HandsomeDead

Since my team wasn't working I tried to build another and I'm doing better but the pits of Master Ball are chaos. Everyone is messing around with gimmicky or off meta decks so it's so hard to plan pre-game. I'm messing around to but nobody else should be allowed. It's this: It's just mostly made up of Pokemon I like, rather than the "best" so I shouldn't feel so tilted at the losses but I am. It's still overall better than my last team, though. I also started to try and rank up in singles. I have a different team for that as I have no idea how to build for singles so I copied one I saw (I just picked it because it has Mega Clafable which I found amusing). I can play the games fine but singles is... I dunno, I just don't have a good grasp of it. I'm in Ultra Ball atm but it has been a harder climb. Probably because more time has passed and there are more serious people playing.

So getting to Master Ball wasn't hard after all 😅. A couple of small losing streaks but i made up for it. When youre in Master Ball you become part of a ladder to see where you stack in the world so i was feeling good about seeing what i could do but ive immediately lost 5 or 6 games on a row. The last one was really bad, just against a basic team that the first guy to get to the top cut posted and I've gone against it loads of times, usually beating it as I knew to be mindful about countering it when building my team* but i was so tilted from the previous games I was making the worst plays. *Incinaroar, Primarina, Mimikyu, Aggron, Gengar, Kommo-o. I think I need a Ground type. Still don't have Garchomp as that is probably the missing piece and sub out Gengar. And @Maf stop watching and get on it!

I got into Ultra Ball rank! Now I'm looking at Master Ball and I know it's gonna be Sisyphean. I did it by dropping Meganium for Kommo-o and this weirdo helped a lot. I know Ultra is gonna be full of Mega Floette and this team needs more work. Ive swapped Sneasler for Incineroar and made it slow as possible to help in Trick Room. I solely used that strategy as rain and Dragonite wasn't cutting it and I need something Steel or Poison to deal with Florette, and slow. There's a few options so I guess it'll be lab time before my Ultra climb. I wish I had my Alolan Muk, I became a fan of him my last Sun run, and to make my team even more Alolan.

You can't move items, you have to get all the mega stones from Champions itself anyway. I think there is something to do with the special Floette from that game. I think it gives you the mega stone if you move it.

I've been trying to get into the competitive part of Pokemon a bit lately so having this fresh version of it that is so much easier to build teams for is an amazing way to learn. Despite it being limited to about 200 pokemon there is still a massive diversity of teams. I get caught out all the time and don't feel like I'm close to having a solid knowledge of everything to make reads and exploit my opponent. I have an okay selection of pokemon because I pulled some from Pokemon Go, Omega Ruby and Sun (but moving pokemon from the pre Switch games is an ordeal 😮‍💨). I must have had some from White 2 but they're all legendarys that aren't in the current format, and from some competitive I've watched they are never used. They've been power-crept I assume. Filling out my collection has been easy enough with more recent pokemon. There is a gotcha system in the game where it rolls 8 pokemon and you pick one out of the set (you can do this once a day no cost but after that you need an ingame currency which I do have lots of but I'm being careful with it atm). I didn't mind the system at first but when you start looking for specific 'mon it becomes a bit frustrating. I wish there was a way to gain something specific. Garchomp is something I think would be good for my team but it isn't turning up. Speaking of my team: Not a great pic but it'll have to do. Its not great but its mine. I know there are Youtubers who show strong teams but my experience with the TGC I'm always better with my own teams because I know my stupid mind and how it works so I tend to pilot teams by others badly. This has got me to the high end of Great Ball rank but I know it needs a lot of tinkering.

The remake has another developer tied to it: Flying Wild Hog. I guess they're doing the grafting. I know them from doing those on the nose shooters like Shadow Warrior, Hard Reset and I'm sure it was them who did Gears Judgement. I've liked they're stuff. So I think Catalyst is the only one with CD's full attention.

I dunno how new it'll be. In fact the animations lead me to believe it may just be mostly new graphics over Anniversary. Could be wrong but we'll see.

So there's a new game in 2027 (Tomb Raider Catalyst) and a remake in 2026 (Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis). Hard to say what the new game will be like but what I can gather from the tone of the trailer is something more like a pulpy adventure, closer to the older games. The remake I think I'm much less interested in, since I think it looks a lot like Anniversary. Certainly seems like the core it's based on.

I only picked CoD because I thought it'd be a safe bet. Not keeping up with it tbh. Surprised to see it flounder so hard.

I guess they're sticking to something more standardised this time and following Steam Deck's model. But I guess it'll be produced in limited quantities again. I dunno if it's going to try to truly go up against mainstream consoles. Maybe they don't need to.

Uh oh, it seems Rockstar is at it again. https://gtaforums.com/topic/1004182-rockstar-games-alleged-union-busting/?do=findComment&comment=1072605777 Looks like the cause of the delay is they're out here firing senior staff and union busting.

Tied to the dev costs and dev cycle is back then in terms of the licence holders attitude is they thought of these games as merchandise for the movie, like a lunchbox or an action figure. You can't allocate the budget a AAA game needs now. A Fortnite skin or a mobile game, sure. As cool and as well intended some of those games were I think games have outgrown this sort of practice, probably for the better. Arkham Asylum was its own adaptation and that's probably what needs to be done now, and what is mostly done.

Well that's a big blow to me, it was what I was most looking forward to out of their portfolio. Can't remember the last time I was more disappointed by a cancellation 😐

I mean yeah, but gaming wise I think it has been fairly normal 😄 I dunno why I was so convinced at the start of the year Death Stranding wasn't gonna come out.

It's more naturally incorporated, You're not choosing something to miss out on another style of play but it expands it in a similar way. Some weapon classes need to be relearned though. Though as a Charge Blade user predominantly at this point, that class is still disappointingly similar where the wire bugs abilities didn't add much, but others it's like a new weapon.