First of all, the ustream thing last weekend was fun. We'll be doing it again on Saturday or Sunday, and hopefully it won't be so distracting. It's something that's meant to bring people together to code, not to talk and/or make fun of how young I look.

The best part of it was either Cesque's picture of me (see here) or Ferret's reaction to the fact that Canadians do actively say "eh".

Anyway, I had to leave the ustream feed in a hurry on Saturday, because I had to take my ex-girlfriend to the hospital for severe abdominal pain. (Miranda and I broke up about a month ago, but we still live together)

I went to the emergency room a few times throughout the week; the last time I spent 14+ hours hanging around in the emerg, and it kept me up for over 30 hours, and it sucked. In the end, Miranda was diagnosed with an ovarian cyst.

I wanted to be a neurologist, and I love the brain. Being at the hospital wasn't bad (some people freak out about being at the hospital and stuff; I never minded it – it was actually fun), and it's rekindled my want to work at a hospital. I work with a guy who used to work IT at a hospital, and it sounds really fun, so maybe I'll try that some time. It's a unique environment.

Speaking of which, I don't know why people are always bashing Scrubs. It's one of my favorite shows, and it captures the life of an internist so well. Mad men is amazing for its perfect acting and writing (I haven't gotten far in it yet though), and is critically acclaimed for it – Scrubs is exactly the same, with a touch of comedy thrown in.

Then you have shows like Greys Anatomy and House that just take a huge shit on being a doctor. What the fuck.

The entire cast of Grey's Anatomy would be sued for malpractice and incompetence, as would Dr House. They'd probably get jail time on top of it, the stupid fucks. I don't know why people aren't rolling their eyes at these shows as much as they roll their eyes at cop shows where the cop "plays by his own rules", and "brings justice any way he can", except when he's "so tortured by his personal life, that he just can't think straight, but his superiors don't care because HE GETS RESULTS". Bullshit.

A good show with a cop in it is Dexter, though. The shit he gets away with is bullshit, but the characters and behavior are good, and the writing is done really well. But I'm sure you all know about that.

Anyway, on to Pokemon White.

It is amazing! I'm so happy with a lot of the changes over Diamond.

On the other hand, it doesn't feel like pokemon at all. Maybe one of the N64 offshoots, but those didn't feel like a pokemon RPG. I'll get into that later. Also, it should be noted that I'm playing this with a regular DS, not a DSi or 3DS (which as far as I'm concerned, still stands for 3D Studio [Max]), so I might be missing out on some majorly cool stuff, graphic-wise. Also, I haven't gotten very far in the game yet, so this is my initial reaction.

First of all, I hated, HATED, how fucking slow the text in Diamond was, especially in battles. I would literally get into a battle, initiate an attack, put the DS down, go pee, then come back, and my turn would just be getting ready to start again. I seriously dreaded battling in Diamond. And this was with animations turned off, and text speed at full.

There was also a little thing that irked me, where if you were battling a trainer, and their first pokemon fainted, it would say the name of the next pokemon they were going to use – however this auto-scrolled, and there were two lines of text below it, and you can only fit two lines of text on the screen. So if you weren't paying attention (ie if you zoned out and started pressing A, A, A, A, A, while you waited for the fucking pokemon to take its turn) and you missed what pokemon was coming out next, you were screwed.

Both these problems are fixed in Pokemon B/W. I can finish a battle in well under 30 seconds, instead of 5 fucking minutes.

I should note that one thing they did not fix was the ability to press "a" to make the entire text in a message to appear. In the early pokemon games, if text (such as someone talking to you) started scrolling out across the screen , letter by letter, you could press "a", and it would stop scrolling and just make it all appear. In Diamond and B/W, you can only change the scroll speed (if scroll speed is slow, holding "a" will change the scroll speed to fast, but that's no help).

My biggest disappointment so far, is that they took out the ability to use "L1" as a replacement for "a", so that you could play with one hand. It really interferes with my ability to jerk off to Pikachu. (but seriously, I used that feature a lot in Diamond)

The other major interface change is the fact that there is no pokewatch (or whatever the stupid merger of the word was), and instead, your menu (which would normally open by pressing "x") is shown in the bottom half of the DS, OR your C-gear. The C-gear would be cooler if I ever had it on, which I rarely do. You can bring out your dowsing machine (which is SO MUCH better than in previous games. I didn't even know how to use it in previous games. No matter where I thought it told me to look for an item, THERE WAS NO FUCKING ITEM ANYWHERE. It made me very confused and angry), but if you bring back your menu, your dowsing machine goes away. Most of the pokewatch apps were useless, and I wish I could have gotten rid of them, but I liked using the Berry Map in Diamond to see where I was.

