GameStop charges for info found online for free

Earlier today, Serebii posted about GameStop providing ten passwords for the upcoming American release of Pokémon Conquest. The catch? You'll need to shell out 1000 GameStop Power Points to get five of these. And keep in mind, these aren't single-use passwords either, they're universal - meaning you can find that info on any major fansite, including Serebii itself. Nice slap to the face there. I wonder who's going to get suckered in?

Poll change: starter ditching in Pokémon?

Sorry for being late on this, I was held by... other occupations. Anyway, seems like as I predicted, this is a very console-friendly community. Out of 354 voters, 66 play exclusively on consoles, 118 (including me) play only a few PC games, 63 play both but more consoles, 35 say it's about 50-50, 43 prefer the PC by a slight margin, 21 rarely play console games, and 8 never do.

Next question: when playing Pokémon games, do you ever ditch your starter, or is it an unwritten rule that you must always stand by it, no matter how crappy?

Math: too hard for YouTube

I lost almost 400 subs since I went on hiatus (why? It's not like I'm gone forever), and here's what it looks like according to YouTube's Analytics:

Fail much?

The biggest Xanatos Gambit ever

After completing Diablo 3 on Normal difficulty yesterday, I have to say, I'm impressed, and I don't know what the haters are going on about. At least those who complain about something else than the online-only component. It did a very good job of ditching what Diablo 2 did wrong, especially how easy it is to screw up your character PERMANENTLY if you don't read a guide online and copy one of a select few builds. Trying out skills you don't intend on really using is a blast, and it's something you couldn't do before.

I will concede that itemization may need some work, since stacking up Vitality and the main stat seems to be the way to go most of the time, especially in Normal, where the more interesting affixes haven't started dropping yet. That, and from what I hear legendary items have too low of a drop rate compared to their usefulness compared to high-end rares and crafted items (I know most legendaries are level 60, but still, I haven't had a single one drop so far). I think people are rather harsh on Blizzard there, internal testing with only a limited amount of people playing past the first third of the first act of the first difficulty will only do so much, and we should be expecting some improvements in future patches. I don't recall D2's launch that well, but I'd be surprised if items were perfect out of the gate (not to mention the masses of crippling bugs we don't have to deal with this time around).

But the thing that really made me go "what the hell?" has to be the storyline. Now, I don't care that much for story in video games, but holy crap is it ridiculous. Not necessarily saying it's bad, but that it's a lot to swallow all at once. As it turns out, the entire trilogy and its backstory was a Xanatos Gambit on Diablo's part, one that would have Hideo Kojima saying, "that's too much". MASSIVE SPOILERS beyond the jump, so don't click if you don't want anything spoiled.

The best 3.6/10 game I ever played

At least going by Metacritic's user scores. Let's not dance around that fact: Diablo 3's launch has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Pretty much everyone's noticed the massive amounts of maintenance yesterday (including one that introduced a hotfix for a glitch that not only wasn't in the beta, but pretty much makes no sense from a programming standpoint), and that was enough for the bad press nuclear bomb to be set off.

However, what many people seemingly failed to notice is the fact that the achievement system has gone totally bonkers. I myself lost a few achievements once yesterday, which caused me to start over (fortunately, I was barely past the beta content, so I didn't waste too much time), but nothing ever since. Everything's running smoothly on my end, but a lot of other people claim that they lost achievements twice, if not more... up to every time they log in. So for all that I was slightly set back in the gold-hunting and elite-killing achievements, some people have it much worse. And Blizzard scarcely ever updates us on the situation - they've allegedly been "working on it" for over 24 hours. Oh, and let's not forget the auction house going down for a few hours this afternoon. Good thing for Blizzard that the RMAH isn't open until next Tuesday, eh?

So of course, everyone's pointing at the online-only aspect as a proof of failure (for all that the game runs much smoother today than it did yesterday). And yes, it's been a rough ride so far, but Blizzard has loooooots of experience with online-only games, so it's going to get a lot better (as soon as the achievement saga gets put to rest, at least).

#error37 trending on Twitter

And to be honest, I saw that coming a little. Even though it's happened before not too long ago. Remember the open beta weekend? Wow, that was chaotic. I might've expected Blizzard to be more ready than that, but the truth is, we've been waiting for this game for way too damn long, so it doesn't surprise me at all that millions of rabid fans would try getting on the servers all at once. And this is why I decided to get a good night of sleep anyway. Staying up at and beyond 3 AM is just torture at my age. (Though I guess not if your name is Andrei Kostitsyn.)

