The Alpha and The Omega

One of my friends shocked pretty much everyone on his Facebook feed when he admitted that he was not going to get the "new" Pokemon game.  For those of you who don't know Cory, he is basically a real life Pokemon Trainer.

His mom kicked him out of the house when he was ten, he got into a lot of fights with other kids, and sometimes other adults.  Eventually, he took down a major crime syndicate while on his way to becoming the very best.

Okay, so that last paragraph wasn't true.  At all.  But he does like Pokemon an awful lot; just check out his DS collection... he has one for each edition of the game that came out for that system (for those of you who aren't handheld gamers, it's like nine or something).  I also like Pokemon a lot.  It's an excellent game, whether you are the "target demographic" of eight-to-twelve year olds with power fantasies, or a gamer who's rapidly approaching middle age.  It's easy to understand, there are very few penalties for failure, yet there's a deep and rewarding endgame for those who want a nearly infinitely replayable game.  One of the greatest draws to this game is that you can set your own goals, whether it's to fill out your Pokedex (that's Poke-speak for nerd-catalogue) and "catch 'em all" as the commercials entreat, to beat the Elite Four and become League Champion, to build the perfect team and take all comers in battle, or to simply collect as many "shiny" Pokemon as you can.

Not long after I met Cory, Nintendo released a remake of the second game in the series for DS, Heart Gold/Soul Silver.  I think it was part of how we bonded, because even if we didn't battle together, we sure had a lot of common ground to cover (even if a lot of it was me hassling him for buying the same system over and over).  I probably spent a total of 300-400 hours over the three DS pokemon games that I bought, and a lot of those hours were spent trading Pokemon WITH MYSELF.  Which makes it all the more puzzling as to why I'm not picking up the game either.

So what happened in the last four years?  Why would a game that's had it's friendly, approachable tentacles wrapped firmly around my free time fall so far from my personal good graces?

The fact is, while each release does introduce some changes to the basic formula, these changes are very incremental.  This game is only a little different from Pokemon X/Y, which came out last year, and it's a remake of a ten year old game, to boot.  X/Y was the same minor step forward for the series, as was Black2/White2 before it and Black/White before that.  Simply put, it's the same reason that Call Of Duty or Assassin's Creed sales have been flagging year over year, and it's the same reason that next years Batman: Arkham Whatever game will also be lukewarm.

Games are a business, and when it comes to games with big budgets, no one is willing to take the risks that they should take in order to make the form progress.  The only ones who will take those risks are the devs with the least to lose: the independent developers, and this works the same way as indie movies.  For every indie darling like Gone Home (which everyone, gamer or no, should play) or Hotline Miami, there are literally thousands that will fail to make back even the cost to develop.


Pokemon is kind of the exact opposite of an indie game, though, and realistically, the market for the next game in the series is still in diapers.  For the rest of us, six generations of the same gameplay is beginning to wear.  Sometimes, becoming the very best is just not enough.

Garlic Time!

 Ahhh... Garlic...  Look at it.  It's like a seed from the gods, isn't it.  So much potential, so much flavour.  Bust open the head, and pull out a clove or two, I'm going to show you how to get the most out of your garlic.

 Place the side of a wide knife over the top of the clove, and give the top of the knife a sharp blow with the heel of your palm.

 Pull the peel off and slice them to about 2-3 mms wide.

 Turn them around, and mince them finely, and salt the garlic with a coarse grind.

 Now take the side of your blade and pull it across the garlic in sections, crushing it down into the board.  You should feel the salt grinding the garlic through your knife.

 By the end of it, the garlic should look like this:

Now you can use it like this in stirfrys, sauces, whatever. The crushing activates an enzyme in the garlic that gives it a distictive taste, and added garlicky goodness.

If you have fresh or dried herbs, chop them up, and press them into the garlic, too.  Works great for marinades, curries, stirfries, anything slow cooked.  You can do this for salad dressings, but if the fresh garlic seems too harsh, let it sit in the acid of your dressing for at least a day or two to make it more mellow.  Anytime a recipe calls for a clove of garlic, if  you can take the time to do this, it will always taste better.  Always.