Talking about things

It's been a while since I made a journal about random things. Here are a few things that are on my mind these days. I hope you like reading long text. I'll continue with the format from the previous journal for people with short attention spans.

Animations
There was a time when I could make an interactive expansion animation in one or two days. Unfortunately, these days it takes me at least a week, usually several weeks to make animations. There are several reasons why this happened.

The original interactive animations were barely interactive or animated. They were mostly Pokémon, which had simple designs and no clothes to animate. They were new and interesting to me back then, so I enjoyed working on them a bit more. Finally, I have higher standards. Even my simple animations are carefully drawn, divided into more interactive pieces and sometimes include dialog and physics. Overall, I don't think I could ever go back to making them quickly again.

I'm working on one right now. Hopefully I can upload it soon. solo6488, you know what's coming.

Smooth McGroove
Here's a Youtube guy I've been watching for several years. It's Smooth McGroove. He's famous for making videos where he sings video game music a capella (voice only). They sound very much like the original versions. Why not listen to some tunes from games like Mario, Pokémon, Megaman, Xenoblade, Undertale, Earthbound and Kirby?




Yokai Watch
For the last month I've been playing Yokai Watch for Nintedo 3DS. Yokai Watch is an RPG similar to Pokémon with a real time battle system. As usual: I have a lot to say about this, it's going to be long and I'm going to end up missing things.

Story
You follow the story of a boy named Nate (or a girl named Katie). Looking for rare insects for his collection, he finds an old ...prize machine(?) in a forest, which begs him to give it a coin. Out of the resulting prize ball comes a ghost names Whisper, who immediately becomes his butler for life and gives him a yokai watch, with which he can see many hidden yokai.

Yokai are invisible, strange spirits that cause people to feel and behave differently. They can make you sad, happy, angry or lazy. Nate soon discovers that there's something more going on with the yokai than he expected.

Overall the story is simple but good. Humorous with a fun dialog.

Gameplay
The entire game takes place in a small city. You can follow the main objective or you can choose to walk around the city talking to people and doing small missions. To find a wild yokai, you have to go to places like trees, grass and garbage cans and use the lens to locate them. When you find one a battle starts.

Yokai Watch is like Pokémon in many ways. You have to find and "catch" many different Yokai. You can have up to 6 yokai on you team, to battle with other yokai. Each yokai can has stats, types and personalities. They can even level up and evolve. There are over 200 of them to catch.

Unlike Pokémon, battles are in real time. You have a yokai wheel, which puts 3 yokai in the front and 3 in the back. The front yokai will automatically do one of 5 actions: attack, technique, inspirit, guard or nothing. Just spin the wheel to change who's in front. You active their powerful soultimate ability by playing a micro game.

Initially it feels like battles are too random, but you'll discover that you have more control than you think. Yokai Watch finally solves Pokémon's slavery problem. At the end of each battle, one of the enemy yokai might decide to become your friend. You can increase the chance of this happening by giving them their favorite food in the battle.

You can play the entire game using just touch controls. I don't recommend that. You can also play the entire game with buttons alone. I don't recommend that either. So far, I'd say use touch controls in battle and buttons in the city.

One serious problem I have with the game is how nearly impossible it is to get all the yokai. I've played for over One Hundred And Thirty Five Hours, desperately looking everywhere for all the yokai and I'm still missing maybe 20 of them. I don't even know what they look like or where they could be. Even knowing where the yokai could be, it might take hours just to find one. Also, the chance of a yokai becoming your friend is extremely low. A rare yokai is way more valuable than any rare Pokémon. I refuse to resort to searching the internet. The game shouldn't force you to do that.

Sound and graphics
Yokai Watch's music is pretty unique. It frequency uses a combination of bass, marimba, sitar and what sounds like a weird whistle from those alien or horror shows. I like it. Most of the game's dialog is in text, but some cutscenes use voice acting. The sound effectsarre good, I have nothing to say about them.

The graphics are bright and colorful. It looks like an anime cartoon. I'd say they did a pretty good job on it. The yokai designs range from horribly ugly to OK. In this regard, Pokémon is better. A rare few of them actually look pretty nice. Obviously, my team has nothing but those ones.

Occasionally you'll notice that some objects have frame rate problems. Yes, I said "objects" and not "the game". In order to maintain the graphical fidelity, these developers actually cut back on updating certain animated objects when there's too much going on in the screen.

Overall
I'd say Yokai Watch is a great game. I really enjoyed spending hours avoiding the main story just doing piles of small missions. There are so many things to do I kept stopping halfway through one mission to follow another and forgetting what I was doing before. I haven't stopped playing it yet. I still continue to find new yokai I've never seen before every day or two.

I will certainly be getting Yokai Watch 2 and 3 when they come out. My only big problem is with how rare and hard to catch even the most basic yokai are. Sadly, it looks like this game isn't very popular at all. Using streetpass, I've passed by exactly ZERO people who had played the game, despite living in a city with a crowded subway. Why is nobody playing this game? It's a major hit in Japan, comparable to Pokémon in the 90s. Go get it!

End of the long journal
Hey, I hope you got through all that and I hope you'll be able to enjoy my next animation soon. It will be a simple one, but will still have your usual cute girl with her oversized belly. Enjoy your summer.