If an air conditioner makes a ton of noise, we don’t think “power”, we think “inefficiency”. The same goes with washing machines; if a lot of noise comes out of them, that indicates lots of lost energy that, through more careful engineering, could have resulted in clean clothes in shorter time and lower energy bills.
And, to fulfill the imaginary requirement for an arbitrary third example, we don’t associate a noisy computer with more processing power. When a laptop sounds like there’s a jet going overhead, that usually means that it’s time to clean the dust out of its fan.
So then, why does anyone still hold on to the misguided notion that a noisier car means a more powerful, effective vehicle? My guess is that there are still a few people around whose primitive minds are stuck in the early fifties, where a loud revving sound indicated a more powerful automobile.
These are the chimps who drive down residential streets making sure that their cars let out a loud roar, because they want everyone to know that they are fast, and they have the car noisy enough to prove it.
The sad truth is, they’re not really impressing anyone. I can tell you what people around them think when they tear off near elementary schools. It would sound something like this:
How annoying. I want to put a bullet right in his tires. If he had the money, why didn’t he buy a better-sounding car?
A noisy car is the sound of inefficiency. I know what some of you are thinking: “But Raizen, if cars can be made that run quieter, why don’t they make those?” You know those Mustangs that meatheads like so much? They actually can run quietly. That revving sound that you sometimes hear from them? It comes from speakers in the car. The engineers didn’t want to sacrifice performance, but still wanted those meatheads to enjoy the sweet, sweet sound of an ancient and poorly-maintained jalopy, so they faked it. That Mustang effect is actually more like a Bose effect.
Even sadder still is the fact that some people spend tons of money to mod their cars so that they sound inefficient and annoying. Intentionally. They’ve got all this money for modification to their automobile, and the intention of the modification isn’t to substantially increase the performance of their car, it’s to produce a sound to the satisfaction of only themselves.
As frivolous as that is, the modding community does do even worse. Some mod their cars so they can achieve some ridiculous top speeds. Two hundred miles per hour? Give me a break. When is a person going to go 200 MPH, even ignoring the fact that a person would have to break the law to do so? What justifies putting huge piles of money into achieving a benchmark that’s not even legal to attain? In cities and suburbs, one must come to a complete stop too often for achieving a high speed to even be practical. So, no one should care whether your car can go really fast, including you.
To ensure that their cars look like they go fast, they also throw money into aesthetics, such as flame decals, racing stripes, all that stuff that helps them live out that Speed Racer fantasy.
Nothing says “spraypaint” quite like gold hubcaps, right?
The best car is the most dependable one, and that would be the one that doesn’t spontaneously break down when you go out to get groceries. This is most easily achieved by buying something modern and efficient, and not letting a bunch of kids monkey around with it.
Lately, Jordan Peterson has caused quite a stir. This has largely to do with the fact that he’s a Canadian college professor that doesn’t toe the line for the left-wing agenda. He has also written a book that has gotten loads of attention, and has even been banned by a distributor in New Zealand.
Considering the controversy surrounding his book, it caught my curiosity, and I decided to go out and purchase a copy, wanting to know what it says. Because the hard left is making out Peterson to be some radical icon of the far-right, one might expect the 21st century equivalent of Mein Kampf.
The book is titled, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
Hmm… With a title like that, Peterson’s book sound more like some kind of self-help or self-improvement book than a political manifesto. However, there’s got to be something about this book that has leftists riled up. What is it about Jordan Peterson’s book that has liberals everywhere going crazy?
Let’s take a look at some excerpts from Peterson’s book, and perhaps we’ll see just what’s got them worked up:
“Rule 1 – Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back”
This would be the title of the first chapter of Peterson’s book, and my impression is that he’s trying to encourage good posture. One can understand why this would be beneficial; it’s not just about maintaining physical structure, but also boosting one’s confidence and presenting a positive self-image. That’s the impression that I get, which seems far different from an admonition to act like an early 20th century German dictator. I suppose that different people can take different things from the same message.
“Rule 3 – Make Friends With People Who Want the Best for You”
I’m kinda picking up a self-help or advice vibe. It’s really hard to argue with the point being made. Sometimes, people really do settle for some duds when it comes to friends, and the result is being seriously dragged down.
