Well the new site is here. Our unions are gone and new changes are to be expected. It's fine so far though I did find something rather amusing. Gamespot cites my most commented blog was one I wrote back in 2007 titled "Best Games You Never Played" which is a fine article that gave some attention to some, now fairly well known cult hits like Psychonauts, Okami, Beyond Good and Evil. However anyone who has followed my blogs in the last, oh six months or so knows back in May I wrote a little article about Microsoft and some crappy stuff they tired to pull? Ring a bell?

I wrote a blog titled "Do the Right Thing" urging gamers to not give into M$'s crappy business practices because if the public bought the Xbox One as it was originally pushed, the competition would follow suit. This article garnered a whopping 1000+ comments so I not to mention subsequent blogs similar to it that I wrote also got a lot of comments. So it appears someone as GS accidentally refrenced the incorrect article as being "most commented."

No GS I understand this is a new thing and I'm sure you're still getting the bugs worked out. I can be reasonable though many of us found it a little funny how right after the Xbox 180, the featured blogs site had erased a lot of blogs that were posted after May especially since many of those were also "anti-Xbone" sentiments. Now I know that Game reviewers "claim" to be "unbiased" and would never alter site content because of some corporate company right. Like Gamespot would NEVER fire a reviewer for not giving a certain game a good review because the publisher paid for ad space right?

So GS, please fix you're little "mistake" and please cite the blog I wrote that actually did get the most comments. Just because you try to sweep all the old "anti-Xbone" blogs under the rug and act like because MS did their 180, that people will suddenly forget about what they tired, doesn't mean we will. I can always post a number of youtube vids or old articles as can anyone here. Microsoft loves go on about how their sh*t don't stink but if you recall after Sony's $600 mess, it was a couple years before gamers forgave them and it took them several good first party games and a price drop.

Anyway GS, good luck with the new setup.

Well I'm all moved in to the new place. My husband started on midnight shifts so I have to keep pretty quiet during the day and use the time to go job hunting, run errands, etc. For those who were wondering. He's got a job with his Air National Guard unit and doesn't get furloughed because of this stupid government shutdown, so he's still working thankfully.

After a couple weeks of game sites only talking about GTAV, I get back online to all sorts of gaming stuff. New 3DS Kirby, Sonic is going to be in the new Smash Bros., Steam started their sharing program and GTAV apparently sold a ton of units and is making all the money in the world.

I got some of my gaming backlog caught up namely both Zelda Oracle games and Mario and Luigi Dream Team beaten. Just want to say the final boss fight of M&L:DT is annoyingly long. I hate bosses that heal themselves. And I'm currently working through Ni No Kuni now. Though I REALLY want to get Puppeteer especially watching Video Games Awesome live playing it.

I want to say that games like Smash Bros. are really good if you want to get a kid interested in a certain game franchise. My 8 year old nephew played both Brawl and Melee and because of that, he got into the Kirby series and now that Mega Man's in the new one, he's interested in Mega Man so for his birthday I found a decently priced copy of Mega Man Anniversary for the Gamecube on Amazon to send him. He has no problem with old school graphics. He has the Sonic Classics Collection for the DS and loves playing those too. This is hope for the future. Also after playing PS All Stars, he's become a Ratchet and Clank fan as well. This pleased my best friend, Megan who is like the #1 Ratchet and Clank fan.

Well this was just some ramblings today. I promise I'll get back to writing some more in depth stuff once I have time to get caught up on all the gaming news.

So of course going around the gaming sites, all I'm hearing is about GTAV which is ashame because it means other titles like Rayman Legends, Puppeteer, Wonderful 101 and so on will get overlooked for yet another round of free roaming thuggery. I honestly through after this installment and with so many other takes on this like Saint's Row and Red Dead Redemption that maybe we'd all be burned out by this series by now, but I guess not. It's once again getting showered with nearly perfect scores and fanboys throwing a fit when it gets something lower than a 9.

