Counting Steps: Pokemon Go!

General info:

Official website – Wikipedia entry

• Developed by: Niantic
• Published by: Nintendo, Pokémon Company
• Original release date: July 6th, 2016
• Platforms: Android, iOS
• Written in Unity

I was late to the game with Pokemon. My generation was in elementary school at the height of the Pokemon craze. From what I hear, it was a grand ole time. Due to some satanic-panic logic (that remains unclear to me) Pokemon was forbidden in my house, growing up.

In fact, that was the reason behind most prohibited activities of my childhood. No Casper. No Power Rangers. No Pokemon. All of that exclusion kept me away from the cool kids’ table. Nobody deserves to be bullied, but looking back, I wasn’t any of the things you usually see in kids that get picked on. Not being an obvious target wound up hurting me in the long run. “How could you get picked on? You’re the biggest kid in class!” I was. Eventually, I had to figure out how to get with it or get left in the dust. 

Not only was it banned at home, most of the disciplinary action I witnessed in grade school revolved around punishing kids for bringing Pokemon cards to school. That prohibition was my “in.” After confiscating a large quantity of Pokemon cards, teachers carelessly tossed the collection in one pile onto the floor. 

Predictably, there were dogpiles. Whatever lay on the floor was up for grabs. I was left out of the conversation, but I certainly overheard them. What 9 years old could resist the opportunity to brag about their 1st edition Charizard? Or their holographic Pikachu? The kids making fun of me gave away exactly which cards I should steal from them. With everyone’s eyes on the prize, nobody noticed the only kid in class who couldn’t play Pokemon joining the ambush. On a few occasions, I’d crawl out with quite the score. 

My brothers obtained their own collections over time. Only, they would get caught. Every time one brother was busted, I’d overhear my parents threaten to search every bag in the house. While they sniffed for clues, I’d ditch my cards among the discarded contraband in the kitchen garbage to save my skin. In the end, every heist proved fruitless. My name’s Eric Fellner, and I stole my friend’s and classmates’ cherished Pokemon cards so I could throw them in the trash.

July 2016. Imagine my surprise the day Pokemon Go comes out, and my mom has it downloaded on her phone. After all that effort! After years of enforcement! 

Possibly the allure of augmented reality swayed my mother’s feelings on the matter? Maybe she admitted to herself the ban never had any rationale to start with? Whatever occurred, Pokemon Go was my first game in the series at the age of 23. 

It was a good summer to start! I had returned from a month-long stay in Brooklyn, which was honestly the time of my life. I had booked my first show for my return to North Carolina. A month of walking around the city got me into great shape. To my knowledge, the relationship I was in was going well. July 2016 was starting off as the peak of my “Jordan-year.”

Additionally, the whole world seemed united in (at least novel) interest in this game. And I could finally buy-in! My co-workers at Starbucks would dip into the parking lot catching Pokemon while they took drive-through orders. All hours of the night, pods of kids and adults alike crowded what was suddenly considered “landmarks.” In search of resources. Battling over gyms. Trying to “catch ‘em all.” You’re familiar with the game.

Counting on!

Personally, I loved using the game as a pedometer! It kept me in great shape. Endlessly running through the neighborhood and shopping centers felt as true to the core gameplay loop of Pokemon as you can get. Only, there was slightly less animal violence.

Then, July came to a close. One night, I stopped in late to see my grandfather who lived in town, Popop. We had open plans to visit a 24-hour bakery in Charlotte called Amelie’s. Unfortunately, he passed in his sleep sometime before I arrived. 

Between that night and the funeral, the girl I had been seeing ended things over text. The next week, I played that show I had booked while I was in New York. Due to similar circumstances in the other bandmates’ lives, the band immediately disbanded. 

After a month of riding high, things crashed spectacularly. My enthusiasm for Pokemon Go died amid the chaos and depression of the time. I didn’t feel like running. I didn’t want to see people out, people together. It’s no exaggeration that week in August took years to recover from. Not just emotionally. Regaining the sense of momentum I felt that summer took time. Pokemon Go forever resides in my memory as the pop-culture phenomenon that coincides with that period of my life.