You might know someone who acted on a dare because they thought that doing so would result in them being respected. In fact, the person acting on it was being respected less, and was being treated as a toy for someone else’s amusement. It was easy for the one kid to ask the other to act on a dare, because the asker didn’t have to face the potential consequences of what he was asking the other kid to do.
Or perhaps you’ve seen someone who seemed a little disappointed to hear that you succeeded at something. That’s a sign that the person might not be that great of a friend.
So, Peterson is advising readers to seek out people that would make good friends. That doesn’t really sound like “evil monster” material, to me.
“Rule 8 – Tell the Truth – Or, At Least, Don’t Lie”
Here we go, now I’m beginning to see what the problem is. In today’s “post-truth” society where kids are taught that lies are acceptable as long as they further the cause, I can see why an admonition not to lie can cause some ripples.
One thing I’ve noticed while looking at the book’s illustrations is that the protagonist character depicted in them is actually a girl. If Peterson’s position is supposed to be sexist, that seems kind of counterproductive.
“Rule 6 – Set Your House In Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World”
Again, there’s some serious self-improvement vibes, here. In fact, it seems like Peterson’s book is about building character.
Another thing about Peterson’s book and the few of his lectures that I’ve seen is that he seems to embrace theology, Christianity in particular, as being something positive for a person’s mind. That certainly goes against the idea that theology is outdated. Of course, most of humanity has been theologically involved throughout our entire history, even today in the modern age, so one can make the case that it’s something that humans are well-adapted to, and therefore is good for one’s mental health.
There does seem to be something about a theologically-inclined college professor who is a psychological practitioner that challenges perceptions about what those in the field are about. While one can argue about what his beliefs are and how he presents them, there’s something notable about the fact that he presents religion as approachable to those who might not otherwise consider it.
“Rule 12 – Pet a Cat When You Encounter One on the Street”
It’s a bit of a stretch, but the act of petting does involve gesturing your body in a manner that somewhat resembles a stiff-arm salute.
From what I’ve read, it seems like the point of Peterson’s book is “be a better person”. If the book were really intended as some manual on how to usher in a racist age of darkness, Peterson is mind-blowingly clever at hiding it.
Based on what I’ve read that Peterson has written and what I’ve heard him say, he doesn’t seem like he’s the monster he’s made out to be. But then, I actually listened to him speak for himself rather than just go with what some Tumblr snowflake was passing along in a deliberate attempt to make him look bad.
Peterson had twelve chapters in a book enumerating principles on living life, and he made one of them about petting cats. This is the guy that leftists are comparing to Hitler.
Old people seem to wonder why young people don’t seem interested in sports anymore. You probably already know why, it’s because sports are boring. The sports in question would be games like baseball, football, and basketball, rather than the interesting stuff like cycling or rock climbing or MMA.
If you’ve ever wondered why your dad or granddad seemed so interested in sports, it’s because back in their day, it was pretty much all kids had for entertainment. They didn’t have cell phones, so cell phone games weren’t a thing. And video games were the thing of hobbyists, they weren’t mainstream like they are today. When a sports team came to town, it was the main thing people around town talked about for weeks beforehand, and for weeks afterwards. If you got tickets, then you were hot stuff. Anyone who couldn’t go but wanted to know what happened had to turn to those who did.
Did anyone do anything other than sports for entertainment? There were movies, but they were mostly films that kids wouldn’t appreciate. Superhero movies weren’t as mainstream as they are today. Movies were mainly geared towards grownups, so a kid either had to develop grownup tastes, or find something else to do. Oftentimes, it was sports, because that was one thing that was accessible to everyone.
The selection of toys was far more limited, too. If a kid got a Pogo stick, he was considered the coolest kid on the block. Everyone wanted to hang around the kid with the Pogo stick. There wasn’t much expectation that the kid would let anyone else play with it, except his close friends. If he chose you, it felt great, even if you fell off the thing. If another kid on the same block got a Pogo stick, then the kids started taking sides. Because suddenly that cool kid with the Pogo stick got a rival.
