WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew spent his week diving deeper into the Lego muck and mire, watching a bit of the Lego Ninjago animated series in order to get some more context to the more esoteric Lego Dimensions levels he has encountered.. Dan didn’t stray to far, playing Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour, the proof-of-concept demo for Capcom’s sequel Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (or Biohazard 7: Resident Evil in Japan).
MAKING UP WORDS: In the first look at mobile gaming this week, Dan and Andrew talk about a game that seems to be made just for them, Square Enix and A-Lim’s Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and how it scratches certain itches while causing others.
POKE MONGO: Pokémon Go is just about the biggest thing in the world right now, topping the charts of the iTunes free apps and is, purportedly, even bigger than porn with Google searches. It’s a veritable point-counterpoint discussion as Andrew relates his experience playing the game while Dan remains in ignorance while discussing the world-wide phenomenon that is Nintendo’s latest genius move.
LINKS:
-Help local Sacramento comic shop, Big Brother Comics, recover from a dreadful fire that ravaged the store by contributing at the GoFundMe page.
FEATURED MUSIC:
-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio
-“Cayenne (Cyan)” by Nobuo Uematsu (from Final Fantasy VI)
-“The Chase is Better Than the Catch” by Motörhead
-“Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce
Last Wednesday saw the release of the newest addition to the Pokémon family of games: Pokémon GO, developed by Niantic, Inc. (formerly, Niantic Labs). Niantic, Inc. was previously known for doing the popular mobile game Ingress. They partnered with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company to apply that GPS/map-based play to the popular Nintendo franchise. Although Dan and I will have more to say about this in this week’s podcast, it was worth taking a moment to address all of the news (both good and bad) that has been popping up over this new title.
Little do people realize GO is an acronym for Geographic Obfuscation.
Stories about Pokémon GO and the outcome of so many people playing have been circulating around various social media and news websites. In Wyoming, a nineteen year old woman found a dead body while pursuing an elusive pokémon. A police station in Australia has warned players against entering the station in order to collect pokéballs or to catch pokémon that spawn there. A police department in Missouri recently reported that a group of teens have been luring people to a pokéstop in order to commit robbery. But, with all that gloom and doom, there are some brighter notes. A large number of Pokémon GO players have been discovering that they are inadvertently exercising by playing the game.
Watch out for those pesky dangers wherever you GO!
I learned that some Pokemon just want to watch the world burn.
As could be expected with something this popular, Pokémon GO has had a few awkward moments. Notorious Amazon Kindle “author” Chuck Tingle recently released Pokebutt Go: Pounded by ‘Em All, another title in his (her?) series of erotic (?) fiction. Several websites have been documenting peculiar places that have been designated Pokéstops, including a Los Angeles bathhouse, a Seattle bathhouse with a “mirrored gloryhole maze,” and other odd and inappropriate places. Most of the peculiarities in location data come from the fact that the Pokéstops appear to be primarily based on location data taken from Niantic’s previous title, Ingress; the “Portal” locations of Ingress were user/player submitted. This explains how so many child-inappropriate Pokéstops came to be in the first days of the game.
All in all, Pokémon GO has been making quite a lot of news since its release.
