Video game ramblings from Kevin Guo

A while ago, I expressed my thoughts with the first trailer for a Minecraft Movie, and how I believed it fundamentally misunderstood Minecraft’s design philosophy, citing the very generic another world story template used in many other previous adaptations of popular media (Mario, Barbie, Harold and the Purple Crayon (still haven’t seen it btw, don’t hate myself that much)). The movie wasn’t yet released back then however, so I didn’t completely write it off as a lost cause, but since the movie is out, I thought i’d watch the movie too see if the trailer was as indicative of the movies ireciton as I though. So, was I right about my assessment? Is the Minecraft movie as generic as I predicted? The short answer is, yes, but it’s not completely devoid of qualities that reflect Minecraft’s game design Overall I like the movie, but I don’t think it’s breaking new ground in the world of video game movies. It definitely feels like a movie that was conceptualized because someone saw Mine...

Pokemon is one of, if not the biggest media franchise around the world. With dozens of games spanning across 9 generations of pocket monsters, along with the dozens of spin offs, restaurants, trains, global events, trading card game, it’s hard to not acknowledge Pokemon as the absolute media juggernaut it is Pokemon is a very old franchise with a very established formula. And with a very established formula, you have to be able to innovate it to keep it interesting. Has the Pokemon Company been successful at this? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……. However successful you may feel the Pokemon company is at innovating the gameplay of Pokemon is irrelevant, because I want to talk instead about how the fan base has innovated the formula, specifically with the new self imposed challenge run called Nuzlockes. For those not in the know, Nuzlocke runs basically add perma death to Pokemon, as in if they faint at any point in the run, they’re considered dead, and thus unusable for the rest of th...