Tag: QandA

why do you not like weezing?

Like I said, my reasons are really kinda petty.  I just don’t like the change from happy, smiling Koffing to bloated, miserable, lung-cancer-y Weezing.  It actually is quite a creative design, and you could even interpret it as illustrating the accumulating detrimental effects of air pollution (or cigarettes?) on a person’s health, and I can easily understand why other people would like it.  It’s just not my cup of tea, personally.

I know you may have a lot of pressing requests by many on this grand website, however, I implore you to perhaps make a segment covering NPC’s that stand out, like your divine wisdom applied to those witty characters (…or witless fools) in a comedic fashion. For example: Ghetsis: a manipulative spawn of all horrors witnessed in the bowels of hell, who is also fanatically Intelligent (as opposed to those happy “i got a rattata who can kick your ass” NPC). Maybe cover Looker and Cynthia as well?

I actually covered Cynthia last year, if you want to take a look, along with Blue, Lance, Steven, Wallace and Alder.  I’m planning to do a series on the rivals as well (probably including Wally and N), but heaven knows how long it will take me to get around to it.  As for Looker… hmm.  Y’know, I’d never really thought about it, but I probably could spin out a piece about him.  I’ll see if I can wedge it in somewhere.

You know I realized something when I had a discussion with a friend of mine. Pokemon is technically one of the few legit “safe” franchises, as in that it continuously makes a lot of money whenever a game comes out. The fact pokemon stuck to the same general although they did make a lot of specific changes is even more amazing. What do you think of pokemon popularity then and now? Although the craze disappeared long ago, how would you guage its popularity then and now?

I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to get around to answering this one; it’s been sitting here for goodness knows how long and I keep thinking I’ll come up with a good answer if I sleep on it, but I never do.  Honestly, I don’t really have my finger on the pulse of the Pokémon community, so to speak, so I don’t know that I’m qualified to judge how its popularity has waxed and waned over the years, or talk about the reasons for it.  I suppose I would guess that Pokémon ‘works’ as a franchise for two main reasons.  The first is that its game mechanics are easy to learn (good for the little kids) but difficult to master (you can keep getting better and better at it as you grow up).  The second is the sheer variety and whimsicality of all the different creatures (an impressive selection even in the first generation, let alone now), which manages to capture, I think, just a little of the bewildering complexity of nature.  I don’t think it’d be bold to say that there really is a Pokémon for everyone now, and a fan for every Pokémon (even if I do like to spend an inordinate amount of time bashing some of them).  I suppose it makes sense, when you look at it that way, for Game Freak to focus so much of their efforts on continuing to expand the Pokédex.

Hmm.  I will think on this.

Would you consider doing a Top 5 or Top 10 Pokemon you find boring in terms of what they do, in an effort to give them something more interesting? I ask because I love Fearow… but he’s just your run of the mill birds of prey, and I can’t really think of anything he already has that could be pushed somewhere interesting.

Hmm.  I do rather like that idea, but for the fact that it would be very difficult to order them; blandness is, by its very nature, rather difficult to quantify.  I sort of have two or three other projects lined up for after the playthrough journal that I’ve already been putting off for far too long, though, so this might have to be a ‘distant future’ one.

In a reversal of a previously asked question, who would you say is your least favourite Pokemon of each type? Also, this discounts Probopass, because we already know he’s your least, least favourite, and considering what you did to poor Garbodor…

I’m almost tempted to have a ‘rematch’ with Garbodor, just to explain more eloquently why I still don’t like him.  Almost.  Anyway.  Hmm.  There will, naturally, be some overlap here with my Top 10 Worst Pokémon Ever list, but not too much, I hope.

Grass – This is still Sunflora.  She’s just so unforgivably bland – I mean, really, a plant creature that likes sunlight?  How long d’you think it took them to come up with that one?

Fire – This is actually really hard; there are quite a lot of Fire-types with really weird, interesting designs, like Magcargo and Heatmor… for lack of a better answer, I’ll go with Simisear for this one.

Ground – Um… dunno.  There aren’t a lot of Ground Pokémon I strongly dislike.  I guess probably Sandslash, for reasons of generic-desert-creature-ness.

Poison – I was going to go with Weezing, but then I remembered that Amoonguss is a Poison-type, and my reasons for disliking Weezing are kinda petty anyway, so let’s pick Amoonguss.