February 2020. After a couple rough years, I was quitting the worst job of my life (thanks for nothing, Target) to teach guitar full-time. Playing music, for a living. Then, wouldn’t you know it? COVID-19 struck! 

Boy did it. And the job I just went all-in on was at high risk of being yanked from under me. Reflecting now, I wonder if the sink or swim of the moment shocked me into a state of flow. One day, my boss and I devised a plan to transition the entire studio to a remote format. The next day, the admin team and teachers were executing that plan. We were infinitely fortunate. We never missed a single day of lessons.

My girlfriend lived two hours away in Raleigh, and we decided to lock down together while I could work remotely. Despite having some work, I still had a considerable amount of free time. We were 5 miles from Moore Park, the center of downtown Raleigh, with everything in the city closed. As that normal set in, I found myself running across Raleigh playing Pokemon Go. Me and my Snorlax, Popop.

Normal is hopefully starting to shift yet again, and I continue to log (slightly fewer) kilometers in Pokemon Go. I’m no longer interested in Pokemon to get along with classmates, and if tragedy strikes, I’m a little better prepared. Pokemon Go is more of a glorified pedometer more than augmented reality, but my fondness for it still runs deep.

This piece is part of a larger collaboration, Pokemon: Creator’s Catch. Click here to check out all the work by other great writers and artists!

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The 5th Retrospective Blogger / Creator collab is going to be about.. (Writer/YT’er call-out!)

In 2017, I came up with the idea of doing a retrospective in a special way. I gathered several writers and I created the “The Legend Of Zelda Retrospective – A Bloggers Journey“. The year after that, in 2018, one of the writers of Zelda retrospective took on another series in the same style. That series was Final Fantasy and that was bundled in the “Final Fantasy: A Crystal Compendium“. Later that year, it was my turn again. So I gathered writers for a series near and dear to my heart and that’s the Tomb Raider series. So, “Tomb Raider – Writer’s Raid” was born. Oh, and in 2019 the madlad Well Red Mage did another one… about, all. the. Mario. Games. Yes, including spin-offs. The “Super Mario Multiverse: Compilation” is the 4th one in this style. And now, it’s time for the announcement of the 5th one. 

How does this retrospective works?

How does this retrospective work? Well, the idea is quite simple. The first thing that happens is that somebody decides on a series to take a look at and lists all the games that should be included in the collab. In that case, the organizer knows how many writers are needed to at least look at the main games and how many additional writers are needed for the spin-offs. 

Depending on the amount of writers, the idea of this collab is that each writer takes as few games to write about as possible. The writer publishes their piece on their own blog/channel/page… Unless they don’t have one, then the organizer looks for a place to publish it. Each piece links back to the hub article that’s published on the organizer’s blog/channel/page. 

The hub and each article are published at the same time. That way, you can go to the hub article and read about your favorite game or about the game you always wanted to know about. And there are a few benefits as well. The creator community comes closer together and meets the fellow creators and opens doors for future collaborations. And for the readers, you might discover new content creators to follow and enjoy. 

Now, what are these articles about? Well, when I organize these collabs I always give the full freedom to the writers to write a piece to their liking. The only “rules” I have is that the article links back to the hub article, uses the art piece made for the collab and that it’s at least 1,000 words long. The article can be a review, a personal story about the game, the development history, interesting facts about the title, comparison between original & remake… As long as it focuses on the chosen title by the content creator, it’s all fine. 

The freedom I give to the writers means that it’s not a retrospective by definition. Since not every article will talk about the development history of the series. This isn’t a bad thing in my eyes, since the main idea of the retrospective is to promote other writers and celebrate a certain series and talk about personal stories and create something unique. My end goal is to create a group of friends that works together to create this celebration of this series. 

This seems like a long and complicated explanation but if you take a look at the finished works, I think it paints a clear picture of the end product. It’s up to the organizer to choose the publish date for each & every article and which writer gets which game. I personally advise against two or more writers taking the same game, but if you want to do it differently in your collab, I’m not stopping you… It’s your collab after all. 