Oh what's that PC gamers? You're sad that it isn't on a platform that's clearly capable of running it? Guess what, that's how Nintendo fans feel every time a game is announced and no WiiU version. You learn to suck it up and move on. So stop your crying and go play Saint's Row IV or something.

I was never into the GTA series. When GTAIII got ported to the Xbox way back, my husband picked it up and being the sort of person that wants to try out a super popular game just to see what all the fuss is about. I played it and after about an hour or so, I was bored. Why? Because I found it repetitive. Get in a car, drive to a location, beat up someone, rinse repeat. Sure you could get bored and just randomly drive around making chaos but that sort of thing never appealed to me and I got really annoyed with a mission where I had a limited amount of time to drive a car to a location without banging it up which for me felt impossible. You can't drive fast because of traffic and you can't just tear the car to pieces and I couldn't figure out how to drive it there in time without banging it up. I'm sure there was some super short route I missed but I hate that whole trial and error sort of thing. My husband liked GTAII best back in college but after GTAIII never bothered with the other installments.

I'm not going to waste time talking about it not having a female protagonist (once again, you want a female, go play Saint's Row IV) or whatever violence contreversey might surround it or the fact there are parents who buy this for their kids then complain about violent video games.

Probably what gets me, is the insanely high reviews for a game, that to me, looks like the same thing only 3 protagonists this time around considering the same game journalists are always ranting about Mario, Zelda, Call of Duty and Madden doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe because the gap between GTA installments gives us time to miss it as opposed to an annual release like CoD or Madden. Although in recent years, the number of "GTA clones" has dropped. For a while there everyone was using that formula it seemed, Scarface, Godfather, Cars 2 even using the sandbox formula because, well it was reliable and popular but at least now, we can do other things in a sandbox besides kill hookers.

Really I don't care about GTAV. Everyone go have fun stealing cars and killing hookers for the 5th time. I don't have time to play much of anything right now as I'm moving in just a couple days so this might be my last blog for a while. Maybe by the time I'm moved in to my new place, the gaming websites will have something to talk about OTHER than GTAV again.

So continuing my look back at Mario's short lived comic book series, the stories I found the most amusing were the ones that delved into Mario's comic book fanboyism for the fictional hero Dirk Drainhead. As I said in the previous blog, Mario was allowed to have something resembling a personality in the comics and looking back now, in a time where comic book superheroes are the biggest thing around, Mario being a comic fanboy is quite amusing.

Bedtime for Drainhead

Full spoilers ahead.

In this story Mario goes on a 72 hour comic reading bender I assume reading all the issues in chronological order and then says "the scary thing is I'd do it all over again." Then promptly falls asleep. Luigi busts into the room waking Mario to inform him that Bowser kidnapped Toad. Why Toad and not Peach? Who knows, maybe Bowser was tired of doing the same thing every week. Oh wait he catches Toads from time to time too.

Mario basically says "f*** Toad" and demands to be allowed to go to sleep. Gee Mario, you'll fall all over yourself to save Peach, but seem content to let Bowser have Toad. Then again Toad won't give him "cake" if he's saved. We assume that at least Peach puts out for him every time she's rescued. But there we go thinking too much into the Mario universe again.

Luigi and Peach realize they have to get Mario's lazy ass out of bed to save Toad and Luigi's prepared to get violent as the panel shows him with ice water, a radio, an alarm clock and various other things. However the bedroom door opens and Mario is standing there with his plunger and a towel he's wearing as a cape and declares he's Dirk Drainhead and he must go rescue his hapless sidekick "Snakey" (Toad) from his arch nemesis "Pipe Ooze" (Bowser). Luigi explains to Peach that Mario is prone to what I have termed "Sleep Larping." Where he is asleep but acting out the comic book. While this explanation is going on Peach and Luigi don't notice Mario has climbed out the window and making his way towards Bowser's castle.

Peach: "Luigi, is Dirk smarter than Mario?"