The actual game itself feels weird, yet cool in a way. It definitely does NOT feel like the good ol' 2D pixilated pokemon that I loved. It feels a lot more like battle stadium or something.

First of all, the graphics are all 3D. And on the DS, the 3D sucks. It looks awful. They also do not use a fixed camera – which can look cool sometimes (there's one long-ass bridge that you cross, and it has lots of different camera angles as you walk across it), but it makes the characters look like crap. The opening sequence shows the professor of the game (a girl. *gasp*) walking into the main characters house. But it does it by having the camera so zoomed out that it shows the whole town, and this tiny model (that looks more like a VERY POORLY DRAWN cartoon) of a character walking to the house. Have you ever seen GM games where a 10 year old draws their characters, then scans them into the computer, and can't even animate them? That's what the intro looked like. It was fucking awful. And the rest of the game gets a little better, but it just feels like someone did a half assed job trying to hand-draw the world and its characters. Even the menus are weird – the buttons are weird shapes that – while they are symmetrical – look like someone doodled them while they were bored while taking a phone call or something.

However, there are parts where it actually does show hand drawn things (you have a little "communicator" device where your hot mom will call you and her face shows up on the screen, etc) and they look really really good. Also, the main character girl is pretty hot. I initially chose her and named her "boobs", because I didn't plan to actually play the whole game with her.

Throughout the intro movie, every time someone would call her "boobs", I'd genuinely laugh, then forget her name was "boobs" a few seconds later, then they'd say "boobs" again and I'd laugh at the novelty of it, and then I'd forget again…And so on. It was fun.

The battle feels a lot different as well, because it's all 3D. While the old pokemon games were 2D, and they felt like they were sort of just happening in a vacuum, b/w actually moves the camera around slightly (it moves it even more if you turn on animations – which I do not turn on), and it gives it the feel that pokemon arena sort of had, where you're fighting an actual battle. The pokemon don't actually move, but it's a cool effect. And as I mentioned before, you can go through the messages of "Pikachu used thunder bolt", "foe's bulbasaur used razor leaf" in seconds, rather than waiting 10 seconds for each message to move on to the next one.

Walking through the world in Diamond, where they used a bit of simple 3D for the buildings and stuff, was a bit of a distraction from the feelings of the old pokemon games, where everything was pixel perfect and had a simple design, but you adjust quickly. With b/w, there is so much more detail and variation put into the environment, and it's actually distracting. You can't lose yourself in the simple task of training your pokemon or capturing the ones you need. It's a good evolutionary step for a fuller game experience, but like I said, it doesn't feel like a pokemon game; it's a good game, but doesn't feel like a pokemon game.

There's also a lot more going on in each city. Team plasma (whatever happened to team rocket? Why must there be a new evil organization in stupid costumes for me to try and learn their motives with each game) keeps stealing shit, and I have to keep getting it back.

Which reminds me of another thing that initially had "douche" stuck in my mind for the first several hours of game play. Remember in earlier games, how you always had a rival? Well not in this game! Instead you have two friends that are total, TOTAL, tools. There's some kiss ass know it all fuck who you just wish would get pushed in front of a train (and this is coming from a kiss ass know it all fuck), and a ditzy helpless fugly chick with a stupid hat. Her pokemon DO get stolen (which I was always hoping would happen, and then she would be out of the game), and when they do the game even takes me to meet her at a pier along with the gym leader of the town, where I was hoping the gym leader and I would team up and say "you are pathetic and unworthy", and then we would snatch off her stupid hat, and shove her into the ocean, where she would be eaten by whatever new fish pokemon are in this game (I haven't gotten a fishing rod in the game yet – maybe a sharktopus or something).

But no…The gym leader has me chase after team plasma and get the pokemon back.

So the characters in the game suck. To be fair, the gym leader interactions have actually been pretty cool (they work together to stop evil, and they're friends…It's how I imagine elite pokemon trainers should behave – teaming together without befriending civilians, to take down weirdos in suits that immediately make me think of sperm), but the fact that I have to keep running into tweedle douche and tweedle dumb really irritates me. It irritates me even more than the emphasis that EVERY SINGLE PERSON in Diamond put on how I should strengthen the bond between my pokemon and I. What bond?! I don't love my pokemon. I keep them cooped up in a ball that jiggles around in my backpack, and only let them out so they can get shocked by raichu or licked by ghastly.

That's my impressions so far. I absolutely LOVE how they sped up the fucking battles , and there's a lot of cool little things, but overall the new art style is shit, and this just doesn't feel like a pokemon game. It's still lots of fun though, and it's a LOT cheaper than I thought it would be. I recommend you guys go out and get it.