By the way, if you’re wondering what a Pogo stick is, here’s a picture of one:
And yes, those things were for real.
If you want evidence of how boring sports are, try attending a sporting event. You’d probably have an uncomfortable seat tightly nestled between other seats like sardines. If you attend a large event, you likely won’t be able to hear the game itself over how noisy the crowd is, and you’ll have just one view of the game, whether it’s ideal or not (almost always not).
It used to be that if you went to a game, you wanted front row seats. Nowadays, you’d want skybox seats. That’s because there’s a party going on up there, with no one really paying much attention to the game.
Simply put, sports are boring. If I had a choice between a sporting event and playing a video game I like, the video game would win, pretty much every single time. But I can’t go to a sporting event any time I wanted, only when one is scheduled, and when one is going on, it’s still immediately competing with anything else I could do for fun, nearly all of it I’d rather do. Even if I were to play a sport, I can think of things I’d rather do.
Not only are there video games, I can watch anime on my phone any time I want, even selecting the episodes I want to watch from among multiple seasons. Or I can do redneck science and blow stuff up for fun. That’s just a few examples of the things that sports has to compete with for my attention. The fact is, sports are boring.
Here’s a thought experiment. Think up a few things you really like doing. Then, imagine yourself at a sporting event, squinting at a game you can barely see, and can’t hear over a screaming crowd. Would you rather be at the sporting event? If so, you’re boring. Otherwise, you now understand how boring sports are. QED.
Twitter is being sued by Devin Nunes over the platform’s anti-conservative bias, and the platform’s failure to moderate content that impersonates his mother, and his cow.
If you were to read this story from traditional media outlets, you’d have to read between the lines of their scathing bias, which wouldn’t be much of anything new if you are among those that still pays attention to them. And, naturally, they’re focusing more on the false accounts that defame him, considering that this gives them opportunity to pass along the tweets that ridicule him, as Daily Mail is doing.
But if you’re up for some old-fashioned media not giving anyone to the right of Karl Marx a chance, check out what Mashable has to say about it. The following quotation in particular caught my eye:
“Sure, maybe his feelings are really hurt, but given the fact that Trump and others have brought up strengthening libel laws multiple times — the old “you can’t take what you dish out” syndrome — it could be setting up more nefarious actions to come.”
Yeah, “nefarious actions” like making sure that the corporate media isn’t getting away with libel, which it committed against the “MAGA kids” who were falsely branded as a hate mob.
I’ve had a number of social media accounts in the past. From what I remember, impersonating someone else and posting defamatory content was against the terms of service of most of them. I know that it’s grounds for a civil case, which leads us to the story being discussed, today.
As for whether there is an anti-conservative bias in social media and the tech industry, there’s pretty much no question that there is. Shadow-banning has been a weapon of choice to ensure that conservative voices aren’t heard. If you haven’t heard of shadow-banning, that’s when a person is allowed to post, but far fewer people see the poster’s content. It’s a way to silence someone without them knowing what’s going on. It’s one of the expressions of the left-wing establishment’s control over social media.
If you’re wondering what it’s like to be a conservative voice in social media, imagine that you’re playing a game of chess against a child. Imagine that in this game of chess, you’re not allowed to move your pieces to the other side of the board. Not only that, you’re not allowed to capture the opponent’s pieces. Worse yet, the child gets to change the rules of the game while the game is in progress. More disturbing still, the child is convinced that you’re a hateful, evil person who deserves to lose for disagreeing with them about anything.
You may have wisdom and know how the game is played, but the child owns the board and can set things up so that you don’t stand a chance.
One point of view on the matter is that Twitter is a private company, and if they wanted to, they could ban conservatives altogether. Whether that’s the case or not, I would expect an American-run company to conduct itself in a manner consistent with American values, including the principles of protecting free expression on a platform conductive to the free and open exchange of ideas.
In any case, I think the rest of us can appreciate that liberals are making this about an attempt to regulate social media, and that they were finally made to admit that regulating something would be a bad idea.
Scyther was one of the coolest pokemon. It was a pokemon that you had to like. If you didn’t like Scyther, you got punched in the hallways. Not only that, it was rare. It was a pokemon that not everyone had.