Luigi: " Well just about everyone is."(like I said, Luigi is vastly different in the comics then what we know)

Mario proceeds to go on a homicidal rampage across the Mushroom Kingdom leaving destruction is his wake. Luigi and Peach try to follow the path of carnage left behind. Meanwhile at Bowser's castle. Toad is just sitting there on the arm of Bowser's throne while Bowser looks pitful. Seriously Bowser didn't bother locking him up or anything. I think this was one of those days Bowser just phoned it in.

Toad: "Just wait until Mario gets here! Then you'll be sorry."

Bowser: "Keep it down the kingdom's Most Wanted is coming on and I want to see dad."

Mario busts in but neither Toad or Bowser is aware he's asleep and thinks he's a comic book super hero. Mario and Bowser get ready to fight.

Then it cuts to later that night, Luigi and Peach are tired and frustrated because they got to Bowser's castle and couldn't find Mario, Bowser or Toad. They come inside only to find Bowser serving drinks to the king while Mario (still sleep larping) stands guard. Bowser basically says he'll do what they say as long as the nutjob with a plunger stays away. Luigi and Peach see this as a good thing. Bowser's their servant, Toad's safe. Then the King, in his idiocy says "Mario's more valuable asleep than awake!" and slaps Mario on the back and he wakes up. Mario looks around confused and Bowser realizes what's happened.

Bowser: "YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THIS GUY TOOK ME DOWN SINGLEHANDEDLY...IN HIS SLEEP!!?? I can't believe I wasted my whole afternoon with you guys!!"

Mario: "Hi Luigi. Hi Princess. Hi Koopa. Hey wait. Is koopa supposed to be here?"

Everyone starts to storm out of the room. Mario asks "when are we going to save Toad?" and Toad replies "next time I'm captured!!"

And Mario is left alone in the throne room where he finds a comic lying around and sits to read.

I told you the comics had some goofy stories. Just wait until Mario and friends go to a Dirk Drainhead Larping convention.

Believe it or not, there is an audio version of this story you can listen to here.

http://vimeo.com/12602415

So while going through stuff to pack for my move coming up, I found these.

These are old Mario Bros. comics I had as a kid. The four paperbacks were sold at my local grocery store near my home and each week, I took my allowance money to pick them up. The hardbound one, I picked up at a toy store, some years later.

For those who don't know. In the late 80s, when the NES was everywhere and Nintendo was a little more laxed on their properties, Valiant (that was bought out by DC) published The Nintendo Comics Zone, a series of comics based on popular games at the time including, Mario, Zelda, Metroid and the Captain N: The Game Master series. I never got to read the Zelda or Captain N comics. These were based on mostly Mario 1,2 and later on Mario 3 with a special issue covering the Game Boy's Super Mario Land. (I'll get to that one)

Note: This is not to be confused with the awesome Nintendo Power comics based on Mario World, Link to the Past, Starfox, etc.

The Mario comics had some things in common with the Super Mario Bros. Super Show in that Bowser was the green, crocodile looking thing called "King Koopa" but the comics stayed in the Mushroom Kingdom instead of silly made up worlds where Bowser kept changing identities and Wart from SMB2 even showed up for a couple stories. Other interesting things the comics featured.

The Mushroom King Toadstool, yes in the comics, Peach wasn't just a princess because it sounded pretty. She actually had a father who was the king. Sadly the king was a buffoon, think the Sultan from Aladdin. He's not evil or tyranical, just an overgrown manchild. We all know Peach from the games is pretty ditzy but in the comics, she actually comes off b*tchy which I'd take that over brainless ditz any day.

Wooster, where Peach had Toad as her assistant, the King had Wooster as his retainer. Wooster was sort of the uptight butler who also realized the King was an idiot and often said this to his face. At one point the King gets pissed off at him and kicks him out, where he goes to work for Bowser only to have Mario and Luigi convince him to come back at the end.

