Gotta catch 'em if you can
Also Black Friday, and the timeless metaphor of brother against brother
Hello there! This week we’re taking a good look at the beauty and annoyances of Pokemon’s old and new, digging into some MTG goodness and of course rounding up a whole bunch of Black Friday options to feed your need for inadvisable splurging.
Happy consumerism weekend! Let us know over on Twitter @_pressanybutton if you get anything good.
Pokemon SV is a wonderful mess
By Tim
So much of the conversation around the brand new Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet concerns how poorly the games perform. And that’s fair; it’s below the standard you’d expect from an $80 Nintendo-published game. The low resolution and lack of aliasing, mixed with blurry textures and heaps of pop-in, makes for an open world that looks like a beta build a year out from release. And that’s not to mention the iffy framerate, dodgy collision detection and regular bugs.
To be honest I don’t think it’s as bad as some are making out, but the performance issues are unavoidably present. And that’s a terrible shame because, otherwise, this is probably the most fun I’ve had with a Pokemon game in around a decade.
The series has been throwing out established conventions in favour of more sensible and streamlined design for a while now, but things really click here in Gen 9. For example random battles in tall grass are a thing of the past, but they’re not replaced by a hokey or limited version of the same thing; monsters roam naturally, alone or in groups, in trees or in caves or wherever, reacting to you believably by fleeing or chasing or sniffing around. Flinging a ball at a random Psyduck in a pond to initiate a battle — right there in the open world with no transitions — is awesome.
And in fact changes like that are all throughout the game. Trainers don’t automatically challenge you if they see you, you only battle if you want to. Your “rival” this time is an already-established master who’s confident enough to give you a type advantage early on. And you get the legendary Pokemon from the cover of the game extremely early on, so it becomes your Pikachu-like companion (although it can’t fight).
The openness of the world is obviously a big change too. Rather than leading you from town to town, the game gives you three sets of objectives that make up intertwined stories you can tackle at your own pace. There’s no scaling so it’s easy to wind up in an area where the Pokemon are way too strong, but on the other hand you can always go to an under-levelled area and let your ‘mon off the leash to auto-battle while you take a stroll.
What to play
It’s Black Friday this week, which means slight discounts roughly on par with what you get in any other random sale, but with more marketing!
Several of Nintendo's first party offerings are 33% per cent off on the eShop, meaning they're around $53. This includes Xenoblade, Donkey Kong, Fire Emblem, Skyward Sword, Mario Odyssey and Metroid Dread.
On the PlayStation Store some big names are half off, including Miles Morales, Cyberpunk 2077, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, The Quarry and Kena.
In terms of physical stuff, the Xbox Series S is down $100 to $400 in most retailers, and PS5 games like Ghostwire Tokyo, Deathloop and Horizon can be had for under $50. NBA 2K23 is also 60 per cent off at Amazon and JB. If you haven’t already picked up a Nintendo’s special bundle is a non-OLED model in a slightly smaller box for $449 (this is not a good bargain). Or, you can go to Big W and get a Switch OLED model for $479, which is a better deal.
New to Game Pass in the last week are cutesy 2D platforming adventure Lapin, and highly acclaimed point and click Norco. And joining today is the stylish and much-anticipated shooter / martial arts beat-em-up Gungrave G.O.R.E.
This week’s new Apple Arcade Game is SpongeBob SolitairePants. Judging by the trailer, I (Alice) don’t think the people who made this game know what solitaire is, but I appreciate the effort. It looks cute.
Sibling rivalry, and other cliches
By Alice
When it comes to fantasy settings, there are a lot of things you expect: Dragons (obviously), a lack of women with agency, way fewer people of colour than the real world, and brothers locked in a fight that shows how troubled the world is that even families are turning against each other. Also, overly long sentences that need editing.
If you like those things, you’re going to love the latest Magic the Gathering expansion, The Brothers War. If you’re into the lore, it’s about two brothers who are at war and you, along with your fellow planeswalkers, are visiting important moments from Dominara’s history or something. I am not into the lore.
What I am into, though, is playing with a bunch of Artefacts that can return from your graveyard. If you’re also into those things, then you’re set to have a great time with Brother’s War.
