The Damned

Well, I like to turtle in general. I love making bases and setting them up to withstand attack. Sadly, no one else likes doing this, so all my games end up with giant rushes or are over far too quickly. Maybe it's all those 3 to 6 hour games we used to have in Starcraft 1 and Homeworld... but I just love long, drawn out, battles that take hours to finish. So yeah, I'm finding SC2 isn't the game for me in that respect.

Weeeeeellllll, fucknuggets. Could just be a really well-timed prank to discredit, or could be a really good fake-out on everyone. Also, nothing from the latest episode of Pokémon Sunday, so I guess they didn't mention any news this week.

I wouldn't mind some sort of updates log of stuff happening as you play, maybe cover some info that most sites will gloss over in favor of details about game mechanics.

Knowing Game Freak, the fire starter will be pure Fire type with Thick Fat, so it takes even less damage from fire-attacks. Belibe it!

One of our in-group artists has submitted what will be the final album art. I've decided to use it because of several factors: 1. The artist was with us earlier, and has already done some of our artwork. 2. The project is dragging on long enough as it is, so a final design is ready and just needs to be polished up a bit. 3. The cover in question has most of the required elements I've asked for, and is pretty much ideal. Thank you for your effort, but we aren't going to need any other artwork at the moment. Thanks, any way.

On a more official news side, remember that grass-monkey thing from before? It seems that it has fire and water counterparts, by the names of Hiyappu and Baoppu, respectively. So, in a way, you can get a alternate set of starters. Don't like Smugleaf? Get a Broccomonk. Couldn't get a DerpDerp (as if you wanted one anyway)? Get yourself a Baoppu. Someone took your fire-piglet? Shame on you, you should have smashed that person in the face with his own pokéball and took it for yourself. But now you can grab a burning monkey thing. No, not the Infernape line. This is totally different, I swear. Also, the final forms of the starters have been revealed... or not. There's a slight chance these are still fake, but all reports from trusted sources are saying they're legit.

Well, I got one of those requirements (two if you really wanted to get technical, with some random stuff I've contributed)...

FACT: Everyone on-line is an asshole. Totally insufferable, and totally dickish.

Refresh my memory: do we have the option for personal avatars? I can't seem to find it on my user control panel. But I see a few here and there that aren't listed in the ones we can choose from.

Meh. It's just the old 8-bit music. Most of us have it already, those that don't are most likely not interested in the original music any way. If they played remixes instead, maybe that would be interesting, but as it is...

I told you, it's a curse! No one will ever complete it, it will just kill all that work on it until we are all dead! Dead, I tells ya!

If the US did declare games as not protected by their Constitution, then I suspect we will see a big drop in US-based companies, with a large increase in Japanese and European developers. I wonder what this would mean for Microsoft, as they are the only non-Japanese console developer. Most of their games are made by US developers, and if they pack it up or move out of town, they could see a big drop in software sales. Sony and Nintendo would still have all their Japanese companies (and Nintendo's own in-house people) to fall back on, but in the North American market, even they would suffer losses. You know what? I think it's time for MS to start throwing some cash and weight around like the old days. They have the economic, social and political clout to fuck over the entire "games aren't protected" bullshit. Come on, Microsoft, show us the old, evil bastard MS we used to know and love to hate.

WAit... Didn't this game (somehow) destroy everyone that was working on it? Isn't Gearbox just going to end up having all of their staff dying in a earthquake-induced fire or something? The game is cursed, I tells ya!

OK, so I noticed this little thing called "practice league", and thought I would give it a try. 0 for 2, but at least it's not as brutal as getting put in with serious (and downright psychotic) players like Starcraft 1 would do. That went so badly, I stopped playing online for a few years It was just that bad. But the nice thing I've noticed about SC2 is that it seems much more designed towards getting you to play better, whether off-line or on-line. They have challenges in single-player to practice common tactics and get a feel for units and their specialties. Multiplayer practice (and I assume the ladders and leagues) pits you against players of the same skill-level, which really cuts down on the "I just can't compete against these guys, so why bother playing anymore" shit that happens to a lot of newer players. Remember all those games you felt like shit after playing, simply because you got your ass kicked? This makes up for it. In fact, even though I lost both games so far, I got some really good attacks in, and in the 2vs2 game, we actually did a lot of damage to one guy, so much that we forced him to abandon that base and hole up with his buddy near his base. We still lost, because the Terran guy had fuckloads of Vikings, but damn, it was still a damn good game. Thanks Blizzard, for making up for twelve years ago. That's just awesome.

The following people need to submit their "pokédex" entry to Cerrax at some point. Just look at the other to get an idea for what to write. GenericAsianGuy andyjayne Chrono26 chthonic Fishy gslicer halc Jaroban pu_freak Rozovian tweek Nothing to fancy, just a little blurb about yourself, Doesn't have to be super-accurate, but it does have to be done. If not, Cerrax and myself will start making things up for them. Things like "enjoys BDSM" and "once raped himself with another persons hand", maybe even "convicted felon in eight countries".

Not to be an ass (even though I actually am one), but shouldn't the Link's Awakening album stuff go in the Link's Awakening album thread?

We have another person working on another version of the cover. Maybe we'll end up with two versions... like some sort of game series that did that as well. Can't place the name. Oh yeah, now I remember! Digimon! Man, someone should totally do a album for that.

No, it does BOTH!! Tsunami, for water, and volcanic eruption for fire and ground. It's a goddamn three-type combo attack, in one move! Diglett are fucking hax.

Nah,it makes perfect sense. They dig on the sea floor until they need to attack, and then BAM, tsunami.

There is no real style of music, yes. The idea is to take the various songs and just have fun with them, like you would in the game. Play it your way, if you will.

OK, the first thing I'm going to say about any artwork is no pixel art, especially using game elements. No thanks, not happening. It's using far too much of the original game material, and it looks plain and derivative. There might even be some legal issues about it, but ignoring that, it just reeks of lack of imagination. This is a chance for some really good original artwork to appear, and instead of slightly editing the old sprites, how about we get something that stands out and doesn't crib from GameFreak?

OK, so it looks like they are putting some sort of story in besides the usual "prof, gyms, badge, team of baddies, thanks for buying, see you again in three years for the next game" that we've had since the beginning. Go to 2:03, and watch the cutscene with the coronation. There's something about a king, and how it relates to the region of Isshu. Not to mention the overall increase in quality in general. Music, sound, game mechanics, characters... this may very well be the most refined generation ever.

I thought we ran that joke into the ground a long time ago. Does this mean it's back?

Trying to get artwork sorted out now. Depending upon how things go the next couple of days, it will be taken care of sooner or later. Vague enough?