But of all the things the comics did, looking back, the biggest aspect was Mario had something resembling a personality. Even die hard Mario fans accept that Mario, like Mickey Mouse is devoid of personality but in the late 80s, writers of the comics and cartoon shows were allowed to give him some personality. So what was Mario's personality? Well he was still the headstrong, take action hero but also a bit brash and sometimes jumped into action without thinking things out but probably the most unique aspect, looking back now was Mario was a comic book nerd in the Mario comics.

Yes. Mario was a comic book fanboy.

In the comics, being somewhat meta, Mario is a huge fan of Dirk Drainhead, a fictional superhero plumber. He has every issue of the comics, knows them all by heart, and even cosplays as Dirk in a story where they go to Pipeland for a Dirk Drainhead Larping trip. I'm not making this up. This is something that gets on Luigi's nerves. Luigi's character is vastly different here than in other mediums as well. Mainly he's the more mature brother who at times gets annoyed with Mario's brashness and Dirk Drainhead obsession. Peach actually gets into the series, or rather the Dirk Drainhead spinoff series "Baroness Blueblood."

As an overall comic series, I won't say you should go out of your way to find them unless you're a die hard Mario fan. The artwork is pretty sloppy and there's no real continuity and while the characters have the most fleshed out personalities they ever had in the comics, it's nothing really deep. But going back and reading some of these, there are a few clever jokes and in a time now when comic book super heroes are so mainstream now, the idea of Mario being a comic book nerd is rather funny in hindsight.

Perhaps I'll write a couple blogs, talking about some of the better stories.

So after some deliberation, I finally picked up Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch mainly because I lucked out and Walmart had a bunch of copies for $30. I would like to have gotten Xenoblade Chronicles but we all know that right now you have to spend $90 for a Gamestop "used" copy (apparently they're doing the same thing with the Metroid Prime Trilogy).

Ni No Kuni was one of those games that I considered but wasn't a day one purchase for me mainly because I don't like a lot of things modern RPGs are doing like overly long cutscenes or tutorials that go on for half the game, but at the same time, this was made with help from Studio Ghibli who as you know, I like their movies despite not being big anime fan.

When I started playing the game, since the PS3 is at my mother in law's house while my husband works until we get moved (which is hopefully really soon) but I was up there visiting with my nephews who were visiting grandma before school started. They're 13 and 7. The older one wanted to try out my copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf and the younger one saw Ni No Kuni and it's E10 rating meaning he knew he could watch me play it and actually said he wanted to see it. The 13 year old is a big MST3K fan so feels the need to make sarcastic comments now and then. He's also at that weird age where he doesn't like colorful cell shaded games like this or Wind Waker and yet he was sitting there playing Animal Crossing as well as the evening before he commandeered my download of Ducktales Remastered and played through it before I got to play it.

Spoilers ahead.

So for those who still don't know what the games about. There is a young boy named Oliver who lives in Motoville which is a 1950s era town. His buddy Phil coaxes him to sneak out one night to check out the go kart he built. So Oliver is test driving it, when his mother wakes up and realizes he's gone. She arrives just as the wheel on the go kart breaks off and the car steers widly into the water. Video Games Awesome made the point of "he can drive stick but can't swim?" Oliver's mom rescues him but somehow the stress of this causes her to have a heart attack and die which seemed kinda odd to me. I guess she couldn't do her deathbed speech if she had been hit by the car or drowned.

Then comes a "FEELS" scene. Oliver is sitting alone in his room, adopted(?) by the shopkeeper lady remembering a time a few years ago where his mom gave him a stuffed toy and Ollie starts to cry onto his stuffed toy. This was a sad scene but luckily Ollie's tears bring his toy "Mr. Drippy" to life and he's Scottish (actually someone later told me he's supposed to be Welsh) but there's something to be said about a sidekick who basically will tell the hero, he's an idiot. But after some insanely long exposition, Oliver is told his mother has a look alike in Drippy's world and saving her may bring his mom back to life and like Harry Potter, he's told he's a wizard and the one destined to save the world from Volde-er Shadar.