Electric – Hands down, this is Manectric, whose flavour is pretty much “whoo, look at me, I have electrical powers.”  Well done, Manectric.

Water – Probably Kingler, for reasons recently discussed.

Rock – And I can’t say Probopass?  Fine, um… probably Gigalith, for being Golem 2.0.

Flying – …I have to pick just one?  All right, all right, uh… probably Unfezant, mostly because he’s just the freshest in my memory.

Ice – Beartic, again for reasons of blandness.  He’s one of those Pokémon where you could probably just stick the equivalent real-world animal into the game in his place and no one would even notice.

Normal – Again, just one?  Erm… Let’s see… I’m allowed to pick one that just plain bugs me, right?  Lickilicky.

Bug – Don’t even ask.

Ghost – This is a tough one… there are so few Ghost Pokémon, and I just think the type itself is inherently interesting, so it’s hard to pick one… probably Banette, but don’t read too much into that.

Fighting – Conkeldurr, for being Machamp 2.0.

Dragon – This is another tough one because there aren’t really many Dragon-types that I dislike, but I can get out of it by saying Rayquaza, for whom I have irrational hatred.

Psychic – Can I say Chingling?  Not for any reason specific to Chingling, necessarily, but because it was obvious to everyone that Chimecho needed an evolution, and Game Freak decided to mock him by giving him a baby form instead.

Dark – Mightyena, because “this Pokémon is good at team work and will only obey skilled trainers” is pretty much the whole story with her.  (And because I know someone will bring it up, yes, I’ve read this article, no, I don’t care)

Steel – Hmm.  I sort of have a vague mistrust of Steel as a whole because I think it screws over the game balance so badly, but there aren’t many specific Steel-types I have serious problems with.  Um. Genesect kinda bothers me, for a variety of reasons, one of which is the whole ‘mecha’ thing which I still feel a little guilty about because I know it’s very subjective, but what the hell, this is about my least-favourite Pokémon; I can be as subjective as I want.

Y’know, there are rather a lot of Unova Pokémon in there.  I suspect this is, more than anything else, because I invested so much energy into hating them.  Probably warped my mind a little bit.  Hmm.  Oh well.

Hey there. I’ve been reading your blog, and noticed your rant on the HM system. Something that always bugged me is that HMs seem to be extremely basic techniques for Pokemon. That’s not the problem, though; what bothers me is that you have to teach your Pokemon how to do it. For example, why on earth do you need to teach a Gallade how to cut? Or your Drifblim to fly? Or your Vaporeon to swim and dive? Waterfall’s at least excusable, but still. Just wanted your input on the subject.

When did I do a rant on the HM system?

I mean, I’m sure I must have; someone’s probably asked me about it before, only… I don’t remember what I said…

…oh dear…

Er… anyway.  I’ve seen a lot of people handle this by saying that the knowledge conferred by an HM is not just about how to use the skill in question, but how to use it in a way that is useful to humans.  Teaching a Pokémon Surf, for instance, does not equate to teaching it how to swim – most Water-types, obviously, already know how to do that.  It’s teaching a Pokémon how to swim with a human-sized passenger (not necessarily a trivial thing).  I’ve actually seen it suggested that the technique Dive creates and maintains a bubble of air to allow a trainer to breathe while accompanying a Pokémon on an underwater excursion.  Similarly, flying unencumbered is an entirely different proposition to flying with a 12-year-old kid hanging off you, hacking away at a rigid, immobile tree requires a rather different kind of cutting action to slicing through an opponent’s flesh, and shifting a massive boulder may require not just raw strength but a precise application of force to a single point.

It’s not a perfect rationalisation, but I think it works.

I am unsure if this has been asked previously, but do you see main character customization coming in the future? I really think it would add a more personal touch to the games…

Hrm.

Well, they do already allow a degree of customisation by allowing you to choose your avatar for multiplayer functions from a list of trainer types, but further than that…?  I don’t think it’s likely.  Game Freak seem to take the whole ‘silent protagonist’ thing very seriously; I think they regard it as a point of philosophy that players be encouraged to imagine as much as possible about their own characters, rather than actually see it on the screen.  Besides that, the focus is always on the Pokémon anyway.  Not that it’s impossible, or that it would be a bad idea necessarily, but I don’t think they’re likely to do it.