Top 10: Pokemon who need Mega Evolutions

I got the new Pokemon game last weekend, and I'm really enjoying it.  However the one problem I found with it is the lack of new Pokemon, most are from older games, but their is one new feature that I am really enjoying...Mega Evolutions.  With Mega Evolution Pokemon now have an advantage over their wild brethren, and the right Mega can change the course of a battle.  The only drawback is the Megas end up drawing too much attention and keep you from using some other valid options.  So I decided to make a list of Pokemon that deserve Mega Evolutions in the next generation of Pokemon (or upcoming events and free updates, please Nintentdo).

10) Eevee

Eevee is the evolution Pokemon, and eventually will have a form for every type in the Pokemon world (Still waiting on my Steel type).  However a normal type evolution may not be the best route, a Mega evolution for its original form would make it as powerful as the rest, without the need to come up with a gimmick to evolve it.

9) The weaker Legendary Pokemon

Every generation their are the insanely powerful legends like Mewtwo, Lugia, Dialga, and Reshiram.  But their are even more that are weaker like the Bird trio, the beasts, Deoxys, and even Mew.  The real insult to these guys however is their is a subclass of Pokemon known as Pseudo-legendary; these are Pokemon  you can catch more than 1 of,  are not banned from official tournaments, and are just as powerful as the weaker legiondaries.  It get worse now that Tyranatar, one of these pseudo-legendary Pokemon can mega evolve, making him more Powerful than about 90% of all Pokemon.

8) Dragonite

For those of you like me you may be wondering why an elegant blue serpent dragon evolves into Barney's retarded cousin.  A Mega evolution may be the perfect way to fix this, make him more like his previous forms while still retaining the appearance of an evolution.  Plus if you look at the evolutionary line for this guy, he would be perfect to combine the dragon and fairy types, making a dragon that Jigglypuff cannot destroy.

7) Any Bird Type

In Pokemon Fly is quite possibly the most useful of the HMs, thus you are forced to always keep a bird on your team that knows the move, the catch? Most of them suck.  Sure there are exceptions like Braviary and Pigeot.  But wouldn't it be great if one of these birds could evolve into something more useful?  The same thing goes for Surf but I'll get to that one later.

6) Porygon Z

Porygon is an artificially made Pokemon, much like Mewtwo and Genesect.  But Mewtwo already gets a Mega form and Genesect is covered under my weaker Pokemon  so that leaves this guy.  Porygon is man made, and to be honest once he reaches the final stage is quite powerful.  But because he is artificial I feel it only makes sense that he gets a mega form.  Think about it he is simply data, so why not have a code in him somewhere that allows him to mega evolve? 

5) Snorlax & Sudowoodo

The reason I picked these two is simple, there's not a lot of them, usually just 1 or 2 in each generation.  This means you usually had 1 shot to catch them or else you could never finish your Pokedex.  In fact up until a year ago my brother was convinced they were legendary Pokemon because of how rare they seemed to be in the games.  Alithough if I had to choose 1, then I'd go with Snorlax just because the thing is so cool.

4) Pokemon that Don't evolve

Up until you defeat the Elite Four and can go after the powerful legendary Pokemon your strategy is fairly simple, capture a pokemon and evolve it to it's final form to dominate in battle.  But what about the Pokemon who don't evolve?  Originally I was just going to put Lapras, but I then realized it can hold its own, unlike others like Corsola.  Plus if they don't evolve, what's the point of training them? thus they often end up in your PC never to be used again.

3) The rest of the trade evolvers

X and Y gave us Mega evolutions that required us to work with a friend to achieve.  The problem is, what about the physical Pokemon Machamp and Golem.  As a child some of the coolest Pokemon required me and my friends to all get together and pool our resources to get.  Best of all there was one for everybody's preference, want a strong defense? use a Golem; want to attack mercilessly? how about Machamp.  Fast forward to today and the only friend I have that plays Pokemon lives 300 miles away, so getting these Pokemon is even more of an accomplishment then when someone to trade with was a short bike ride away.  So why not make them all worth having and give us mega evolutions for them.