So we FINALLY get into the Fairy world and reach the overworld which looks fantastic. Bright green rolling hills with shadows of clouds moving around and I get into battle. Now I will admit that I'm not too good with these sort of "hybrid" battle systems. In a western RPG, you can just run up and start wailing on the enemy and turn based JRPGs will stop the action while you select your next attack but for a good while, I was getting my ass handed to me while I was trying to select things from the menu while the enemies were running at me. The first area in the forest, they keep it rather easy but when I got to Ding Dong Well, I was dying left and right and it took a while to get the hang of the system.

You also get "familiars" which are little Pokemon-like creatures except that if a familiar dies, you die as well unlike Pokemon where they fall in battle, and you just swap them out. This is a bit annoying though after a while you get the hang of bringing them back when health is low or keeping a look out for Drippy to drop orbs if needed. That is one nice thing about this "Hybrid" RPG system is the ability to run around the fight arena and dodge some enemy attacks. Also familiars are really involved in mainly trying to find the right food for them to build up their stats, then again if I had played more Pokemon games, I might have gotten used to that.

Still it is one of the best RPGs I've played in a while. Even on Easy mode, there's still a lot of grinding involved and there is a lot of talking and text at times but there's a lot involved with quests like taking feelings or enthusiasm from one person and give it to someone who's "brokenhearted" or lacking in a certain feeling, so there is ALOT to do in this game and I've barely scratched the surface.

I also like that there are cat people in Ding Dong Dell. The 13 year old nephew was going to make a crack about it except that I pointed out that in Skyrim which he's currently playing, there are cat people as well, along with lizard folk as I recall from Oblivion. So now I'm interested to see what other unusual places I come across.

So yes, I'm liking this game a lot and hope to play more soon.

So as everyone knows now, Gamespot is giving itself an overhaul. In fact I got an email to the Google group beta but haven't had a chance to sign up.

I was wondering what was going on when they removed "Awesome User Blogs" from the front page meaning, no matter what blog I posted, it wasn't going to be featured on the front page which upset me as I only recently got the Soapbox icon.

The big change coming is the end of unions which upsets a lot of users especially if you had a fairly active union. I used to be in a bunch of them but now most of them are nearly barren.

Also everyone's level gets reset to 0 and emblems are gone replaced by an achievement system. That's a pain for someone like me who spent a few years getting up to level 63 and has written ALOT of blogs and reviews.

Of course perhaps this overhaul will finally fix all the glitchy problems this site has had for a while now. Like when you post on a forum and get that bigs OOPS page which happened ALOT after E3, you know the time when sites like thsi are going to have a lot of traffic.

Hopefully I can continue on, over on this new site and people will read my writing. Of course with my move coming here, I won't have a lot of time to write.

Good luck to all.

So it's official that Sony will no longer be supporting new content for PS All Stars, namely those who hoped for new characters and stages as DLC, that's done.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/sony-ends-support-for-playstation-all-stars-battle-royale-6412500

Playstation All Stars Battle Royale was a game that fascinated me in that I was surprised it didn't come out sooner. When you look at the amazing amount of Mario Kart clones out there and how popular Smash Bros. is, it's a wonder everyone isn't making Smash Bros. knockoffs. Sure there's stuff like TMNT Smash Up, Punch Time Explosion, Shrek Super Slam and some anime based ones but they're not as omipresent as other knockoffs.

When PS All Stars was announced I was curious, mainly to see if Sony could pull this off. Nintendo fans cried foul from the start but honestly it's not the first game to "borrow" from a popular series. Die hard Sony fans were convinced it would be the Smash Bros. "killer" and be 100 times better and in the end, that didn't happen.

It's really a shame because as someone who loves SSB, I felt like PS All Stars had a lot of potential that was wasted and the final product seemed more like a quickie cash grab than a loving homage to the Playstation. Here's what I think went wrong.