It was a version exclusive, and you had to have the Red version to catch one. Even then, it was a rare spawn that appeared in the Safari Zone. When one finally showed up, you got excited, even though there was no guarantee of catching it. Because, you know, the Safari Zone, where the capture mechanics were wonky. It was a great pokemon to catch in an area where catching things was a drag.
But if you got one, you were the man. Everyone wanted to trade with you. People would hang out with you, because you were the man with the Scyther. Or something like that. It wasn’t like it was game-breaking or anything. It was a mantid with blades for arms. And part of it’s appeal was that it was so rare.
So, how come Scyther is one of the most common pokemon in Pokemon Go? I’m not kidding, they seem to be about as easy to find as other bugs like Weedle and Wurmple. One day, as I was traveling home from work, I saw something like five of them in about 40 minutes.
It used to be that Scyther was rare, and that was part of what made it so cool. But nowadays, if you have a few Scyther in Pokemon Go, you might have accidentally caught them with the PokeBall Plus, and haven’t gotten around to releasing them yet.
There are a lot of ways to improve Pokemon Go, and one of them would be to restore Scyther’s rarity. Scyther’s rarity was part of what made it appealing, but then Niantic ruined it.
It’s pink Himalayan sea salt. You know, sea salt. Right from the shorelines of the Himalayas:
If marketers can sell burnt ash as “activated charcoal” to impressionable people as though there’s some mysterious benefit to it, why would it be a stretch to get the same people to buy sea salt that came from a mountain range that’s pink for some reason?
If you’ve been compared to Adolf Hitler or called a Nazi at some point, you’re pretty far from alone. The first time I was compared to Hitler, it wasn’t while discussing politics in an online forum, it was in an IRL chat about video games.
People seem eager to compare those that they disagree with to either Hitler or the Nazi party, especially the closer they are to losing an argument. But do these people really know what Adolf Hitler or the Nazis were really about?
It seems like all that most people really know about them was that they didn’t like Jews. But that in itself doesn’t make for a political ideology or philosophy, especially considering the Jews’ relative lack of influence. That’s like someone asking you what your religion is, and you answering “I’m not Zoroastrian”. There has to be more to what you believe in than you just saying that you’re not a member of a minority group.
The general consensus is that Hitler was right-wing. Those on the right usually answer that by saying that Hitler supported gun control, which isn’t a very right-wing stance to take.
But what was Hitler and his Nazi party really about?
People talk about Nazis all the time, but the topic of the Volkish party rarely comes up, even though the ideology of the Volkish was Nazism in its embryonic form. The Volkish were a folkish movement (Volkish literally means “folkish”) characterized by a rejection of urbanization and an embrace of rural and natural living. They were heavily conservationist and rejected industrialization. They were largely naturalistic in their thinking, and some of them embraced naturism, with not a few of them being nudists. Many of them were vegetarians; Hitler’s professed vegetarianism was a consequence of him belonging to the movement, though as vegans point out, Hitler didn’t really stay true to his vegetarian diet.
So yeah, the Volkish that Hitler belonged to were largely hippies. They were the most hellish hippies in history. Their beef with the Jews largely stems from the fact that Jews embraced technology, urbanization, and were meat-eaters. It also didn’t help that many of the conspiracy theories about the Jews that persist to this day were around back then, too.
The Volkish switched gears once they seized significant political control of Germany and became rebranded as the Nazi party. At that point, they seized control of the military-industrial complex and turned Germany into a socialist state.
Don’t believe me? “Nazi” is shorthand for “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”.
Next time you try to malign someone by comparing them to a maniacal dictator, check to make sure that you yourself do not ideologically align with the very same dictator.
The smiling kid who may very well take down a corrupt media.
In one of the more refreshing recent news developments, one of the “MAGA kids” students is suing CNN for defamation after CNN had carelessly portrayed them as a hate mob.
As you may recall, back in January, the corporate news outlets have covered a story about a group of kids in a confrontation with a native American group, portraying them as hatefully throwing taunts at an elderly man. Since then, mainstream news outlets have backpedaled after full video of the confrontation had been posted online, which shows that the only hateful rhetoric thrown out came from “another organization”, which the corporate media seems to be too terrified to acknowledge by name.