2) Raichu

A Little explanation on this one, Pikachu has been the mascot for the Pokemon franchise since the beginning.  Therefore it makes sense for him to get a mega evolution.  However Pikachu already evolves into Raichu, so instead give one to him.  The first Pokemon game I ever owned was Yellow version, so Pikachu was my first ever Pokemon, in Yellow Pikachu had the ability to learn Surf, turning his only weakness into a strength.  I lent my Pikachu to a friend to help him beat the elite four and learned he could be evolved so long as he was in someone else's game.  Thus Raichu holds a special place in my heart as the first Pokemon I ever owned, and in X I have one in my team because of how devastating it is to Water types.  Plus giving him a mega evolution kinda ties in with the next list number.

1) The Rest of the Starters

In X and Y we get a new starter, one that I really liked, but then I got a Torchic from Mystery Gift, and then a Charmander from the Prof, and guess what: those two Mega evolve.  Thus my new starter ended up taking a backseat because he simply couldn't compete.  The starters are the Pokemon that you choose at the beginning of any Pokemon game and are supposed to be your partner throughout your journey.  With that logic it only makes sense that they ALL get a new form that is based on the personal bond you have with a Pokemon (at least that's how Mega Evolution is explained in the games).  I chose to start with Fennekin, and in doing so screwed myself with a massive water weakness by having 3 different fire type starters, so why make it worse by making Delphox a weaker option than the others.

Agree with my list? disagree? feel free to leave a comment below, I'm interested to hear what Pokemon you all feel deserve Mega evolutions.

DCnU: 2 Years Later

It is hard to believe it has already been two years since DC decided to give its readers the finger...I mean reboot everything to reach out to a new audience.  And to mark this anniversary in stupidity I will do my best to give an unbiased review of the past 2 years.

The New 52, seriously we're still calling it that? Was started as a reboot that would modernize the DC universe and allow for new readers to jump in without worrying about 70 years of backstory.  At least that is how it was sold to us.  In practice however their were some problems with this.  When it all started our heroes were redesigned (in matching uniforms for some reason), made younger, and had their origins altered.  It started with Justice League and our favorite heroes were brought together to stop an enemy too powerful for them individually.  I was enjoyable enough, but then the individual titles started to come out, and they were all hit and miss (mostly miss).  For the first moth I saved up and bought everything just to try it all out.  The second moth I dropped about half of them, after the first arcs were done I dropped even more, and after about a year I made the difficult decision to drop all titles about my favorite DC hero, Superman.

As new titles were released I would try them out, usually hate them, and drop them.  Currently I only read 6 monthly titles and 2 weekly digital ones.  To put this into perspective I usually get more than that a week from Marvel.  Of these 6 titles, 1 of them is set in a parallel earth, in fact my favorite stuff DC has done in the last few years are all outside their mainstream universe.

Now onto some of the problems of the New 52, first and foremost the timeline.  DC promised a new timeline for new readers to not be confused by.  This ended up failing because they set this new universe 5 years after the heroes started showing up, and those origins were not revealed for almost a year, and the villains had to wait even longer.  So instead readers were dropped into a world where even long-time readers were lost on the timeline.  Sure there were books set at different times, like Action Comics being set at the beginning of Superman's career, but this ended up doing more harm than good because the different timelines would contradict each other.  Other times we are given multiple books set at the same time, but very different things are going on.  Also we are forced to believe that in those 5 years there has been 4 different Robins raised in Wayne Manor.

The next problem is the reimagining of characters themselves, particularly the villains.  For example Darkseid was always one of DC's biggest Baddies, born of a noble family he became a tyrant by right.  In the New 52 Darkseid was a farmer who was given the powers of a god, got tired of his oppressors, and took power.    A lot of the heroes were moved out of their iconic, albeit fake cities, and moved to one we would all know.  The most notable being Green Arrow, who was moved to Seattle a town I know well.  But Green Arrow's Seattle is more of a tourist destination rather than the hipster rich, rain plagued land I know.  The Space Needle was always present in every issue I did read, which is impossible considering it's location and the fact you lose sight of it only a few blocks away.  Then their is Nightwing, for those who wisely gave up DC before the reboot here is his new origin; Dick Grayson grew up in a circus (so far so good), but this circus was secretly used to recruit assassins for an Owl themed secret society (could be worse), and Dick's parents were killed because he was to be the next one recruited into the order (you're losing me), and did I mention the assassins are all undead zombies? (And I'm done).  The last one I'm gonna talk about is the infamous living sex doll Starfire, way to reach out to female readers guys.  Starfire was a fan favorite character for years, and her popularity skyrocketed with the Teen Titans cartoon.  So why would anyone think it was a good idea to remove all aspects of her personality and make her a character who sleeps with any man she talks to...oh right, the ever elusive horny teenage boy demographic.