In fact, I bought it for two of my friends, and they're coming over tonight, so they can keep restarting their game and giving me their starting pokemon. XD

There's several new features that I haven't tried yet – one of them is C-Gear. The game puts a lot of emphasis into getting data from passer-bys and stuff. It'd be cool of more people around here played pokemon. I live in the biggest city in Canada, so I guess I'll eventually pickup some data from others, haha.

But yeah, there's something called C-gear communications, which basically starts up wifi, infrared, etc. It says not to start it on a plane or in a hospital, and when I first read that I thought "pfft, alright. Not like I'll be in a hospital any time soon"…then BAM, ALL of my playing time was done in a hospital. I thought it was funny.

I think this might be a game where I can do what cesque did, and try write about the game as I go along.

It won't be nearly as entertaining since I can't do screenshots, but I'll give it a shot.

I've got 30 minutes to kill, so I guess I'll make this blog even longer by starting that.

*ahem*

Beginning

It is Autumn. The camera shows a wide angle of the town, and professor what's-her-face is shown walking into my house with a package, then leaving without it.

The scene cuts to my bedroom, where me and douche bag are standing in front of the package from the professor. Douche bag says something douchy about how dumbass is always late. I will always refer to my two "friends" in the game as douche bag and dumbass.

Dumbass shows up, and we all chose our pokemon. Douchebag says something douchy, but ends up always picking the pokemon that is strong against mine, while dumbass always picks the one that's weak against mine.

I pick Oshawott (which sounds very similar to Oshawa, a city near where I live), which is the squirtle equivalent of B/W. Dumbass decides she wants to battle me in my bedroom. I beat her, but it DESTROYS my room. My codependant mom offers to clean up my room for me, and tells me to go out and have an adventure. Clearly if I had picked tepig, the charizard of b/w (who does not live up to charizard at all), I would be out setting shit on fire, and getting into trouble. Maybe even killing small animals, instead of just making them faint. But I digress, about the oblivious and unhealthily helpful mother.

We meet up with the professor (after dumbass' parents tell her she can't go on an adventure, but she does anyway, ‘cause she's a dumbass and doesn't realize that I don't want her to tag along), and she goes through the speech of giving us a pokedex, and how important it is, and how to catch a pokemon, etc.

She then tells us to meet her in the next city (accumula town), and walks ahead of us. Douchebag thinks it would be "fun" to see who captures the most pokemon by the time we get to the next town, and they go running off ahead of me.

Obviously with my OCD, I collect more pokemon than them, and when I meet them at the next town, I whoop their ass in a battle.

After I heal in town, team plaaaasma shows up in the middle of town, draws a crowd, and gives a speech about how pokemon should be free – but for some reason they're allowed to keep pokemon in order to use them to steal pokemon from people to set them free. Apparently humans keep them from reaching their potential, and pokemon are unhappy. People then start talking about how pokemon and humans each have something that the other does not, and we complete each other; which is very vague, and I don't understand. Personally I side with Team Plasma on this, as far as logic goes.

After team plasma leaves, I run into some mysterious figure with special insight into what pokemon feel and hear. His name is "N", and is clearly a wannabe "L". We battle, I win, and he wanders off muttering about me not hearing pokemon, or something.

I then leave Accumula town, and get a message on my "xtransciever" with a picture of my hot mom, who is giving me running shoes (FINALLY. I hate not running. And now I hate not having a bike). I wander along Route 2 with nothing interesting happening. I still don't know what pokemon I should be building up, and I only have four pokemon at this point – two normals, one dark, and my water one. I figure I might as well level up my dark pokemon along with my water pokemon, since normals suck.

I arrive in Striaton City. There's a weird forest of dreams off to the side of the town, so I go in there, and someone gives me a pokemon. Depending on the first pokemon you choose, this person will give you the pokemon that is bad against in. In other words, I got a fire pokemon, which is bad against my water pokemon, but is good against leaf pokemon, which my water pokemon is bad against. This was very convenient.

I then went back to Striaton City, and challenged the gym. There were three gym leaders here, but you can only fight one of them, and it again depends on the pokemon you chose. Since I chose a water pokemon, I had to fight the leader who fought with leaf pokemon. I didn't mind, because my fire guy whooped him very easily.

I got my badge, and headed out of the gym. After I got out, some science chick (the bland science chick, not the sexy one who is made sexier ‘cause she's smart) named Fennel. I gotta get back to work, so I'll explain Fennel's role next time! If I feel like it. XD

P.s. I wanted to do an april fools thing for 64D, but I ran out of time. Especially with so much time in the ER. :(