The Black Hebrew Israelites.
As a result of CNN’s careless coverage, the Covington students that pretty much did nothing but stand there smiling have been repeatedly threatened by those naive enough to take the corporate media at face value. Therefore, the student at the center of the controversy has decided to sue CNN for $275 million for defamation.
There’s a lesson that the corporate mainstream information media needs to learn, and that’s that there are repercussions for carelessly handling information, even if you feel justified in how you’re portraying someone by reason of the narrative that you prefer to peddle. If people like the MAGA kids who have been victimized by the corporate media’s irresponsibility with their informational positions make it expensive for them to libel, that just may be what it takes for them to feel discouraged from doing so.
While we’re on the topic, there’s something that has had me concerned, and this is an opportunity to bring it up. It seems as though tech companies have an interest in making sure that the corporate media’s biggest mistakes don’t receive too much attention.
The reason why I bring this up is because I voiced my opinion on the MAGA kids incident back in January. Since posting my article, I’ve noticed a suspicious trend in the traffic to this site:
What’s pictured is this site’s traffic. As you could see, prior to the posting of the article, the traffic to this page was widely varied, and there have been days when the traffic was substantially higher than usual. But in the days after it was published, the traffic to this site was steady, and traffic seemed to approach a sort of “cap”.
Noticing this, I decided to perform an experiment by taking the article off this site by reverting it to draft. Afterwards, the traffic to this site returned.
Something seems suspicious.
It’s not news that tech companies have long had a left-wing bias, but I suspect that search engines are now silently throttling traffic to pages that refuse to toe the line for the left wing narrative. This has apparently been going on for a long time. Back in 2017, I made an article criticizing the SJW movement for comparing itself to the Resistance from the Star Wars films.
As noted in an edit to the article itself, I performed searches for the article to try to find it on Google, but had difficulty in finding it. A Bing search showed the article as the first result of my first attempt at finding it. Today, a DuckDuckGo search similarly brought the page right up as the first result of my first attempt at finding it.
It would seem like something suspicious is going on with Google.
Today, the librarians of the digital age don’t have to go as far as to burn books, all it takes to silence someone is to omit them from search results. Now that Google has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, why trust them for informational purposes? It’s prime time to consider setting an alternative search engine as your default.
I’m interested in seeing whether mainstream news outlets change the way they handle information in the face of a public willing to fight back by making it expensive for them to commit libel. Perhaps the best way to stop the tide of defamation from news outlets is to ensure that they can’t afford it.
As for what we the public can do about tech companies that are making apparent attempts to censor us, perhaps the best thing we can do for the time being is use the services of their competitors.
A team of Boston University scientists have discovered a material that blocks nearly all sound from passing through it. This material, dubbed by scientists as “acoustic meta-material”, can block 94% of sound, making even a loudspeaker inaudible to the human ear.
Leave it to scientists to discover something awesome but still fail to give it an awesome-sounding name. I think a great name for this stuff would be “shutupium”.
One cool thing about this material is that it can be 3D-printed, so if you have a 3D printer, you can produce this stuff at home. Also, air can pass through it, but not sound.
I don’t know about you, but my head is racing from the possibilities of a material that can block sound. Obviously, there will be a new way to implement noise-cancellation technology in headphones. Better yet, it can also allow the rest of us to enjoy peaceful, quiet neighborhoods in spite of the annoying snots that drive around and listen to rap with their windows down just to annoy those of us who actually pay to live where we do. It would also be great for blocking out the barking from dogs whose owners moved into the city with them, not considering that everyone else would find them annoying.
And imagine what this can do to block noise at work. Those who work in noisy industrial environments might enjoy earplugs made from these things. But what’s really got me excited is that I could work and have no problem tuning out coworkers that continually fire off their BS cannons about stuff nobody cares about.
It would also be nice to have the windows open to let in some fresh air without hearing people hollering down the street. Come on guys, you can afford cell phones. As few as $20 might be all it takes to start you off with a phone and a simple plan.