The battle system: PS All Star's "AP system" was unique forgoing health and damage meters in favor of building up power to KO opponents. You can't go into PS All Stars and play like you do Smash Bros. You learn that within the first five minutes. This was a mixed bag for a lot. Some loved it and saw it as a more "Hardcore" fighting mechanic, others felt like it might have been better off just copying Smash's damage meter gameplay. I couldn't help but feel like the game was unbalanced as some fighter's level 3 attacks required no work like Spike's laser or Parappa's singing where others like Nathan Drake's zombification required him to run around to KO everyone and it doesn't take long to figure out which attacks build up the most AP the fastest and you end up spamming those as much as you can. It also makes the stage hazards and items, pretty pointless which is fine if you're one of those who plays Smash Bros. with "Final Destination. No items" all the time. I personally play Smash Bros. to have fun.

Meager offerings: Like Smash, PS All Stars is best played with friends but that doesn't excuse the measly single player offerings. You could play through each character's story, or do the trials but not much else outside of that. Now I'm not shedding a tear over the new Smash Bros. dropping the story mode but that aside SSBB had event matches, unlockable character trophies, music, stickers and challenge modes. PS All Stars didn't have much for solo players and half the unlockables had to be purchased. One one hand it was nice all the fighters were there from the get go, but then one of the funnest parts of SSB is seeing that "Challenger Approaching" screen and unlocking someone else which brings me to....

Lackluster Roster: People love to complain about Smash Bros. adding and cutting characters but in the end, Nintendo tries to get in at least some characters we want. We wanted Sonic. We got Sonic. We wanted Mega Man, we're getting Mega Man. Smash could have a roster of 100 that included all Sonic characters, Master Chief and Sora and fans would still whine that Steve from Minecraft should be in it. Meanwhile when PS All Stars was announced, fans begged for Crash and Spyro, Activision was on board with the idea and what did Sony do? Zeus and Issac from Dead Space because the game didn't have enough white guys. You want a fighting game with a disappointing roster, PS All Stars delivers that. Even more annoying was the number of things in the game being nothing more than an advertisement like Raiden in his Revengence attire or including dark haired Emo Dante no one liked just to promote DMC. And fine Crash, Spyro, Lara Croft and Cloud are third party, I know a number of PS fans who could name a ton of actual Sony first party characters that were left out like Tomba. If Nintendo will drege up characters like Ice Climbers and ROB, then I think Sony could've dug Tomba out of the grave.

And while PS All Stars had a much more reliable online component than SSBB (not like it was hard), I've heard rumors of issues with leaderboards and belts being incorrectly awarded.

The saddest part is, there was potential for this to be something great. It could've been to Smash Bros. what Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed was to Mario Kart, a knockoff but a good knockoff. But Sony cut ties with Superbot and seems uninterested in making Playstation All Stars 2 and maybe improving these things like getting characters we wanted, adding more single player content but nope seems they'd rather cut their loses and move on.

In the end, I honestly saw some things in PS All Stars that I'd like Smash Bros. 4 to incorporate like the alternate costumes (free of course), the 2 in one stages and the little rivalry cutscenes.

What a shame and what a lot of wasted potential.

So some of you have wondered why I haven't blogged much recently and while I've had ideas of stuff to write about, quite frankly I haven't had the time.

My husband has a job in Pittsburgh and is staying with his mom until we get affairs in order here at home. For me that's a matter of getting our house on the market and sold and looking for a new place to live closer to his job. These past couple weeks have been really hectic as we have a buyer for our home and have to deal with all the paperwork involved in getting this done.

This means I've had little time to game or write blogs. So don't expect a ton of new blogs for a while here. Plus now with E3 over and a lot of the big releases not coming out for a couple months, I thought I could back off for a bit.

I am happy to say I got Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon and Kirby's Dreamland 3 both beat so at least I'm making a dent in my games. Hopefully Paper Mario and Zelda: Oracle of Seasons will get finished soon that's if Animal Crossing: New Leaf wasn't so addicting.

Perhaps once we get a place to live and get settled, I'll finally get a WiiU. No point in buying a new console just to have to pack it up and all.

