Role Playing and displacer dragons

    So, I figure that at some point, someone is going to go 'what the heck is a displacer dragon?'  Well, to be honest, I ended up with this because every other name I tried was already taken.  Almost every blog I peeked at had one post to the tune of 'check it out, I started a blog.'  I say most because one of them had no posts at all.  First of all, here's a close up look of the art in my icon.  Of course, once I change this page up some, the icon might be different.

You can find the artist of this picture here.

  This is Ivory.  She has a complicated history, but I suppose I should start back a bit.  When I was younger, I was a tad depressed.  I still have issues on and off.  Back in 1995, I started out using this new thing called AOL.  I poked around here and there, met some people.. then I was introduced to the idea of role playing.  I had always read books a lot.  I suppose it's one form of escapism, and this was a more direct form.  My first exposure to RP was in Star Trek 'sims'.  Short for Simulations.  It was a group called the UCIP, United Confederation of Interstellar Planets.  Because, I suppose, just calling themselves the United Federation of Planets was too obvious.  Even though it's been a long time since then, this group is still around!  You can find their webpage here if you are curious.

This is my very first role playing character ever, in Star Trek Online form.

    My very first character ever was named Blake.  He was a Sivaoan, a feline race from a Star Trek novel.  In Star Trek Online, he's a Caitian, close enough.  So, how do I go from Star Trek to tentacle dragons?  Well, part of that is Lunar: The Silver Star.  Lunar was a video game that was first for the Sega CD, but it's been remade a few times since then.  I don't believe it ever became a very 'big' game.  I was chatting with people who also liked Lunar on some message boards, when one of those weirdos said he wanted to run an RPG based off of it.  So I applied a character and got in.

This is Ebony 1.0.

    My character was the young Black Dragon of Lunar.  While I was a fan of Star Trek, of course, I was always more into fantasy than sci-fi, and I was quite in love with dragons.  This RPG took place on IRC, which introduced me to the whole concept of IRC in the first place.  Lunar: Middleground is a story for another time, however.

    So now I knew about the existence of IRC.  So I started peeking around for other places to role play, and I found some fantasy places.  This led me to a channel called the #BlkDragon*Inn, and that place still exists, too!  Webpage found here.  So, now that I was in a fantasy setting, of course my first character was a dragon.  At first he was simply known as 'baby black dragon.'  Shockingly, my first time RPing got the interest of another player there, who surprised me with this art.

This is Ebony 2.0.

    Now, I didn't plan to be unimaginative with names.  My screen name was something along the lines of 'bb_dragon', but there ended up being some confusion with the guy who started the channel, who was BlkDragon, as such, I spontaneously named him Ebony after my Lunar character.  Ebony, seen here, was very young at the time.  And he aged in real time.  He's a character I've played for more than 10 years.

They grow up so fast.

    Now we're getting close to the whole point of all this.  See, during one of my plots, an Ebony from an alternate dimension appeared.  That Ebony had grown up living a worse existence and left his universe because everyone he knew was dead and he was likely to be next.  While pondering how odd my plots can be, one has to remember that, over the course of playing a character for years, a lot can happen.  This Ebony saw the relatively happy Ebony of the 'normal' universe and was upset and disgusted.  Why does that Ebony get to be happy and have a family?  The new Ebony did not wish to be like Ebony Prime.  So, using magics, he turned himself into a white dragon.  When he felt it wasn't enough distance still, he became female and started using the name Ivory.

    Ivory still felt like she had a lot to prove.  She became friends with rougher types than Ebony.  Perhaps a bit out of spite.  This led her on a variety of adventures until she was bitten by a were displacer beast.  Because who says those aren't a thing.  She embraced the change, finally feeling like she was her own person and not just 'the white Ebony' or something along those lines.

    As is a habit with me, Ivory became a more major player than Ebony was.  I suppose she had issues to work through, and that gives you things to RP.  It seems lots of the characters I made up on the spur of the moment end up pushing the characters I put real thought into aside.  There's a few details missing, but that's how the displacer dragon came around.  Through random combinations of plots happening over the course of years.

    I wonder if any people out there will be all 'oh hey, I remember you.'  Feel free to leave comments if so.  As I go, I'll leave you with this.  There's many universes and possibilities out there.  Ivory eventually ran into another version of herself, who took her pain and bitterness to different levels, and decided to just claim the planet in the name of dragons.