The tease

So, a few days ago, I put out a tease that I was doing one of these collabs again. Yet, I kept the series a secret. The reason for that is because I recorded a podcast together with Alex Sigsworth about gaming music. At the end of the recording, I teased that I was in the final planning stages of this sort of collab but I refused to reveal the subject. 

At first, he was going to be able to publish it today but sadly some editing issues popped up and he has to delay it to next week Sunday. I wanted to avoid him uploading a podcast where I tell that this collab is still a secret while I fully reveal it later before he uploaded it. 

Yet, we came both to an agreement that it’s fine for me to reveal the series while he will see what he can do in editing. I’m going to leave that fully onto him. So, it’s possible that he cuts everything out about that or he puts in a disclaimer that it’s recorded before this reveal… It’s all fine in my book. But yeah, I wanted to tell this “behind the scenes” story in case if there is some misunderstanding when the podcast does goes live. I’m quite looking forward to the podcast since his previous ones were amazing and it was a lot of fun to record with him. 

The reveal and such

A few writers jumped in blind already. So far: Andrew Fisher, Eric Fellner, TriformTrinity and Gaming Omnivore signed up. That you so much for that. Now, of course with 5 writers we aren’t going to be able to tackle a series that’s extremely close to a lot of childhood’s hearts… I want to catch more writers for this collab. I want to catch ’em all to have enough writers for this journey/adventure… And if it hasn’t clicked yet… It’s going to be about:

Yes! It’s going to be about Pokémon! 

So, if you want to help out in this collab, what do you have to do and have?

I would love it if you have your own blog or YouTube channel. I wouldn’t mind publishing one or two articles if you don’t have your own space but I would prefer it if you have your own space. 

If you are interested, feel free to contact me over mail, Twitter or Discord. (My handle is NekoJonez#5471). Give me a link to your own site/page and if everything checks out, I add you to the group. 

For this collab, all the articles will be in English. So, if you decide to write an article or make a video, it should be in understandably English. It doesn’t need to be in perfect English, but remember that it’s going to be a sort of “ad” for your blog/channel to possibly interest new readers/watchers. 

At the moment, there is no real name or publishing date planned for this project. When I have enough content creators, I’ll look for a date and time when everything can be published. We will look for a date that works for almost everybody. 

Keep in mind that I’m trying to get as many content creators as possible. So, that means that I’m not going to allow content creators picking too many games. And also, when a game is taken by a content creator, it’s taken by that content creator. If you want to trade, it should be agreed upon with both content creators and me. 

When you want to write an article, it has to be at least 1,000 words. If you want to create a video, I expect a video that’s at least 5-10 minutes long. 

If you want to read/watch the final product, well keep a look out on my blog and Twitter. More information will appear on there. But for now, I’m quite interested in who is going to sign up for this collab and I’m rather curious for the end result. So, who is going to join us on this adventure? 

With that said, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Review: Alan Wake – American Nightmare (PC – Steam) review ~ The Teasing End?

Wikipedia entry

So, before I begin at this article, I have to mention something for my readers. I found out that I made a mistake in the numbering of my reviews. I was off by 2 from number 15. So, I had some work fixing them all. But don’t worry, none of my URL’s changed. So, Remedy has released a sort of sequel to their amazing game Alan Wake. I haven’t written a first impression of this game, but I had written way back a first impression of the original. To be honest, you may call this game more of an extended DLC mission then an actual game. But I’m going to review it if it were a stand-alone game. If that’s okay with you. And if that isn’t okay with you, I’m sorry, articles don’t rewrite automatically like Alan Wake can. My apologies for that. Man, I haven’t even started with the actual review, and I’m already making references to the game. Anyway, my best buddy MiseryLC has watched an LP of this game. He found that this game was pretty sweet. But do I agree with my best buddy or are there some things in this game that make me dislike this game? Let’s see. Oh, like always, feel free to comment on this article and or the game. 