So naturally many people are raging over the fact that unlike the first two games, there's no offline single-player mode. But you have to understand why they did that, and it goes beyond the usual accusations of DRM. The official excuse, that "people get confused because they can't take their single-player characters online", is definitely the weakest argument they could possibly offer. The fact is, they went to great lengths to create an economy that would be more compelling than in Diablo 2, AND they added a real money component to it (more on that later). That means that they have the moral obligation to keep the game as pure as possible, with as little hacks and dupes as possible. And it just so happens that offline single-player is the perfect testing grounds for such exploits. Diablo 2 fell prey to them easily, and they're obviously not okay with the idea of history repeating itself. So I'm in the minority on this, but I really think that online-only is for the better... in this particular case. Of course it's unneeded in many games that take this approach, but there's a very good argument that can be made for it here.

Speaking of the RMAH. People seem to complain that it's a ploy to make Blizzard more money. Except it's completely optional (unlike, say, paying your WoW subscription), and you can sell gold for real money anyway, so if you see an item you want on the RMAH, you can just sell the corresponding amount of gold beforehand. So, um, a private company wants to earn extra profits, and it's bad because it's Blizzard? I swear, Blizzard has the same aura as Nintendo in that people put them on a pedestal by thinking they're above money-grubbing. THEY'RE NOT CHARITIES. DEAL WITH IT.

And with that, let's see if I can get into the game.

Poll change: PC vs. console habits

As it turns out, most of you who visit this blog have been with me for a long time. 27 followed me from the beginning, or close to it, while 78 started watching me while I was LPing Crystal. Putting these together, that's 105 out of 261 voters who are in my first 1000 subscribers out of almost 10000. Impressive. The Emerald era still has the most votes with 87, which is no surprise considering that's when my viewership exploded. 44 people started watching me with the Platinum era, only 19 with the Soul Silver era, and six of you have yet to experience my Pokémon LPs growing as they are being done.

Next question: how many PC games do you play vs. console and handheld games? (Edit: of course, emulation doesn't count.) I'm fully expecting the votes to be heavily skewed in the favor of consoles, especially considering my LPing pedigree. Out of 18 LPs (including the incoming Pokémon White), I covered only two PC games - and one of them was a fan-made Flash game, while the other is 20-year old abandonware.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm almost exclusively a console gamer, with Diablo being one of the rare exceptions to the rule. And even then, my first introduction to the series was done through a friend who had the PS1 version of the first game... and the unanimous verdict on that port, as well as the mind-numbingly bad N64 version of Starcraft, is hardly positive. I didn't have a PS1, so I bought the PC version, and I was instantly sucked in.

More CoroCoro info: returning characters confirmed

Well, if I wanted to pass off fake info, that's exactly how I would've done it. Whoever leaked this stuff was an idiot, not backing it up with scans immediately. But yes, several old gym leaders are going to be returning in a Pokémon World Tournament, which on the surface seems to be reminiscent of something Cynthia alluded to in BW1 if you looked hard enough. This is a huge bone thrown to the nostalgia-driven fanbase, and the ultimate form of fanservice. I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea, though: it's the kind of thing you'd keep for the final game in the series, and if you think this is the end of Pokémon, sorry, but you're an idiot. I say that because any game that DOESN'T have this will feel extra empty.

Oh, and here's a fun thing to think about. BW2 takes place two years after BW1, which itself happens several years after the first four generations. So knowing that younger gym leaders, such as Misty, are going to be coming back, are they going to redesign them so that they look like adults? Judging by the scans, the answer is no. Screw realism, this is FANSERVICE.

In other news, the genie trio's new forms aren't female forms for bragging rights, or anything of the sort, they're real, bona fide alternate forms, complete with stat changes. Thundurus gets a stat spread more centered on special attack (WHY?), Landorus has more attack (ARE YOU SERIOUS?), and Tornadus is more defensive. Over at the TSG forums, Meta289 suggested that this was an apology for basically making the original genies palette swaps of each other, as well as saddling the first two with identical stats (which screwed Tornadus over enormously). In addition, it's confirmed that they're an AR Searcher thing exclusively (I'm going to assume the sole purpose of these forms is to drum up AR Searcher sales).

Also, Cheren is now a Normal-type gym leader (did he take over the Nacrene gym? If so, what happened to Lenora? Oh well, I don't think many people will miss her Watchog), and he looks like Tommy Wiseau. Bianca also got a redesign, and inherited Cheren's glasses in the process. And as expected, we'll meet Alder and N once more (the latter looks especially weird in the art that was showcased). Which means it's likely that the other major figures of Team Plasma will be making a comeback, as expected.

Are we looking forward to this game yet?

Edit: After Pokébeach yesterday, it's Bulbagarden's turn to claim every previous gym leader will return. That suddenly makes the possibility a lot more credible.