Vote Lady Ivory for Queen of the Planet.  Or else.

Pokemon X and Y, the first new Pokemon games in a long time?

    I already posted today, but hey, it's a new blog.  I need to get some content out there to reach the masses.  Hey masses!  Are you here yet?  I have the word 'Pokemon' in this post, it's popular, right?  Except making that little line over the e is annoying.
   But seriously, I have been playing Pokemon since the days of Pokemon Red.  Back then I thought you could only get Charizard if you picked the red one.  I mocked my friend who picked blue.  Who wanted that turtle thing anyway?  Charizard is a dragon!  I still feel sorry for that charizard.  I was sort of clueless back then and it seemed that most of my chosen Pokemon couldn't learn the HMs that the game dumped on me.  So that poor charizard had a move list that consisted of Flamethrower, Dig, Fly and Cut.  Fortunately, I have gotten better since then.
    Alright, I'm going to toss a Pokemon game at you.  Let's see if you can figure out which one I'm talking about.  A young trainer meets with a professor and is given a pokemon and a pokedex to start their journey.  They encounter some bad guys along the way, but due to their friendship with their pokemon, they defeat them.  In the end, they face the Pokemon League and become the champion.
    I'm sure anyone who has followed Pokemon lately is already nodding at my sarcasm and going 'I get it, you're describing every game.'  Well, you'd be wrong.  In Pokemon Black and White 2, you get your starter from a professors assistant.
    Will X and Y be the same?  Well, spoilers if you don't want to know anything.  But the game's pokemon professor and bad guys have already been revealed.

"We're here to be the bad guys in this 'Pokemon Red' thing, are we late?"

    So yes, I am expecting there to be to be some of the same sorts of plot points.  However, I have some hopes.  Lets look at how Pokemon bad guys have gone.

    We start off with Giovanni, the head of Team Rocket, the bad guys in Generation 1.  So what was Team Rocket up to?  They want to use Pokemon in the pursuit of illegal goals.  Fair enough.  They're also meanies who don't believe in the heart of the car... Pokemon.  Once Giovanni is defeated, he realizes the error of his ways.

    As for Generation 2, the bad guys are... Team Rocket.  What's left of them, anyway.  They're pretty sure that their boss is going to return.  Your character ends up disbanding them and everyone is happy.

    Generation 3.  For the first time, we have different bad guys based on which game you are playing.  Before Emerald, you either found yourself facing Team Magma in Ruby or Team Aqua in Sapphire.  Their goals were to either expand the world's land, or expand the world's sea, respectively.  

"Then we all die from the resulting global cataclysm, GENIUS!"

    Once again, you teach the error of their ways before wandering off to finish your goal to become the very best, like other people already were, until you beat them and take their place.

    Generation 4 gave us Team Galactic.  Now here, I believe, is where things start to change.  For one, Team Galactic was smart enough to have a legitimate business face.  Their did research into Pokemon energies.  By not simply yelling 'we are evil' at the world, they got people to donate pokemon to them.  What was their goal?  Their boss, Cyrus, wanted to capture the Pokemon of Time and the Pokemon of Space and use them to rewrite the world in his own image and become a god.

    Well.. we've certainly stepped forwards a bit from 'using pokemon to commit crimes' haven't we?  And, for the first time, when you defeat him, he does not say 'by losing a Pokemon battle, I realize that bad stuff is bad, and will be good from now on.'  He is last seen swearing revenge on the player.

    Generation 5 takes it another step forwards.  Team Plasma, like Team Galactic, pretended to have the best interest of pokemon at heart.  But they were trying to get people to release pokemon so that the region would be weakened for take over.  At the end, you head to the Pokemon League, as usual, but then.. this happens.

"How did they construct a giant, underground castle without anyone noticing?"

    A giant castle bursts from the ground and attacks the Pokemon League itself.  Something like this has never happened before.  Unlike in the previous games, where the 'final battle' is a fight against the Pokemon League champion, with nothing but at title at stake, the end of Pokemon Black and White is a final 'dungeon' of the Plasma castle.  You face off against N, who really did think he was helping Pokemon, before having a final battle with Ghetsis.  And he doesn't reform after a Pokemon beating either.