Great work, scientists. While we’re hard at work making people less annoying, it would be great if they could invent something that could repel the smell of perfume or cigarette smoke. Or a pair of glasses that can make anyone look like a supermodel.
I recently set out to add another installment to my series on The Right Way to Play Pokemon, this time focusing on Pokemon Black and White. It had been a few years since I’ve picked up and played either game. But from what I remember, this game was pretty big, and the selection of pokemon was immense, so I carefully researched recommended team members and even went as far as doing damage calculations to ensure that these team choices would work well. Then, I set out to test my findings on a copy of Pokemon Black.
I have fond memories of Pokemon Black and White. In spite of this, the fifth generation of Pokemon receives a disproportionate amount of hate from certain segments of the community. If they were to be believed, gen 5 was the worst generation of Pokemon, and a person would be better off spending their money on something different.
Hearing all these complaints, it sounded as though they were talking about a different game than I remembered. But then again, it had been years since I’ve played the games, so maybe I remembered them wrong. But as I did my research for to prepare my article, the complaints didn’t match what I was actually seeing.
These games seemed fantastic.
For starters, the selection of Pokemon just for the playthrough was huge. Not only that, the game was intentionally designed so that only new pokemon were available for the player to capture prior to the post-game, making players come out of their comfort zones and try something new.
Because, you know, Pokemon. That game series that’s known for its themes of science, technology, exploration, and making new discoveries? These versions in particular even went as far as to ensure that the games didn’t just boil down to the typical old experience of picking Charmander, catching Pikachu, then playing through the game with the same-ol’-same-ol’.
Video games are about challenge, after all. It’s not much of a game if what you’re playing is the same comfortable experience every time. We decide we want something new eventually, so the Pokemon series is only going to get so far by repeatedly pandering to a sense of nostalgia. Life isn’t just about looking back, it’s more about looking forward.
Not only that, the experience was very balanced. Just from researching team selections, one would get the idea that GameFreak saw to it. These games were packed with pokemon that would have made excellent team choices. The starter pokemon, as well as many pokemon you can catch, were varying degrees of great. Lillipup? That’s a great pokemon, available at the outset. Drilbur? Great pokemon. Sigilyph? Scraggy? Joltick? Archen? Petilil? There are so many pokemon that would make great team choices, that narrowing down the selection to just a few was a challenging task.
To make things more interesting, GameFreak redid the exp. formula so that low-leveled pokemon gained more, while pokemon that were higher-leveled gained less. This meant that freshly-caught pokemon could easily catch up with the rest of your team, making it harder to dismiss certain pokemon by reason of not already being a member of a team for a long time. It also made it less likely that pokemon that haven’t been performing as well would fall behind. Better yet, it also helped to keep your team from becoming overly centralized around just a couple battlers that would otherwise continually get high amounts of exp. because they’d win every battle. And to make it easy for lower-level pokemon to catch up, it’s easy to gain levels from wild Audino, which frequently appear.
Then there are the themes. To start with, the game opens up with a coronation:
I don’t know about you, but that intro really makes me want to play the game. Who is the guy in the freakish robe? Who are the sage-looking guys who look on? Who are those two women who also seem well-designed enough to be of significance? Who is the green-haired kid, and why is he being declared king? What is going on? If you want to find out, keep playing the game!
Pokemon Black and White actually have a story. I’m usually pretty cynical about stories in video games, as they usually amount to hack fiction that serves as little more than a pretext to continue playing the game, as though the game mechanics didn’t do a good enough job. Pokemon games usually don’t have much in the way of story outside of “you’re a boy in a red hat who beats up an evil team on the way to becoming champion”, so it’s a change of pace to see a Pokemon game that has a story, and a surprisingly well-developed one.
The source of conflict is a man who runs an organization that sets out to free pokemon from humans. He sets up someone else as leader so he’ll have someone to hide behind and act through as the man behind the scenes. His organization also challenges what players have been doing in Pokemon games for years, making them think about what they’ve been doing all this time. It’s more complex than just a case of “bad guy wants to take over the world”.
