New review blog location! Yes, it's moved again.

I'm pretty tired of dealing with whatever "changes" they're making to the editor that makes it hard to... well, edit. Therefore, the new location of the review blog is on my website. If you click that link, you'll be right at the review blog part of it. It's just easier for me to deal with the HTML part once on my own terms instead of having to undo an accidental new paragraph when I just wanted a new line through a dozen steps. I'll set up a specific RSS feed for that part of the site once I get a new post on there, but for now, it's just a mirror with fixed links. Again, just go to the review blog part of my website and you're good. I'll leave this blog copy up for now at least, but it won't be getting updated.

Pokémon Design Ranking, Generation 5

Here we go, a divisive generation that's also being looked upon as being the best one in the wake of whatever Sword and Shield are doing, but people will also probably argue it's the worst. It even took me a bit to warm up to these designs. They took a sort of "re-inventive" angle to have exclusively new monsters initially for the games, so there's a lot of role re-filling as well. This is the last of the "sprite" games though, despite having many 3D features, the characters are generally sprites in these games, so there's some interesting stuff there to consider for how characteristics were shown. There's also a whole lot of monsters so this took a while to get to with everything else I was doing.

Steam Game Festival Summer 2020 Demo Reviews

At this point, any gathering that's not a protest is effectively canceled eternally, possibly through next year as well, and at that point it may be more than protests that need to form for all I know because I'm not some kind of clairvoyant, more of a pessimistic analyst at times. At the moment, though, I'm balancing bandwidth between having downloaded a ton of games from bundles and just outright free games, and this new flood of demos for future games that just showed up on Steam. This time I'm looking to cover a lot more demos than I usually do, between finding several that caught my interest and there just being a whole bunch in general. Some from previous demo things have returned, but I've already posted my thoughts on those, given they haven't changed much. I'm focusing on ones that I haven't done yet.

Ludological Narrative Convention 2020 Demo Reviews

With absolutely every physical convention being made non-existent for probably the entire year, at least, more time-limited demos are being uploaded to Steam, regardless of whatever exclusivity the game itself has, so not sure why they insist on not being on Steam but the demos are. This brings us to the virtual LudoNarraCon, something I don't really pay much attention to normally so already it's working. The games and demos here more seem to be really "indie", as in there's a lot of dialogue and slower paced gameplay and also a bunch of things where either choices matter or there's some kind of message or both. Not so much the type of "indie" that involves roguelikes and hardcore platforming. But there's still the retro pixelated art style because that applies to anything. I've decided to go over a few demos briefly, namely for games that aren't already in my library through giveaways or bundles.

Steam Game Festival Spring 2020 Demo Reviews

So while everything else in the world is going on and I'm mainly just waiting for things to happen in Animal Crossing, I decided to check out some of the trade show type demos that showed up on Steam recently. Some are repeats from last time they did this from the Game Awards, so I found some new ones to look over. Just some unscored impressions here, nothing too in-depth.

Pokémon Design Ranking, Generation 6

On the continued backwards journey through Pokémon designs by generation, next is the first 3D generation, as in the main games on the handhelds were in full 3D and not sprites in a 2D environment, so there was a start of a disconnect between the art and how that translated to 3D, especially given that they really wanted to maintain an "anime" look for the "main" games. Also they made the models way too high-res for the system in an attempt to future-proof it. This covers the games from Pokémon X and Y to Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, but the really high-res models continued into the next generation.

Pokémon Design Ranking, Generation 7

I'm going backwards this time, like I have with other things, so this time I'm reviewing Generation 7 Pokémon designs, the generation of the last main Pokémon game I bought as things are now. Since I'm more familiar with the designs from here on back, this may go more smoothly as I've seen these monsters up to a lot of things by now. This may count as spoilers for Sun and Moon and consequently ULTRA Sun and Moon but whether you're wanting to go into this blind or knowing is up to you.

Pokémon Design Ranking, Generation 8 (Initial)

There's a new Pokémon game, and this time that means new Pokémon, and I feel like I should review the designs of Generation 8, just happening to finish this right before I've borrowed a copy of Sword to see if there's any fuss to fuss about. Regardless of how that goes, if I can still like one thing about the series, I'll go with the monsters themselves, even if all the games from the one before this one on leave a bunch out. To try to give the designs a fair chance, I'll have to see them in motion given the whole everything using models thing with the tendency for "default" resting poses, plus if I get to find any official 2D art I'll factor that as well. Of course, since this counts as spoilers for Pokémon Sword and Shield, anyone wanting to avoid those should probably get to a point where they know about all the new monsters on their own accord before continuing to read.