CoroCoro starts to leak: genie trio gets alternate forms

At least that's the main thing that's come out of this so far. Question is, what will this accomplish? Did they really need form changes? Thundurus is already OP, Landorus is fine as is, and... well, there's Tornadus, I guess. I dunno, I'm not that much of a fan of everyone and their dog getting alternate forms. Remember when it used to be special (it was a Deoxys thing exclusively before gen 4, in fact)? Oh well, let's wait and see, something good might come out of this. By the way, it's said they can only be obtained through the AR Searcher, which suggests that changing forms may be impossible. Throwing this out there: what if it's just a cosmetic thing, for bragging rights for those who bought the AR Searcher and were lucky enough to find these?

And while there aren't any scans to support this yet, allegedly a whole bunch of old characters will appear in BW2 such as Brock, Misty, Giovanni, Blue, Volkner, Steven and Lance. In what capacity would these appear, nobody knows. I sure hope they can be battled in the post-game, because quite frankly, BW1 was a little lacking in that aspect. Nonetheless, I remind you that this isn't confirmed yet, we could be dealing with a Trojan horse strategy where the leaker gives some accurate info, and attaches lies to it to make them sound more believable. I mean, why would the page with the genies be leaked, but not the rest? Sounds suspicious, but it could be true. More on this as it unfolds.

Edit: Pokébeach suggests that these might be female genies. Looking at their design, that's actually believable... but is the game code capable of handling something like that? If the new forms are assigned different rows in the Pokémon table, this is very much possible.

Edit 2: Speaking of Pokébeach, they're saying that according to the scan's leaker, every previous gym leader can be fought in BW2. As cool as this sounds, this doesn't sound like something Gamefreak would ever do. 40+ gym leaders in a single game? Seriously? Not to mention, we have yet to see any proof of any old character returning, at all. This is really, really fishy, and the likelihood that we're dealing with a Trojan horse leak just skyrocketed with that. Pics or it didn't happen. I mean, the guy does have a copy of CoroCoro, right? Why not upload the rest of the scans to prove that it's true?

Microsoft fails at math

You won't believe this one - I had a hard time buying it myself. Apparently, Microsoft will sell the 4 GB Xbox 360, complete with Kinect (for all three people who care), for $99 if the customer signs up for two years of Xbox Live at a cost of $15 per month. Do the math, that means a total of $459. Now, how does the same thing cost if bought separately at standard prices? $420. Kinda defeats the point of a bundle, huh?

Is there such a thing as too much detail in an LP?

One of the things that make my LPs stand out, and something I'm rather proud of, is the fact that I will show everything I possibly can in the games I cover. Of course, I have my limits - I ran away screaming when the Nintendo Gallery reared its ugly head, for instance (and I have yet to see a single person complain about that - I love you guys). But what about things that don't rank as high on the scale of tediousness, but you still wouldn't wish on your worst enemy?

If you've been keeping up with Chuggaaconroy's Super Paper Mario LP, you know what's coming tomorrow. Chapter 2-3. The place where many games were ended, never to be continued again, out of the sheer tediousness of the thing. Sure, you can look it up on GameFAQs and be done with it in three minutes flat. But the sole fact that if you don't you're in for one of the most painful, what-were-they-thinking experiences to ever hit gaming is still enough to convince many players to quit playing the game entirely and shoot for a refund.

And if I were to venture a guess, the guy's going to go the extra mile and do things the "legit" way. Mad props to him if he does that - and really, he's in a position where you just can't win. As Nightlingbolt eloquently put it over at FMT, "Chuggaa's fanbase is unpleaseable either way. Easy way, someone calls him out for being a *. Hard way, someone calls him a retard for not taking the easy way."

Now, if this were my LP I would go for the three-minute cop-out, because the stage is just THAT BAD. This is where you find Slim because GameFAQs said so, this is the code for the safe because GameFAQs said so, there, stage over. This is coming from the guy who goes out of his way to show everything the game has to offer, but this is beyond my threshold of pain.

So the question I want to ask you is this: in a hypothetical scenario where I did just that, would you be left unhappy because I wussed out on the treadmills and hamster wheels, or would you not mind at all? Alternatively, if I decided to torture myself by going the hard way for the sake of being complete and/or "professional", would I be an idiot for missing out on the easy, three-minute way?

(On that note, I would like to reassure anyone who's never played Super Paper Mario: yes, it IS that bad. Don't buy the game just to see if that one stage is as bad as I say it is. IT IS.)