Compare it to the original? 

Would it be wise to compare this game to its original? Well, honestly that isn’t the best idea ever. Because there are a lot of things different in this game than in the original. While keeping the same formula, this game is nothing like the original.

Let’s first talk about the story. The story is told differently this time around. Real life actors played some cutscenes. While in the original, if I remember correctly, only small parts has been done with real actors. The acting scenes are extremely welcome and add to this game.

The story in this game is rather interesting. It aids the gameplay quite well. But the end of the story of this game is extremely weak. It was an ball to the wall action story with some little twists, but I feel like the first game had a way stronger story.

Let’s talk about the graphics for a moment. While my laptop couldn’t handle the highest settings very well, the normal settings gave extremely neat settings. The dark feel is back full force in this title then in the original. With some attention to detail, I barely have anything to complain about the graphics.

But, the collision detection is a totally different story. Some objects that you know can move, don’t. Yeah, ever had a chair that doesn’t move a pixel when you run against it? Thankfully, this issue isn’t that big and isn’t present with the enemies.

Nailed it!

I’m so sorry for the pun. Wait, you don’t understand the pun? Let me explain, there is actually a nail gun in this game. Yes, a nail gun. Remember my review of the original where I said that the selection of guns wasn’t the best? Well, this game totally fixes that!  The interface for selecting guns is a ton better.

There is also a use in game for collecting the pages. I don’t quite remember if there was a use in the previous game for them apart from getting the backstory. In this game they are used for unlocking guns. Interesting.

This game has some changes to the gameplay as well. Foremost, the health system works quite differently. You don’t fully get your health back. You can have 3 hits from the toughest enemy, and you die. But your health bar is now in three parts. So, when it’s somewhere midway the 2nd part, it will only fill the 2nd again instead of the third as well.

Also, the compass is quite useful. It has a bit more icons than in the original. You can’t see the full picture as far as I know, but certain clear icons appear when you’re close to ammo or light to regenerate health.

This game has also various new enemies. While the design of the enemies is the same then in the original, the new enemies more than make it for it. From enemies that duplicate when you shine light on them to enemies that can divide themselves into birds. It made the game more challenging, and I quite liked that.

Flaws

So, before we continue this review, I have to admit that I haven’t played the survival part of this game. It looks like fun, but it’s not totally my gameplay type. Yet, it’s a must-have addition to the game.

Anyway, the flaws of this game. For starters, the final part of the game is a tad bit too hard. Think back at what I said earlier, the game has an incredible weak ending. So in other words, you get a little reward for that high input.

The biggest flaw this game makes is that it’s extremely short. According to Steam, I finished this game in 5 hours. While I honestly don’t believe that, I can’t deny that this game is rather short.

Another thing that might turn people off is that there are very few settings in this game. Due to the nature of the story, you will see some locations several times. The variety in this game is rather low.  That’s a sad part.

Also, I have noticed three times that the scenery moved for no reason. And it didn’t get explained either. Why does a big cinema screen suddenly move from one side of the parking lot to another side? I’m sure I didn’t get turned around or anything.

So, before we end this review, notice how I didn’t talk about the animation, music and sound effects. If you’re interested in the game, check them out for yourself. And if you want to know my opinion, they are great. I just like to don’t talk about certain things of the game, so you have some surprises after reading this review.

Conclusion

The bad:

– Short.

– Weaker story than the original.

– Some repetition.

– Some things got unexplained that should have been explained, Dues Ex Machina’s and scenery that suddenly changes.

The good:

+ Classic Alan Wake gameplay with some tweaks.

+ Nice bonus story (while not perfect.)

+ Amazing design.

+ Unlockable.

+ Additional game mode survival.

+ Great soundtrack.

+ Great sound design.

Final thoughts:

If you want to buy this game, buy it on Steam. The low price of €9 is actually totally worth it. Don’t buy it for a larger price. Since this game doesn’t offer more value than that.

At the start of this article I talked about how this game should have been an expansion pack instead of a stand-alone. This would have increased my final score.

