Random Stuff #52

I've been wanting to post stuff, but there's really nothing to discuss anymore.  As you know, I haven't been playing Yu-Gi-Oh competitively, so there's really nothing to discuss with regards to that.  I'm waiting for more updates for Kaijudo (organized play and such), and there's never anything to talk about for Vanguard.

But yeah, recently, I've just been playing through some video games.  I finished Pokemon Colosseum without wasting a bunch of time power-leveling all of my Pokemon.  I got everyone on my team up to Level 48 then went for the final boss.  It was kind of difficult, but the fact that he used a Slaking that basically lost half of its turns due to its ability made it pretty simple, since I could just gang up on the other Pokemon he had out.  Yeah, Double Battles were a large part of why I really liked Pokemon Colosseum; they're more exciting than Single Battles.

I also liked how the game was about making a balanced team as best as you could with a bunch of random Pokemon.  There were no wild Pokemon to catch; you had to steal ("Snag") Shadow Pokemon from other Trainers to make your team.  My final team ended up being Typhlosion, Jumpluff, Quagsire, Ampharos, Flygon, and Altaria.  I already decided from when I started the game that Jumpluff and Quagsire would be on my team, so I caught Quilava (over Bayleef and Croconaw) to balance out the team.  I also wanted to use Gligar, but then I realized that Flygon is just better than Gligar in every way possible, since Gligar can't evolve in Generation III.

But yeah, in previous playthroughs of the game, I used the three Legendary Beasts (Entei, Suicune, and Raikou), but I decided against it this time to make it more of a challenge.  So yeah, Ampharos just filled in the spot for the Electric-Type (and its Special Attack is ridiculously good), and I wanted another Flying-Type so that I could use Quagsire's and Flygon's Earthquakes more effectively, so I used Altaria.  There were no other good Flying-Types that could use Ice Beam (you get Delibird too late in the game for it to be effective, even though it would have STAB on Ice Beam).

So yeah, I was able to beat the final boss and all of his Level 60 Pokemon even though none of my Pokemon were above Level 50 by the time I faced him.  That was pretty fun.  And, I had so much fun playing Pokemon that I went back on Pokemon Battle Revolution and started playing some of the Colosseum Battles.  I chose the one where you use a team of rental Pokemon, but you can trade one of your Pokemon for one of your opponent's at the end of each battle.  You start with two "Rental Passes", and I chose the one that conveniently had a Rotom on it.  It was the better team anyways, but having the Rotom made it an easy choice.

And playing all of these Pokemon games reminded me why I liked playing Pokemon competitively.  Even though luck can play a large role during battles, you ultimately have all of your options available to you.  That is, opposed to a card game where you can only work with what you draw.  In Pokemon, you have your whole team of six Pokemon at the start of the battle, and you have to choose how to use those Pokemon to the greatest effect.  Sure, there are stupid things like critical hits (6.75% chance), getting frozen by Ice Beam (10% chance), and missing with moves like Charge Beam (95% accuracy), but skill plays a large role.

Unfortunately, I dislike Generation V to a great degree, so I refuse to play Pokemon Black/White anymore.  Not to mention that competitive Pokemon takes up a huge amount of time.  I mean, when I did play Pokemon competitively, that was basically all I did.  There was just so much to do: EV Training, breeding, testing IV's, getting TM's, balancing your team, studying every Pokemon people would conceivably use, and other such things.  I left power-leveling off the list because you only need to do that to evolve Pokemon or learn certain moves, and that could be accomplished by leaving your Pokemon in the Day Care and banding/clamping your DS.  But yeah, I don't regret wasting my summer all those years ago like that.  It was fun.

Anyways, before playing Colosseum and PBR, I was playing Assassin's Creed Revelations and Assassin's Creed III.  I can't really talk about these because there are too many spoilers and such.  But yeah, the AC: Revelations disc I had access to had the first Assassin's Creed on it, which I had skipped over (I started at AC2).  So, I tried playing it, but when I got to the first real mission, which was to travel over 1 kilometer to Damascus to talk to some guy, I quit.  All of the walking in AC3 before you get your Fast Travel points was irritating enough, so I definitely wasn't going to waste all of my time traveling in a game whose story I already knew.  Not only that, but you somehow lose your ability to counter kill at the beginning of the game.  You can't expect me to believe that Altair just magically forgot how to counter kill just because he was demoted.

But yeah, since I'm done with all of that, I decided to make a competitive Kaijudo deck so that when organized play is announced, I'll be ready.  Not only that, but Aki and I are going to record videos tomorrow and I wanted to use a new deck.  We tried to think of new Yu-Gi-Oh decks to use, but there's really nothing to try.  We haven't really gotten any new cards since I bought those two manga with Number 50: Blackship of Corn, neither of which I have opened...

Yeah, same old, same old.  Yu-Gi-Oh is stale, I'm waiting for Kaijudo tournaments (which hopefully won't be on Sundays...), and Vanguard is as skill-less as ever.  There's really nothing to talk about.  Now you can see why this post was dominated by my discussion of Pokemon.  But, I did find out that there will be a Yu-Gi-Oh Regional in my area in March, so if the ban list cleans up the game and the tournament organizer realizes that he needs to book a space that can hold up to 1000 players, then I'll be going to that.  But that's still months away, so yeah.