    For the first time, Pokemon games get a direct sequel, rather than a remake.  In Pokemon Black and White 2, Ghetsis is back to try again.  A villain in a Pokemon game returning?  MADNESS.  Team Plasma was also flying around in an airship blasting cities with a giant freeze cannon.  

"No, seriously, where DO they get those wonderful toys?"

   It's like an actual PLOT is happening.  Like the bad guys matter for more than some grunts you have to battle now and then.  It feels like, if you fail, BAD STUFF WILL HAPPEN.  If you haven't seen it, you should check out the anime trailer for it HERE.  I think the stuff we see there is better than anything the real anime has.

    So, I started all this by talking about X and Y.  My point is, it seems like Pokemon is getting a bit more serious.  Sure, Pokemon aren't exploding in pools of blood.  I don't think we'll see any games that start with your characters parents being murdered in front of them, and your character taking their last Pokemon on a journey of vengeance.  Truthfully, I wouldn't even want that.  I like the Pokemon games for being fun.  The stakes can be high without it ever getting into Game of Thrones territory.

    The idea of a story based around 'kid with Pokemon encounters bad guys' can be more, as Black and White are showing.  Not to insult Game Freak, but I really feel like pokemon has been spinning it's wheels for a long time.  It's been a simple matter of 'new game introduces some new pokemon and moves.'  The only games that have felt a little different have been the spin-off games where you steal Pokemon from other trainers.. but you're the good guy, honest.

    For the first time, Pokemon are moving into the wonderful world of 3D.  I don't mean the kind that pops out of the screen, either, but actually modeled Pokemon.  We'll be getting animations for attacking and similar things.   I know they will be limited, but it's a lot less limited than the non-moving sprites we've had for 4 generations, or even the animated sprites from Gen 5.  

    Okay, so they're using later technology, does that mean that these games will really be that different?  It also sounds like they've been listening to players.  Information released has pointed to EVs and IVs being easier to figure out.  I'm guessing there'll be some NPC who tells you things about them.  The way Pokemon goes, he'll probably say 'this Pokemon's speed isn't very good' instead of giving you numbers.  Just guessing of course.  So what else, well, character customization for one.

"Wow, hair AND skin color?"

    It seems limited, though we can't say until the full game is out.  It just feels like Pokemon has to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything new.  But if they have to take baby steps, that's better than them not taking steps at all.  Of course, you may be wondered why I'm not addressing the donphan in the room.  The somewhat controversial introduction of the Fairy Type.

"Hi!  I'm here to destroy dragons!"

    The Fairy type will be super effective against dragons.  According to the guy who has been leaking information, they will also be immune to dragon type attacks.  Whether or not that is true, this is big news.  Dragons are all over the higher tiers in Pokemon.  This is going to shake things up a bit, and I think that is a good thing.  If everyone is stuck on the same teams and the same strategies, things get kind of stale.  No one type should be 'the best'.  As of now, dragons are only countered by ice and.. yet more dragons.  Don't get me wrong, I dig dragons, just look at my icon and all.  But I think this is a big sign that they are trying to change things with this game, that they want this game to be 'different.'

    If they are going into this game with a concept of 'lets make a new Pokemon game' and not 'lets make another Pokemon game', this could be the best Pokemon game to come along in some time.  After all, when I talk to people who haven't played since Gen 2, they never ask me what happened in the plot.  It's 'what pokemon were added?' 'is this ability new?' or 'What the heck is Eviolite?'  

    Maybe this is the game where things start to change.  Maybe we'll be able to link up with our friends and interact in new ways.  Maybe our characters will be able to unlock new outfits to show off how cool they are.  Maybe the bad guys will do something unexpected and shocking.  Maybe someone will run around wielding a Honedge like a weapon because THAT WOULD JUST BE AWESOME.

SOURCE

    Or, you know, maybe you'll defeat Team Flare, they'll see the error of their ways, then you'll have a friendly battle with the current Pokemon League Champion.