If you liked Alan Wake, don’t pass on this game. It’s a great game, sadly it’s short.

Score: 70/100.

Score, if it had been an expansion pack/DLC to the original game: 80/100

And that’s all I wanted to say about this game. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

NekoJonez: Review #016: Alan Wake (PC) ~ Departure

Official website

You would have thought that I would write my 15th game review on my blog. Yet, I decided to write it here on ButtonSmashers. Why? Well, to thank the guys for the great times they gave me and because Q gives me sometimes some free games and I think that means I need to pay him back somehow. So, I write an article on one of the best horror/adventure PC games ever made, well in the recent years. Besides, for me it’s all about reaching the milestone instead of the location. Another reason why I write it on my friends blog here is that I actually got this game for free from somebody of Arpegi. And my first impression is already on my blog. So yeah. If you want to read my first impression of this game, you can do that here. Anyways, unlike Alan here, I’m not in the dark. My dark, well black, cat is sleeping in my arms, making the time I spent on this review a lot longer then I originally planned. Oh well, the two additional collector edition episodes will have to wait. I have a game to review. In my introduction I always make it clear how I got to this game. Well, I got this game as a present. I was allowed to choose between three titles for buying someone a game. I knew the title Alan Wake from seeing it on a YouTube channel called Lazy Game Reviews. I wanted to link his video but the highly trained monkey’s of Google failed to work. (Yeah, YouTube has been bugging out for me. So, after some 500 error’s I gave up.) Anyways, enough stalling of this! Let’s get on with the review. Nothing special for the 15th, just a plain old review. And my plain old invite for you to write a comment what you think about this game and/or review. 

Manuscript pages

This game blew me out of the water. One of it’s many stronger points is the writing. It’s just an amazing story. Don’t go spoiling yourself because the ending is somewhat open ended and ready for a sequel. Yet, I haven’t finished the additional DLC’s yet. So, maybe I get my answers there.

I actually bought myself the novel version of this game. And I’m pumped to read it. I can feel Wake’s pain. He’s a writer who lost inspiration. Sometimes I have that myself. But apart from a story with deep and rich characters, it’s extremely memorable. It makes a lot of twists and turns. Even Alan starts to doubt himself from time to time. It feels more human.

The presentation of the story is what made this game for me. What’s going to happen in the (near) future of a chapter is written out on manuscript pages, some are extremely well hidden. Some provide backstory to the characters. While the pages play a very important role in the game, it’s implementation is just brilliant and how it should be.

I’m so sad that I finished this awesome story and this is one that I wished I could play over and over again without knowing the story. Where is that reset button in your brain when you need it?

Well, let’s talk about this game’s gameplay. And is it something where many game developers can learn from. You play the role of Alan Wake, like I told earlier, a writer who is in trouble. This game is a mostly linear adventure game, at some moments there are two or more paths, and it’s a shooter as well. But with a big twist. Before you can hurt your enemies, you must shine your flashlight on them. I only wish that not all enemies where male. But this is such an extremely big nitpick.

Ammo?!

In the game you use several weapons. A pistol, shotgun and a flare gun. You sometimes have flares and flash bangs at your disposal. And when you explore you can have more ammo as your reward. The additional batteries I found for my flashlight came in extremely helpful.

Yet with this comes on of my few complaints with the game. The weapon selection is not that great. When you play it, you will understand me better. But it’s as simple as putting everything under the scroll wheel. So when you wish to switch your flash bangs to flares without switching your weapon, well though luck.

And your objective is nearly always the same. Go from point A to B. Yet, the journey is always extremely different. From fighting through ambushes to driving a car to an other location, the game never feels really repetitive. This game also haves some major horror mixed in. From being in the woods with a lot of bear traps and the Taken following you to being in a hospital that is consumed by darkness.

I also love how the creators of this game hid several QR codes to scan in the game. I uncovered some GIFs with it. I’m so curious with I’ll find on my second playthrough. Yes, you read it correctly, I’ll probably play through this game more then once. Not only since the highest difficulty provides all pages to find but also because of several paths I didn’t explore and I wish I did.

