to turn back.
Well, you know what they say about turning back: it's for cowards and you should never ever do it. Onward, with Ren's gate code!
I arrive in town and the folks are already trying some mob justice.
Can't let that happen. So Aelita and I do what we can to control the situation. (note: the answer was violence)
Everyone in this town hates outsiders. It's really interesting stuff from a story perspective. I get the feeling that this arc is gonna get into the dangers of rallying people against outsiders as enemies. Maybe it'll get into the need for empathy and understanding to prevent tragedies.
Narcissa, the town's gym leader, has us take a trip with Ren to learn more. After a horrible attack on their radio tower, followed by a threat of more disasters, Goldenleaf isolated itself from the world. And of course, if you never see anyone outside your community, it gets very easy to paint them all with the same brush. So now, with their connection to the outside world severed, the residents jump to blind hate.
Anyway, we stay at the Pokemon Center for the night. It's full of people who are hiding from Goldenleaf's residents. I don't blame them. But some ghosts show up in the middle of the night to... well, really, I don't know what they're trying to do. Wake us up and scare us? They're kinda just running around in the lobby...
Oh, I guess they're Team Xen members in disguise. Pretty funny, but c'mon, Geara, you can do better than that, right?
It was this scene where I realized "alright, yeah, I probably was getting told 'you WOULD like him' when I said 'Edgy 👀' like I first assumed."
You know, I think the last time someone said that to me, it was about Naraku from Inuyasha.
And now I get detained by the woman Geara manipulated because he knocked out Narcissa and Aelita. There's just one problem: she didn't bother to take away my Pokemon. So even if it's three-on-one, they're gonna have a tough time keeping me here too long. And besides, after I beat their Pokemon up, Mosely (who we saved earlier) shows up to beat them up. So now it's time to chase Geara and find out if part two of his plan is cooler than part one.
Part two of his plan is cooler than part one.
Under Wispy Tower, Narcissa, Mosely, and I progress through a lab full of immortality research and Team Xen grunts. Seems like the radio business was a front. There's nothing too wild here, but the scientists seemed pretty interested in Hoopa, Dusknoir, and Giratina. Solid picks.
Eli survived getting stuck in a machine at the Shadow Pokemon factory. Good for him.
And now it's time to see how Geara and Ren are doing. And give him a chance to talk to his mother about the lab.
THIS SPACE IS RESERVED FOR THE INEVITABLE PICTURES OF GEARA BEING GEARA
And with his gloating out of the way, it's time to see what he came here for.
Well, I guess Giratina, and the cooler Origin Forme at that gets to go on the "Geara has good taste" list, which will appear in full at the bottom of this post. Oh, yeah, and I'm not gonna spoiler tag that every time I mention it.
And he's even got plans to make a dramatic exit later!
Toxic works wonders in this fight. I feel like maaaybeee I should've given Geara more of a fair chance, but oh well. And now Narcissa shows up to FIGHT GIRATINA WITH A PAIR OF FANS while sick jazz music plays. And she even motivates Ren to join the fun!
And that leaves me to fight Geara. I wouldn't accept any other plan.
His team is tough - he's got some serious coverage going on. And it has this interesting type slide. It feels like he starts off with a more ghostly team (and Persian is there), then brings in some fairy types. If that ends up being a metaphor for his future character development, the people who wrote this game are serious chefs.
I had to change up my team to beat him. Fairy and Dark are a tricky combo to resist, so I needed to up my offense. Enter Weezing.
Weezing is important to take care of Morgrem. Solrock feels like a dangerous pick, but with Raticate's help, they can take out his Marowak before my team gets blown up. And then I kinda spam Sucker Punch until Raticate gets taken out. Super Fang can be pretty spicy, too, if I have the HP to take a hit.
I'm glad Geara put up such a fight - he has preconceptions to live up to.
But unfortunately for me, he gets put in timeout, just like Zetta. Man, I can't catch a break with my faves...