Also of note is the story involving the character of Bianca:
As cheerful as Bianca looks, her story isn’t as cheerful. While most characters in Pokemon have the support of their parents, Bianca set out on her Pokemon journey against the wishes of her dad. While it’s easy to write him off as a stodgy curmudgeon, he is actually very protective of her, and considering that she projects vulnerability all over the place, it’s easy to see why.
If you’re used to chasing dreams because of so many games and movies that encourage you to do so, the conclusion of Bianca’s story hits like a dose of reality. Bianca finds out that she’s not well-suited to her goals, and that her endeavors were almost certain to end in failure, however enthusiastically she may have tried. For how cheerful the Pokemon games usually are, that’s a difficult lesson to have to contemplate. Oftentimes, people learn the hard way that they’re not well-suited to their career choices, and a person might not end up doing what they want to do, however much they may have wanted to do so.
Adding to the replay value is the fact that the seasons in Pokemon Black and White change depending on the month you’re playing the games. This can change the accessibility of certain areas and items depending on when you’re playing, and can make things slightly more or less convenient. A player can actually stand on a snow bank that otherwise wouldn’t be there if it weren’t winter in-game! Not only that, there’s a different tileset for most overworld locations depending on when you’re playing.
That’s well beyond what’s necessary for a game that’s already huge, and adds yet more replay value to a game that was already gushing with it.
Conveniently, there’s a battery indicator on the HUD on the bottom screen. As in, an indicator of the battery level of the system you’re playing on. That’s such a great convenience, that I wonder why more games didn’t implement it, and why more games don’t do it now. And not only that, it tells the time. And the strength of your wireless connection.
Come to think of it, why do these games get dumped on so heavily? When was it that these games came out? What does the Wikipedia article say?
Oh. That explains it. Pokemon Black and White were released when the hipster movement was in full-swing, and it was considered trendy to dump on anything mainstream, regardless of how high-quality the products may have been.
But hey hipsters, you got to dress in trashy clothes and bash on stuff that was actually great. That’s what you were going for, right? If so, mission accomplished, you missed out on some excellent games just so you can be a snot.
Stop hating on things just because a bunch of other people have arbitrarily decided with one accord to bash on it. You have a brain, use it.
So far, this article has only considered the first Black and White games. After these games were released, there would be direct sequels. While Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were basically re-tiles of Sun and Moon, and GameFreak is famous for releasing Kanto remakes, with Black 2 and White 2, new areas have been woven into the setting, which made the games feel like a new experience, even though the setting was the same as in the previous games. What’s more, the pokemon selection has been amped up by integrating older pokemon before getting into the post-game. Lucario fans, rejoice.
While most Pokemon games start you off in a small town without a pokecenter or gym, but with a convenient professor’s lab, BW2 starts you off in a decent-size town with it’s own gym and pokemon center, and the professor’s lab is located somewhere far off. That’s right, Pokemon actually tried something different. Not only that, the main character’s mom is a retired pokemon center nurse, so there’s an explanation for why she’s able to heal your pokemon that goes beyond mere game mechanic convenience.
Also, Challenge Mode. The sequels give you the option to play a harder game. That’s great for players like me who wanted an additional challenge. The only complaint would be that it’s only available in one of the two versions, and not before the post game, but the sharing of unlock information can make this available to players with the other version regardless of whether they’ve made it to post-game.
That’s right, there’s a feature that enables the sharing of version-exclusive features with someone who has the other version. That’s another feature that hasn’t been implemented into a Pokemon game since the fifth generation, probably because a lot of petty naysayers dumped on its many attempts at innovation, resulting in the GameFreak that we see today that seems hesitant to try anything new.
There’s also Pokemon Dream Radar, which allowed players of BW2 to have tons of items, pokemon with hidden abilities, and legendary pokemon, right at the game’s outset if they so choose.
So many exciting features, and such well-made games that are packed with content. Why does anyone pick on the fifth generation of Pokemon?
Oh yeah, the hipster movement. That’s another one of those fads that I’m glad is over.
If you’ve made the choice to actually play Pokemon Black or White, you have chosen well, and you’ve done well to resist the discouragement that comes with all the undeserved hate that these games get. If you’ve yet to give them a try, you’ll find that they are true gems in the 3DS library.
The smiling kid who may very well take down a corrupt media.
Magnetricity 