Category: Game Features

In-depth features on games of all eras. Items in the ‘Game Features’ category contain strong language.

Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 28)

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There’s a certain time in every Pokémon game, it might come after about the fifth badge, when your team is fully established and indeed, most of them are fully evolved. It’s around this point of the game that you might begin to encounter the below creatures and ask yourself the classic question of Blackjack: do you stick with the previously reliables, or twist with some of the new shakers below? Well, that’s what I’m here to help you with, innit? Just don’t blame me if you’re left with a load of undeveloped babby Pokémon before the sixth Gym Leader battle.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 27)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 27)

Ice creams and gears, we’re at the heart of Generation V now. The last great Pokémon Generation, I called it. But listen, these things are always cyclical. I’m only denouncing later Generations now, the ones that younger players love today, in the same way that people probably dumped all over Generation II when it was the most gobsmacking thing I’d ever experienced, at the time. And if you go still further back, older folks would have looked at me memorising all of the original 151 Pokémon, their types, their moves, their cries, and said “put that down, you fool. Go out and get yourself a girlfriend.”

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 26)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 26)

We’re just about getting to the halfway point of the Unova Dex, which is traditionally where the Pokémon designs begin to get a little more interesting. You’re far away from the generic birds and rats, and getting into heavy metal crocodiles and ghostly coffins. Mind you, you occasionally get the odd trashbag cropping up in places of the Pokédex where it really shouldn’t be – like Stantler being near Blissey and the Legendary Dogs in Johto, or the many generic Water types taking up residence next to the Regis in Hoenn. This time around though, I fear the trash may be just a bit too literal.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 25)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 25)

Every Generation starts off with a bit of juice. You’ve got the Starters, some quickly evolving Bugs, and even the common birds have been taking level ups in coolness. Pidgeot and Fearow, classic though they may be, were hardly far removed from real-life birds. But Staraptor and Talonflame? Now we’re talking. Unfortunately, you do eventually have to get to the cave dwellers and fishing fodder. Bottom of the barrel merchants, these guys. You won’t find Zubat in Unova, you’ll be happy to hear. Instead, it’s… Woobat and Swoobat. So that’s tedious and uninspired, then.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 24)

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Welcome to Unova, featuring the fifth Generation of Pokémon, a New York City ripoff and probably the last Pokémon region truly worth visiting, if you really want my opinion. You won’t catch many Pidgeys and Rattatas on your journeys through the Unovan Routes, oh no. It’s a whole new batch of Pokémon to get you immersed in the new world, not a single Pokémon related to earlier Generations to be found here.

Of course, you know that Game Freak wouldn’t have changed things that drastically. You still have your Water, Fire and Grass starters. You still have generic birds and rodents, and a bug or two. Or twelve. Certainly it’ll be a while until we get to the robo-insect WMD and the dragon with heads for hands. As a general rule of thumb, with the exception of your starter Pokémon, you should always pick your team from the latter half of the Regional Dex.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 23)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 23)

It doesn’t come as a surprise anymore that the Legendary Pokémon are so numerous that I have to divide them up into two separate parts. As I’ve said before, if every Pokémon is legendary, then none of them are, although you at least make sure to catch the one that appears on your version’s box art. That’s usually the easiest way of making yourself a battling god.

And speaking of god, if you’re a very talented trainer, by which I mean you’re either able to time travel back to 2007 when Nintendo events were being held, or if you had a flash cart and were good at hacking, then you could quite literally catch god, as you will see below. No, not the god of application forms or interior design or anything small-time like that, we’re talking about the god of everything. How overpowered is that?

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Super Smash Bros Pub Fight Tier List (Part 11)

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Super Smash Bros Pub Fight Tier List (Part 11)

It’s been pretty emotional, and stressful to the body too, you know. I have to sit down and imagine what it would be like if I was relying on, say, Sonic the Hedgehog, to bail me out of a pub pagger. And if he can’t, I have to imagine what it’s like to get a clump in the head off the biggest, most boozed up nutter at the forefront of the aggro. To do this, I hit myself in the head as hard as I can while screaming for help from the Ice Climbers. You can call it method writing.

So you needn’t be too sad about these pieces coming to a conclusion, because it’s all a load of nonsense anyway and there probably isn’t a single character in Smash Bros Ultimate who sitting alongside won’t get you targeted and bullied, apart maybe from Snake.  And one of these days, you never know, I may do a tier-list for every single Smash Bros song based on their suitability to a pub Spotify playlist. Would you read that…?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 22)

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Oh me, oh my, we’re getting into the Sinnoh Legendary Pokémon now, where even if I became a Rap God it’d still take me all year to get through. I beg only 10 or 15 minutes of your time today to at least get started on… if you’ll let me check my notes… the Lake Trio. I suppose it’s better to start wit hteh inoffensive before getting righ tdown to the dream destroyers and time purloiners.

I’d better keep it in my pants though – no, Cynthia hasn’t just walked in with a sort of “where’s Burkey” expressiono on her face, but we need to finish off some new evolutions to old Pokémon first. I know, I know, I’m as sick of them as you are, but don’t worry, I’m sure they can’t all be as bad as Rhyperior.

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 21)

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We’re definitely getting to one of the most interesting parts of the Sinnoh Pokédex now – some long awaited evolutions to older generation Pokémon. It shows you that Pokémon fans don’t know what they want, though – we were all crying out for some new evolutions to old favourites, and then when we finally got them, we all complained just as much, as you shall see in a moment.

And now look, there’s been a number of generations that have come out since Diamond and Pearl, and evolutions to existing favourites have become scarce again, though not so scarce that Farfetch’d didn’t get some treatment. We’re never going to be happy, us Pokéliebers. But in our defence, would you be happy with Rhyperior?

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 20)

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Building the Best Pokémon Team (Part 20) NOTX

There comes a time in every man’s life when he realises that it’s over, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Generally, this is when a man walks into the baby section of a department store for the first time and realises he now needs to appear knowledgeable about their baby’s health.

You may not know what to ask for when you’re in there, but fear not because I’m about to take you on a tour through the Pokémon Gen 4 Baby section. You should recognise some of the faces – they look just like your mates twenty years ago, back when you all used to have a booming social life.

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