I’ve been playing with the Jumpstart boosters, which is a really nice way to discover a set, because you don’t need to build a deck; just shuffle two boosters together and you’re ready to play. While I’ve read a lot about Meld being an important mechanic in Brothers War, I haven’t actually experienced it. But Unearth and Prototype have been coming up a lot. Unearth is an older returning mechanic that allows you to fish Artefacts out of your graveyard for one last hurrah, while Prototype lets you cast the card for a cheaper cost, giving it different abilities. Prototype is the most interesting, because it allows you to include far more expensive creatures in your deck, without locking you into having unusable cards in your hand if you draw them in the early game.
I’m hoping to soon draw some good Prototype cards so I can start adding them to my other decks, because I do love a big, expensive creature and being able to have more of them without penalty will be delightful.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Look, I hate Black Friday, you (might) hate Black Friday, but it’s become a whole thing and there are Lego deals to be had and Christmas is coming, and whatever. Here’s my pick of the Lego sales announced so far.
Over on the Lego website, the freebies will once again be the Winter Elves Scene and Tribute to Lego House, along with a Drawstring Brick Bag, but this time you have to spend at least $259 to get any freebie. If you buy the 10,001 piece Eiffel Tower set, you’ll also get a freebie of Eiffel’s Apartment, which is cute. There will also be discounts on items in the reward store, so if you took advantage of the double points last weekend, you can get a bigger discount this weekend. The actual discounts will come on the Lego website on Cyber Monday, but we don’t know what those are yet. Turning a sale into a giant riddle is frustrating, but also mildly entertaining.
Over on Amazon, the headline deal is The Mighty Bowser, which is $288, down from $400 (and I can feel my resolve crumbling). You can also get 30% off the Lego Nintendo Entertainment System, down to $279.20, and Princess Peach’s Castle Expansion Set for 40% off at $110 (Princess Peach sold separately). Getting away from gaming, the Jazz Quartet is down to $137.50, Botanical Bird of Paradise is 44% off, Sesame Street is 29% off, as is the Ideas Grand Piano (which is a spectacular build), and Assembly Square, my favourite modular build ever is 34% off at $295.20.
If Amazon isn’t your jam because of the human rights violations, then Kmart will likely also have some very good deals, though they’re more of a mystery aside from their half price discount on the wizards from that book written by a TERF, if that’s your jam.
When buying Lego on sale, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: It is always 20% off somewhere (or probably will be very soon, if it’s a new release), and if it’s more than 10c a piece (without any Power Functions), then it might not be a great deal.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Pokemon is the third best selling game series of all time. And yet, going back and playing the older entries can be surprisingly difficult. Counting remakes but not spin-offs, there are close to 40 different mainline Pokemon games spread across the series' 26 year history. But only nine of them are playable on Nintendo Switch.
So assuming you want to revisit the series pre-2018, and don’t want to resort to piracy, you’re going to need older hardware plus the games you’re after. Unfortunately, all Pokemon cartridges are phenomenally expensive on the second-hand market, and their popularity also means places like eBay and used games shops are filled with counterfeits. Some of the older games may also need soldering to get them back in shape, thanks to their ageing internal batteries (though my wife’s copy of Red is, somehow, still going).
If you're not bothered about having physical copies, but still want to stay above board, grab a 3DS. The digital store has the original Pokemon games from Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 6 and Gen 7, as well as remakes of Gen 3. A 3DS will also play the cartridge versions of Gen 4 and 5, if you’re willing to find them, meaning with one machine you can play versions of all the games not currently on Switch.
The caveat here is that Nintendo is in the process of decommissioning the digital store on the 3DS; you can't pay with credit cards anymore (you need to use point cards or the balance from a linked Switch account), and as of March 27 purchases will be impossible altogether.
Given all this, it isn’t surprising that old Pokemon games are very commonly played using emulators and pirated ROMs. Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance are very easy to emulate on essentially any computer or device. Some won’t be able to emulate the real time clock tech found in some old Pokemon games, but the community has long since produced patched versions of the games to get around this (you simply re-enter the time every time you play.)
It’s a shame that things are so complicated, because virtually everyone who ever had a Game Boy has heaps of nostalgia for these games. Hopefully, one day soon, a Game Boy app for Nintendo’s Switch Online service will make the whole issue moot.