Mega Man and Artificial Difficulty

    So, this is a blog I am making.  I am told you should pick a subject and stick with it.  But everything's been done.  There's so many places out there that you can look up info on video games, why should anyone come to me about it?  So I'll be sharing thoughts and insights about whatever occurs.  So let's talk about video games.
    I'm going to start off by saying everything here is my opinion, so please don't hate on me if you disagree.  I've been thinking about Mega Man.  You know Mega Man, right?  He's been around for over 25 years now.  I started thinking about Mega Man due to this fan game, Mega Man Unlimited.  But we'll get back to that, lets step back a few years.
    Mega Man had 6 games on the NES before jumping to the SNES.  The Mega Man X series had started at that point, so perhaps they were moving on from Mega Man.  Mega Man 7 was released, followed by Mega Man making the jump to CDs with Mega Man 8, and that was it for over a decade.
    Then Capcom releases Mega Man 9, returning to Mega Man roots, with a retro style.  Admittedly, Mega Man had never strayed far from that style in the first place.  Only two of the eight games were on systems besides the NES, and two two games were still pretty basic side-scrollers, even if the CD versions added cut scenes with bad voice acting.

"Mega Man, dis space wobot might hab somtin to do wiff Doctuh Wiwee!"

    So what about Mega Man 9?  I thought it was a pretty fun game.  I was a bit disappointed, though.  I always thought that Mega Man 9 would be the game to link the Mega Man and the X series, what with X also meaning 10.  It would be clever.  Plus the Mega Man games seemed to be leading to something.  Mega Man was tempted to just kill Wily twice, and after being infected by 'evil energy', perhaps he would have.

    But we hadn't gotten a Mega Man game in so long, even the retro game was nice.  This was followed by Mega Man 10.  Now it feels like we're just spinning our wheels.  9 had the 'refreshing retro' thing going for it, 10 was.. just that again.  Also, 10 just felt to me like they were trying too hard.  It's a hard feeling to describe, really.  9 felt as if it were hard due to the level design and pacing.  10 felt like it was hard because they put unfair pits and spikes everywhere with the specific intent of killing you.

   This is where we start getting into the idea of Artificial Difficulty.  TV Tropes already has a page on this idea, though they call it Fake Difficulty.  I'm using the word 'Artificial' because it sounds fancier.  So what is Artificial Difficulty?  To try and put it simply, it's something that's there just to kill you, so that you can keep retrying the stage.  I will say most enemies in a game are there to add challenge.  But an enemy on a platform you can't see until you've made the jump and can't go back?  That enemy is there to kill you.

"I see you're trying to jump a pit, I think I'll pop up with perfect timing to kill you."

  Now, while I'm using those pit enemies as an example, once it happens to you once, you should be ready for them.  If they knock you down again, it's kind of your fault.  But it's a cheap death until you've learned that.  I feel Mega Man 10 was aimed more at 'killing you' than 'challenging you.'  They added an Easy mode to the game, and what does Easy Mode do?

"I feel insulted."

   It covers up most of the pits and spikes for you, as well as lowering the amount of enemies.  If it had that many spikes and pits in the first place, maybe that's a clue.  After Mega Man 10, Capcom seems to have abandoned Mega Man.  Two planned games were cancelled and his only appearance was as 'Bad Box Art' Mega Man in a fighting game.  Zero appeared in Marvel vs Capcom 3, representing the series, but neither Mega Man nor X did.  Mega Man is finally returning in the latest Smash Bros. game, which is more about Nintendo supporting him than Capcom.

   So, without Capcom giving us more Mega Man, it seems the fans have stepped up to fill the gap.  We got the well made Mega Man vs Street Fighter, which Capcom allowed to be released, sort of glossing over that they didn't make it.  But it seems that most fan games are leaning towards being very hard.  This finally brings us back around to Mega Man Unlimited.

"This is not the title screen of a game that is messing around."

    I am not saying this game is bad at all, I am saying that it is hard.  It was designed to be hard.  My first exposure was watching a playing on Screw Attack.  They play the game for about an hour or so.  During this hour, not one boss is seem, as they can't get through a single stage.  

   "Hah!" says I, metaphorically, "Clearly my skills are FAR superior to Craig's skills.  I shall download this game and show them how it is done!"  So I do and I start off with Comet Woman's stage.  I have to continue once before Comet Woman is defeated.  Feeling pretty good for myself, I decide to take on Yo-Yo Man.  No one called Yo-Yo Man can be that hard.  Unfortunately, his stage is full of pits, spikes, and enemies that will knock you into pits and spikes.  Comet Woman's stage had it's fair share of pits and spikes as well.  The stages are also very long with checkpoints set far apart, so your death will frequently have you back at the start of the stage.