Anyway this move it a bit nerve racking for me right now but I'll still be around.

So for a while I had contenplated trying a Pokemon game. I am a Nintendo fan and it does feel somewhat wrong to be a fan and not at least try one of their biggest franchises if just to see what all the fuss is about. After asking some friends about a good one to cut my teeth on that I could play on my 3DS Heart Gold/Soul Silver was suggested which is of course the updated version of the origina Gold/Silver game remade for the DS. I will say, getting a copy of this one is tough. New copies on Amazon run upwards of $100 and used isn't much cheaper, especially if you want the Pokewalker that came with it. I finally by sheer luck found a used copy at Gamestop for $40 and figured I wasn't going to do much better given the rarity of it.

First off, I feel bad for anyone that did get this one used as it's a pain in the ass to delete the previous save file. Most games if you select new game, it asks to overwrite the data. This one doesn't do that. You have to go to the title screen and hit select, up and B at the same time and then it asks you several times if you're sure. Mainly because of the Pokewalker which I don't have so I don't care, but I guess this is good for those kids, who have annoying siblings who go around accidentally deleting save files. My nephews talk about this all the time. How many of you have had a kid brother erase that 100% save file on a game because either he couldn't read or wasn't paying attention? Also the file erase thing is not the easiest thing to do on the smaller model 3DS due to the select button.

So with THAT annoyance out of the way, I was ready to begin my Pokemon adventure. It is nice I can be a girl though my sprite looks funny with her pigtails. I got an email from my friend "Ethan" who says "I like Pokemon." Thank you William Shakespear. Anyway I get to Dr. Elm's lab and there's a creepy stalker outside his window. Ok. But my character decides not to tell Dr. Elm that a creepy person is spying on him and instead am told to go to Cherrygrove City to find Mr. Pokemon but not before getting my first Pokemon. I decide to go with Totodile who I name "Crocky." Yes I know, Cyndaquill is the best starter. Shut up and let me play!! OMG I move so slow and I don't get any Pokeballs to start which makes me mad as I wanted to catch stuff in the tall grass I was wading through but at least Crocky gets XP and I like that he follows me around and I can talk to him. With my bag filled with potions and a cell phone, I make my way to Cherrygrove City to find Mr. Pokemon.

And no sooner do I arrive than a creepy old man wants to show me around town and gives me running shoes to move faster. Thank God but seriously, why did I have to get shoes to run? Why couldn't that have been there from the start? I go to the store for Pokeballs and they're out. F*** but I buy some more potions, pick up an apricorn bag and eventually reach Mr. Pokemon's house to pick up an egg, then it's back to New Bark Town.

And along the way I meet up with the creepy stalker chick....wait..IT'S A DUDE? What the hell? But the hair...and.. oh never mind. He sics Chikorita on me and I take him out fairly easy. I return the egg to Dr. Elm and now is when I officially begin my Pokemon Trainer journey and my buddy Ethan gives me Pokeballs. Horray! I also decide to send money home to mom because, we're in deep with Tom Nook and the Racoon Mafia. Told her not to go to him for a home loan. So in no time I catch myself a Pidgey who a name Thunder and a Senstret who I name Fluffy. Sometime later I get a Kakuna and make my way to violet city. I fight a couple kids and some of the bug Pokemon enthusiasts. A fella in town says if I find a Bellsprout, he'll give me an Onyx and as luck would have it I wander into some grass shorly after and nab a Bellsprout and a Mareep. Stupid Crocky knocked out the Ekans before I could catch it but at least I could do my Onyx trade. This was around the place I stopped.

It's easy to see the appeal of this. You get into the action fairly quickly and it's not long before you're catching and leveling up Pokemon left and right. I'll probably stick around in the area because there's some ones like Ratatats and Hoothoots to catch and a cave to explore and I don't think I'm nearly ready to take on the first gym leader.

But I am getting into this game which is suprising because I didn't think I would.