The costumes are also an issue with the universe, everyone seems to have the same tailor now.  Either they have a full bodysuit with unnecessary lines and a v-shaped collar, or they have a Tron suit, which is especially weird when considering Tron is owned by Disney, and yet Marvel is staying away from the suits.  There is a small handful of costumes however that I find well made, for example Animal Man, his suit is an updated version of what he used to wear and it manages to set him apart from everyone else.  I also like the Earth-2 line of costumes, all of which are hilariously more eye-catching and original than anything the mainstream DC universe has.

Moving on we have the treatment of characters, I sort of went over this a little bit ago, but this is such a problem it needs be addressed twice.  First are the relationships, in a rebooted universe I'm OK with nullifying some marriages, but don't tell me superheroes work better when they are single *cough* Didio *cough*, sorry I had something in my throaght.  Clark Kent is no linger with Lois, and I can live with that for a while so long as they have some kind of dynamic.  Barry is no longer married to Iris, this is a bit odd considering the whole reason behind Flashpoint was Barry wanted Iris back, but I can deal with it, again, so long as there is some dynamic.  The real problems start when we get into characters like Animal Man, a large aspect of his character is his family but after Rotworld his son is dead, his wife left him and took his daughter, leaving him...single.  Then there is Batwoman, her potentially groundbreaking marriage was called off recently in order to keep her free and available to fight crime, even though her partner was totally supportive and understanding.  The relationship that really throws a wrench in DaDio's single=better theory is Aquaman and Mera, who officially are not married yet I don't think anyone told Johns because he's been writing them that way since issue 1.  There relationship actually improves the narrative and makes me care about the characters more.  So basically DiDio took the one Marvel decision fans are still angry about (ending Peter and Mary Jane's wedding), and thought; "yeah, that was a great move, let's do it to everyone".

Speaking of Marvel, they had a modern reboot as well roughly a decade ago, but they did it in a way that worked.  Not everyone is a fan of the Marvel's Ultimate Universe (personally I am), but they still have the choice to read it, or the classic mainstream universe.  DC didn't do this, they just made the Ultimate Universe the main and did away with the classic.  This honestly makes the reboot universe all that much worse.  Luckily DC does have it's share of "elseworlds" for fan to turn to, including my personal favorite the "Earth-One" line, which only releases a single volume every couple of years, but manages to reboot DC better than the actual reboot did.  Or the Beyond series which comes out weekly and continues where the series "Batman Beyond" left off, only a little more mature to match the age of those who grew up with the cartoon (like me), so DC isn't failing, just the New 52.

The next large mistake made in the new 52 is not listening to the fans.  Since the reboot started fans have asked about their favorite characters, such as Stephanie Brown, Wally West, and Cassandra Cain.  And for years we have got the same answer; wait and see, they may return.  I may not be in charge of a Major comic industry, but wouldn't you want to bring back characters fans enjoy so they buy more comics? 

Lets move on to the Events, oh God the events.  Night of the Owls was decent-ish, if you only read Batman's story.  Then there was the train wreck "H'ell on Earth", then the mediocre "Trinity War", and the abomination that is "Forever Evil".  However I am enjoying Zero Year, so that's what, 1 out of5?  And people say Marvel is having problems.  "Forever Evil" in particular is possibly the worst event I've read in a long time.  It was transitioned into badly by simply tacking it onto the end of another event, the Earth-3 characters are borderline cartoonishly evil, and it was so badly written I stopped reading partway through. 