    Once again, the game was designed this way, it is supposed to be a challenge.  "Yo-Yo Man can live.. for now.." I say in this hypothetical situation where I like to talk to myself.  "They barely touched Rainbow Man's stage, lets give that one a go!"

    Rainbow Man's stage is full of lasers.  Anyone who recalls Quick Man's stage will be familiar with the insta-death lasers of death and redundancy.  

"Run, Run, no time for the slinky!"

    But it's not that bad.  Hopefully I'm not hurting the feelings of too many people when I say that.  The thing is, the way the screen scrolls in the Mega Man games, you get a second or so of a sneak peek before the action resumes.  In Quick Man's stage, that second gave you a moment to plan your route before the lasers started.

   In Rainbow Man's stage, the lasers are bouncing around corners and such.  It's all too much to take in.  It becomes more a matter of memorizing where the lasers will be, as well as trial and error as you try and figure out what to do.  

   With Rainbow Man safe behind his laser barriers, I decided to go after Nail Man.  At a casual glance, this stage isn't so bad.  There's the death pits, sure, but most of it's danger comes from the enemies.  Then it keeps going and going, draining your health.  Toss in a few vertical screens where you may fall down 3 screens or so and lose progress.  Finally you see the boss door!  You have reached the end!

"LOL, nope!"

    You have reached the mid-boss, Hammer Man.  The mid-boss who will probably kill you as you need to learn his pattern.  And then you will find yourself all the way back at the start of the stage.  This is the part where people might be tempted to throw their cart out the window.  But this is a digital-only game.  You could throw your computer out of the window, but that would be wasteful.  You could delete it really hard I suppose, but that just doesn't have the same satisfaction.

   So, I went along again, defeated Hammer Man and was rewarded with access to the rest of the stage, and a check point.  "Oh, there's all the spikes."  Yep.  The relatively spike-free stage was too good to be true.

  Where am I going with all of this?  Well, most of you have probably fallen asleep or left, 'TLDR'ing or such.  If so, how are you seeing this paragraph?  For those of you remaining, I go back to the idea of Artificial Difficulty.  This game isn't trying to 'present a challenge,' this game is trying to murder you.  Some people enjoy the challenge and get a nice feeling of accomplishment when they win.  Other people.. not so much.

  If you have played previous Mega Man games, think back to them.  Are there areas where you die over and over again?  Not counting the bosses, just parts of the stage.  When I say that, I imagine the main thing that pops up is those blocks that pop in and out, when they're over pits or spikes.

"And that sound they make will follow your to your grave."

    What else?  Quick Man's lasers?  Maybe those passages where you have to weave between spikes as you fall?  The point is, there's probably not that many spots you will repeatedly die at.  The old Mega Man games were, for the most part, not designed to kill you, they were designed to challenge you.  You will miss a jump here and learn your lesson, an enemy will pop out of a pit there, and you're more careful around the next few pits.

    You can create difficulty without the game being out to murder you.  But maybe that's what some people want.  They want to climb forwards, limping and bloody, and stand on a mountain and say, "I did it!"  These are the same people playing those Mario hacks where blocks are always placed to drop you into a pit.

   Personally, I'm a little tired of seeing the 'Retro' Mega Man games.  The ones that try and think up new, silly bosses and plot lines like 'Dr Wily is using the worlds biggest Boom Box to make all the robots in the world dance, he must be stopped!'  I want to see Mega Man move on.  Update the graphics, take all the lessons we've learned over the years.  Lets see his story come to a climax so he can retire gracefully.

    Even the best Mega Man fan games are only making you feel like you're in the 80's again.  Mega Man is just spinning his wheels.  It's not the fan makers fault.  An 8-bit game is obviously easier to make than something more complicated.  On top of that, Capcom set the precedent.  And I happily admit, some of these games took a lot of work and are well done.

   But is that all that's left for Mega Man?  Are we soon going to see an 'I wanna be the guy' version where every block in the game is spikes?  It might just be me, but I want Mega Man to finally complete his mission.  I want him to fight and get that everlasting peace he's been after.

   Until Sigma comes along, of course.