Bonus note: the phrase Geara Giratina can be read to the tune of Perihelion by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
I haven't finished this yet so here's some unrelated text:
I've got half of city hall clamoring to send you back to cryo, and I'm half-tempted to do it
Send you back to cryo
Half-tempted to do it
Send you back to cryo
Half-tempted to do it
Do I need to remind you your body temperature is riding on this?
Do you wanna end up back in the ice box?
Do you expect me to justify your freedom?
If this weren't important you'd still be in cryo sleep
If the need weren't so great, I'd have you on the next flight back
I've got half of city hall clamoring to
Send you back to cryo
Half-tempted to do it
Send you back to cryo
Half-tempted to do it
The shadow move Shadow Sky is for sickos
and I'm sickos
I learned it has an extra effect the game doesn't mention. It boosts the power of Shadow moves by 50%. As I said, sickos.
I actually played this in 2023, but I wanted a test article that wasn't basketball copypasta spam.
Pokémon Colosseum (2003) stands out as a unique take on the Pokémon formula. The game takes place in Orre, a region with no wild Pokémon. And while double battles were an occassional twist in the mainline games, they're the only kind of battles in this one. It's a great change that makes Colosseum fresh even for longtime fans of the series. I played it in late 2023.
The character designer knocked it out of the park. Even some of the generic trainers have memorable styles. The villainous admins of Cipher get designs that match their personality. It doesn't stop at their looks, either. Their teams take advantage of the double battle format with fitting unique gimmicks that suit their style. My personal favorite is the fourth admin you face: Ein, Cipher's lead scientist. They use a team built around the moves Rain Dance and Thunder. And I love their outfit. Another admin earlier in the game abuses the combo of Earthquake and Protect.
I got interested in playing this because I wanted to learn double battle gimmicks, and I got what I was looking for. And some of those AI trainers are as devilish as I hoped. The cold opening sets a great tone that carries through the whole game, too.
really loving this boss fight against Cipher Admin Ein
I guess when the character is evil and the team is evil too it works really well
it took a long time to get around to fighting Justy, but boy, does his team make it worth it
Double Team and Sand Veil is one heck of a strategy
I just wish he had more setup moves to take advantage of it...
I'm playing video games˃˅˃! ˅˃My favorite character in this game is Evil McVillainface, who performs evil deeds and insults people.
Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Koby Altman proudly waited outside the visiting locker room after the final buzzer to give LeBron James and the players on his victorious new-look team an appreciative fist pound on Sunday afternoon. Injured forward Kevin Love yelled out, “There you go! There you go.” Sharpshooter Kyle Korver gave a look of pleasant surprise. Guard J.R. Smith yelled out, “We got an [expletive] squad now.” And before James hit the locker room door, former NBA great Kevin Garnett hugged him and said, “Y’all look so different.”
Overheard in Cavs locker room after Game 7:
“He got me,” LeBron said of Tatum's dunk over him. "That f***ing Tatum boomed me."
LeBron added, “He’s so good,” repeating it four times.
LeBron then said he wanted to add Tatum to the list of players he works out with this summer.
Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Koby Altman proudly waited outside the visiting locker room after the final buzzer to give LeBron James and the players on his victorious new-look team an appreciative fist pound on Sunday afternoon. Injured forward Kevin Love yelled out, “There you go! There you go.” Sharpshooter Kyle Korver gave a look of pleasant surprise. Guard J.R. Smith yelled out, “We got an [expletive] squad now.” And before James hit the locker room door, former NBA great Kevin Garnett hugged him and said, “Y’all look so different.”
Overheard in Cavs locker room after Game 7:
“He got me,” LeBron said of Tatum's dunk over him. "That f***ing Tatum boomed me."
LeBron added, “He’s so good,” repeating it four times.
LeBron then said he wanted to add Tatum to the list of players he works out with this summer.
Gravity Games Bike: Don't Play This Game!
