Tag: Super Mario Odyssey

Nintendo Just Announced Its New Pokemon Game and It Looks AWESOME

By on • ( 1 Comment )

This is not a drill guys, this is what we’ve been waiting for all these years. Nintendo/Game Freak is finally releasing an open world Pokemon RPG. It only took 21 years, but here it is; Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield.

I was super bummed last week when Nintendo unveiled its annual Nintendo Direct, which they use each year to tease everything they have coming up, because there was not a single mention of Pokemon. But a bit later it was revealed that Pokemon would have its own 7 minute Direct video and my brain was off to the races.

Sure you could argue they already did that with Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu and Lets Go Eevee, which looked great, but they were really just a port of Pokemon Yellow. This will be the first open world Pokemon game in 3D on a major platform.

If you have followed The 300s even a little, you know that I am a diehard Pokemon guy since the days of Pokemon Red back in 1998.

I think the last Game Boy I owned was Game Boy Advance, after racking up the original and Game Boy Color. So needless to say I missed just about every game between between Pokemon Crystal and this, not counting N64 titles. So anything from 3DS or the likes never made it into my home.

It’s a funny story of why it took so long too. The Nintendo Switch has been out for just about 2 years, but we’re not getting new Pokemon titles until “late 2019,” nearly a full 3 years after the system dropped. Why would Nintendo wait this long into a system’s lifecycle before releasing one of its core IPs? Especially with Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild being monster hits on Switch? Well, the Pokemon CEO literally thought Switch was going to flop.

The man in charge of all things Pokémon says he specifically warned Nintendo about its latest console, the outrageously popular Nintendo Switch. He thought it was going to be a failure.

“I told Nintendo that Switch wouldn’t be a success before it went on sale, because I thought that in the age of the smartphone no one would carry around a game console,” Tsunekazu Ishihara, CEO of The Pokémon Company told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “It’s obvious I was wrong.”

Glad we got that cleared up Tsunekazu because I am jones-ing for some new Pokemon in my life.

Super Mario Odyssey was awesome, but Zelda Breath of the Wild was one of the best games I’ve ever played. It really showcased what the Switch was capable in terms of world building. I think they have as evidenced by the long delay in the game’s release, but I hope Pokemon takes that example to heart. With that being said, the new region, Galar, looks incredibly vast so fingers crossed.

With a new region comes new Pokemon and they only introduced your new starting 3, but as usual its a grass/fire/water type sophie’s choice.

And heres a couple of mockups of how the game will actually look in your hand:

Now “late 2019” is a ways away so thats disappointing, but at least we’ve got Detective Pikachu to look forward to. A movie that has no right looking as good as it does. It also comes out on my 30th birthday. Coincidence? I think not.

Nintendo Brought the Heat at E3. Lets Break it Down.

By on • ( 1 Comment )

If you’re reading this then I assume you already know, but for those who don’t, E3 is the annual video game convention, Electronic Entertainment Expo, and its where publishers showcase new and upcoming games. Its where new consoles get announced, new titles are revealed, but most of all its where all the blazing hot trailers are released for upcoming video games. And Nintendo brought the heat this year.

To be honest, this is the first year I’ve been excited for Nintendo’s E3 announcements, probably ever. The Switch is the first Nintendo system I’ve owned since N64. As I’ve joked about before I have absolutely zero brand loyalty, so good luck marketing to me. I went from the original Nintendo to Sega to N64 to Dreamcast to PS2 to Xbox 360 back to PS4 to Nintendo Switch. So yea, not a lot of continuity in there. With so few console exclusives that are actually worth it theres little reason to stay loyal to just one system.

But I am back on the Nintendo bandwagon and they’ve crushed it out of the gate with phenomenal games like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Outside of that though theres been a lack of great games on the new system. Nintendo gets accused of going to the well too often rehashing the same franchises over and over again like Mario and Zelda, but when the games are this good then who cares?

The most glaring absence had come from one of Nintendo’s most popular properties ever; Pokemon. Whats unique about Pokemon is that its never made the jump to home consoles for a standalone game. They’ve always developed core games for mobile devices like the Game Boy and the 3Ds. There have been random games like Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Snap to name a couple on home consoles, but no core games where you gotta catch em all.

That is until now.

Naturally, the news of Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Evee! leaked a few weeks ago so it wasn’t a huge reveal, but it was awesome to see the old Kanto region I grew up in as a fully realized 3D world. I am going to buy the absolute shit out of this game on Day 1.

Its essentially a remake of Pokemon Yellow, which dropped on Game Boy in 1998 and earned a 10/10 from IGN. But it won’t just be a port since they had to build this 3D world from scratch and it will also introduce new elements to the series such as adopting some gameplay features from the massively popular Pokemon Go iOS game. Then of course there’s this little guy.

Its a Pokeball controller that you throw to catch new Pokemon. Lets be honest, it doesn’t really matter what this costs because I am 100% going to buy it.

Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Evee! will both be released on November 16th so get your pre-orders in asap.

Super Mario Party was also announced, which will be the first game to really encourage playing the Switch with friends. You could say Mario Kart already did that, but that was a port of an old Mario Kart game rather than a brand new game so I’m giving the edge to Mario Party here. Plus this is the first game to really take advantage of the Switch technology, just check out the trailer below.  This one drops on October 5th.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was announced and it looks glorious. They really pulled out all the stops for this one by including every single character thats ever appeared in a Smash game. Ever. The roster is gigantic. We got all the originals plus we got Sonic, we got Charizard, hell we got Solid Snake himself. This is going to be the best drinking game since Mario Kart 64.  This one drops on December 7th.

Still no appearances by Fox McCloud though which is a goddamn shame because Star Fox 64 is one of my favorite games of all time and any Star Fox I’ve played since (Gamecube) was hot garbage.

For any Fortnite fans out there, the massively popular free title is now available on Switch too. So you can jump off the flying bus while literally riding the bus.

A couple of other freebies now available on the Switch include Pokemon Quest and Fallout Shelter. Quest is definitely a freemium type of game meaning you’ll likely have to put some money into the game to progress quickly, but I know Fallout Shelter has been out for a while to decent reviews. Both probably aren’t enough to be a great standalone game that you’d pay for, but as a free title you can play on the go? I’ll take that.

So if you were on the fence about buying yet another system, now is a pretty good time to jump into the Switch. Just make sure you get the Pokeball.