Tech Rally Water Guard
Some new Games I Own reviews are up on the site. They’re not of games that are frighteningly terrible, so you’ll have to look for hyperbolic remarks elsewhere, I’m afraid. I’d planned to have a few other updates to the music page and some of the shrines, but I just don’t have the time, to be frank – I’m occupied during the week and then I’m totally drained during the weekend.
I’ve been playing a really unnecessary amount of Pokémon Rumble lately. It’s… it’s an odd game to pinpoint why I’m still playing it. It’s fast-paced and has you in direct control of your creature, so it ditches the turn-based battle system that I just don’t have the patience for. But at the same time, it simplifies the game so much that it’s hardly even a Pokémon game.
The creatures are no longer creatures, but “toys” – this means they can’t gain experience points, level up, evolve or even learn any new abilities unless you shell out cash for it. Buying moves is the only way of ‘customizing’ them, and even that’s a totally randomised procedure – you can’t seek out TMs for specific abilities, you just pop a wad of cash in a bingo machine and are given a move to accept or decline. Arguably capturing monsters in the original game was a luck-driven process because you never knew if your Pokéball would hold, but they’ve dropped them altogether! Sometimes a creature becomes collectible after you beat it up. That’s it. Do critical hits or elemental weakness give better odds of capturing critters? Who knows!
It’s a totally brainless game and I’ve spent a lot of my sessions just studying it to see what makes it tick (I’ve written a whole bunch of notes to make into a General Writing if I think it’s worthwhile), but I’m still playing it and enjoying it. I think I just wish there was a game very similar to its simplistic pick-up-and-play nature but with a bit more depth and control over it, y’know. I think my beef with RPGs is that I love the idea of customizing weapons, equipment, abilities and stats on your characters… I just wish it were in a more interesting atmosphere than menu-driven turn-based combat with digits and numbers. About the closest game to it I can think of to Pokémon Rumble is maybe Fat Princess, but it’s more of a tower protection multi-player game than an RPG or whatever, it seems. Vexing!