Poll change: last gen was the best gen

I was genuinely curious to see what the results of the favorite home console poll were going to be, and despite my work being hugely Nintendo-centric, it's still the PS2 that managed to come out on top over the Gamecube by a single vote, 51 to 50. The rest of the top 5 is rounded out by a trio of other Nintendo consoles, though, with the N64 at 32, the Wii at 28 and the SNES at 21. The Xbox 360 at 17 and the PS1 at 11 were the only other consoles to get in double digit-land. After these comes the PS3 with 6 votes, the Genesis with 5, the NES with 3, the Dreamcast and Xbox with 2, the Saturn with 1, and the Master System with 0.

As for the "Other" option, it somehow got 6 votes, way more than I expected. What consoles were these votes for? The Atari 2600? The Intellivision? The Jaguar? Why not the Magnavox Odyssey while we're at it? Heck, God forbid, the CD-I? I thought the available options were enough to get every single vote out there... to be honest, I was debating whether to put the Master System on there, because Sega only really bloomed with the Genesis, but I decided, eh, why not... and no one voted for it. Speaking of Sega, the total whomping it got was by far the biggest surprise for me. Put together, its consoles only got eight votes. For a company that used to rival Nintendo, that's downright pathetic.

Next question: when did you start watching my videos? To be honest I'm not expecting a whole lot of Red and Crystal, considering I was under 1000 subs until well into Emerald, but hey, let's see.

A post about everything and nothing

- First, I would like to warn everyone ahead of time: there will probably be a new Wind Waker video tomorrow, but after that, don't expect anything until Thursday at the very least (and then the next Sunday should be my final video before Diablo 3 comes out).

- So if you haven't noticed, he who shall not be named likes Life Shrooms in Super Paper Mario a bunch. I'm really curious to know his reasoning, though. In the RPG entries, Life Shrooms were moderately useful later in the game, since not only can you potentially take a massive beating in a single turn (say hi to the last 10 floors of the Pit of 100 Trials in PM2), but when used strategically they can also allow you to do something else than heal in a given turn, while still keeping you alive (once again in the Pit). But in Super Paper Mario? We're talking about a real-time game here, so you don't even have to use up a turn to heal up. Maybe if you completely forget to heal, but other than that, really? Packing standard healing items of better quality (even standard Shroom Shakes) would do you MUCH better. So, um, is there something I'm missing here?

- The best way of preventing texting while driving. EVER.

- If you plan on getting Diablo 3, this might come in handy if you want to know what a yard is worth. Proof that you're playing as 25-foot giants.

- For those same people, an invaluable piece of advice, that countless people seemed to have completely missed during the open beta: the first thing you should do when starting up the game is head to the options and activate Elective Mode, which allows you to assign any skill to any skill slot, regardless of category (except for most non-attacking skills on the left mouse button). Just so you don't go bonkers when you see a Barbarian with both Battle Rage and Threatening Shout and call him a cheater. Now, why the hell isn't THAT the default option? Blizzard says it's because separating the skills into arbitrary categories and let players choose one from each is more simple, but I call bullshit. What's more simple than "here are 20-something skills, pick six, have fun"?

- Also, no, there are no WASD controls. NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP. THIS ISN'T WOW. (If you're laughing, THIS, of all things, was the most common complaint during the few days the open beta lasted. This makes me sad inside.)

New info on Global Link in BW2

Check out Serebii for the details. It's set to be similar to the one in BW1, but the info I think we're all interested in is, will the Dream World be bearable? Will we get new abilities? At the very least, we'll be getting new areas and Pokémon. One of the new areas is called the Cool Hole, which implies a heavy Ice-type population. Looking at the Ice-types that don't have their DW abilities yet, we have a few:

- Pickpocket Weavile. Are you serious? Pressure is the best option on a Pokémon with 70/65/85 defenses and a shitty defensive typing? PASS.
- Thick Fat Mamoswine: While they currently exist, they were only given through a special distribution as male Mamoswines. Meaning no Swinub/Piloswine-only moves, and no egg moves either, which is a crippling flaw.
- Moody Glalie: Banned ability, whoop-dee-doo.
- Cursed Body Froslass: Meh, interesting novelty, but Snow Cloak is far more helpful.
- Soundproof Abomasnow: Could be useful in lower tiers where Snow Warning is banned, but an absolute joke in OU.

Of course I didn't mention Snow Cloak Articuno and Ice Body Regice (for all that they'd be a nice improvement) because I'm not expecting legendaries to be distributed there. As for gen 5 Pokémon, it's still unknown whether we'll actually get some of them this time, but the Ice-types with DW abilities are Weak Armor Vanilluxe and Swift Swim Beartic (!!!). So overall, Mamoswine is the only one worth looking forward to. Of course, we're going to be getting Pokémon from other types, but which ones? Who knows.

Speaking of the Dream World, you'll be able to visit it once every 20 hours instead of 24 hours like before. I'm going to assume it's because of low traffic. Gee, I wonder why?