One other complaint I have is that the driving is a bit broken. It’s too loose. You sometimes feel like you’re riding on ice. And with sudden tight corners in the road, this game makes the driving not so easy. Plus, your car can break down. Excellent, yet a damage meter is nowhere to be seen.

While the ammo for your weapons is extremely scare, you’ll never be without bullets. If you don’t waste them that is. With a human jump and a limited sprint, this gameplay can’t be any more talked about I guess. On to the next segment! Like in the game. It’s also in parts. And when you reach the next part, a quick recap plays. This makes being up to speed with the story such an easy task.

Well lit room

Let’s first talk about this game’s soundtrack. I like almost every track. Some songs at the end aren’t really my style but I won’t talk bad on the game because of this. The set the mood like it should. The music gets tense when it needs to. And the music gets lighthearted when there is drama.

And the sound design is how I think it should be in all games of this genre. All weapons are such a blast to use because of this. Except, I miss a bit of a ticking sound for the flash bang. But that’s the only change I would do in the sound department.

And does this game gets tense. A full 100% yes please! The further you go, the more I got on the edge of my seat. This game provides a lot of challenge. One or two parts where a bit unfair but hey, that I can let slip.

The level design is excellent. I never really felt stuck and it was always clear in which direction I should head. Thanks to the ability to press “F” to focus on the part Alan was talking about makes that you have more control in your hands and that’s something I can only applaud. The only thin I should have dropped was the clicking to start an engine for light. One time it got a bit too difficult to remain fun.

Oh, now I suddenly remember that I should have mentioned in the gameplay section that there are various additional collectibles to find. Well, now that I mention it here, I can say that this games it’s length is great. I have beaten it on normal difficulty in 18 hours. Yet, I know that I skipped some parts and I haven’t finished the DLC. And I truly look forward to beat this game again with the developer commentary playing in my headset. Yeah, I advice you that you play this game with a headset, it makes the experience a lot better.

There are also parts in the game that you play with a side kick. And it’s AI is great. I had moments where I really was saved by the AI. And there where moments where the enemies really took me off guard. And I like how the animation helps you see enemies swarm you from different directions. This makes the possibility of cheap deaths go down so much. But before we talk about that, I want to say that I had to try some parts several times. Not because of cheap things but because I was truly taken off guard or I took the situation on with a wrong weapon. The bosses really require that you use the tactics of the weapons and ammo that you have.

So to finish this review, I’ll talk about the visuals and animation. And wow, the visuals are just mind blowing. The excellent voice work really shines through here. With nice and extremely well done locations, it’s a joy to walk around in this game’s setting. Nothing feels out of place and the developer really made it in such a way that this game might be real as well. The character’s detail is also well done.

I also like how you get a nice death animation when you kill the last enemy of the attacking group or when you die. The animation might have a hiccup here and there, it’s not really noticeable when you don’t pay attention to it or when you don’t look at it with a reviewer’s eye.

So, let’s wrap up this special longer review here and let’s get right to my conclusion, shall we?

Conclusion

The good:

+ Amazing story.

+ Great setting.

+ Nice gameplay.

+ Decent length.

+ Pretty epic soundtrack.

+ And much more.

The bad:

– The driving is a tad bit broken. A damage indicator and improved driving would be welcome.

– The switching of weapons isn’t the easiest thing to do.

Conclusion:

When even MiseryLC talks about this game, you may be sure it’s quality content. He didn’t play this game, he only saw a let’s play of the sequel. And I agree with my statement there. This game is a mindblowing experience. One that every one should play that likes adventure and horror games.

The presentation is unique. In terms of visuals and the story. It’s different yet familiar. It’s really worth to check this game out on Steam and play it right now.

I truly had trouble looking for negative parts of this game. This is one gem that should be high on everybody’s list. And it’s even a port from a XBOX360 game. Take that, a well made port.

Play this game, you won’t regret it.

Score: 95 / 100