Now lets talk Batman shall we?  Batman is overused, I understand he's popular, especially after the Dark Knight trilogy, but DC is treating him like he is only hero, he and his Bat family take a majority of the DC monthly titles, 4 of which actually have the word "Batman" in the title.  There was even a brief time when he led 2 different Justice Leagues, when honestly he isn't the kind of person people would rally behind.  One thing the New 52 did get right is he cannot defeat Superman, every fight the outcome was Superman as the victor thus far.  Which makes sense because Superman is the most powerful character in comic books, hell Screw Attack did a Death Battle where they determined just how powerful Superman truly is (Click HERE to watch).  Batman is meant to be the dark brooding hero that invokes fear in others, not the shining beacon of hope everyone rallies behind.

The last thing I want to touch on is this, this isn't the first time DC has rebooted, it's the 1st major one they have done in a while, but every Crisis usually leads to alterations in the continuity, and those happen every couple of years.  So if you're not a fan of the most recent reboot, just wait a little longer DC's track record has proven they don't like to commit.  And even with the crap the reboot has given us, there is still a few titles that are well worth the read, my favorite of which being Earth-2, ironically another example of a reboot done right.

Video Game Review: Batman Arkham Origins

Ah Batman, the most overrated superhero ever.  Of course he does earn it by being such a badass, and the Arkham franchise has been one of the greatest in the genre, and the newest installment is no exception.  However the game does suffer from issues that a lot of franchises are lately, they are switching developers and the new guys need a little time to adjust before truly expanding.  As a result the game feels more like more of the same rather than a full sequel.

The story is this; Batman has been operating in Gothom for about 2 years now and most of the city believe him to be an urban myth.  But on Christmas Eve a criminal named Black Mask hires 8 of the world's deadliest assassins to kill the bat, and the one who succeeds will be paid $50,000,000.  The story is dark, maybe even darker than the previous installments; the police under Commissioner Loeb are corrupt, many civilians are killed in the killers pursuit of Batman, and even some major characters are offed by the end of the game.  There are some major plot twists as well that I will cover in the spoiler section.  Other than that the game feels a lot like Arkham City, which isn't exactly a bad thing.  I have heard some people are experiencing some major bugs and glitches, and I have as well, but so far none of mine have ruined the gameplay.

Plot (Spoiler Section)

I covered a lot of the main plot above, so here I'm going to go into detail on it a bit.  As mentioned before Black Mask hires 8 killers to go after you, but strangely only 6 are a part of the main story, in fact I actually finished the game before realizing I never even saw Shiva.  In fact there are a lot of optional villains, some of which are interesting.  Riddler of course returns with more hidden items, this time he is called Enigma and he hid data packets that reveal proof of crimes committed by the GCPD and other "outstanding citizens".

Now onto the true spoilers.  I was really excited when I heard that the game would feature a new mastermind from the previous games, but part way through the game there is a murder scene you investigate at Black Mask's safe house.  Turns out he was terrified of some new player in town, The Joker, and retreated to his safe house with his girlfriend to wait until he was taken care of.  when you arrive Black Mask's girlfriend is dead and strung up on display, a second body is there presumed to be Black Mask himself, meaning the Black Mask that hired the killers is not the real Black Mask.  Later on it is revealed Joker has the real Black Mask captive to get at his funds and has been pretending to be him the whole time.  It is a great twist but I still would have wanted to see someone other than Joker as the main villain.

The best change from the previous games Origins did was Bane.  a simple Google search will reveal just how different he is.  The Bane in Origins is a mercenary with his own private army, he is methodical, cunning, and highly trained.  Personally I prefer this Bane to the giant brute we usually get but what really makes him stand out is towards the end of the game when Batman finally finds Bane's secret base it is empty, but worse than that there is a board where he is trying to find out Batman's secret identity...and he knows Bruce Wayne is Batman.  This Bane is addicted to the substance Venom, which amplifies his strength but oddly doesn't affect his physical appearance.  However if he were to stop using the drug the resulting withdrawals would more than likely kill him.  As a result he is working on a new drug, TN-1, that would have a permanent effect and end his dependency on of Venom, the downside is that currently it does some major damage on the subjects brain (This plays in later).  So later on in the game Bane pays the Batcave a visit while Bruce is out looking for him and destroys it, and just to make things worse he even kills Alfred, you heard right Alfred dies in this game...sort of.  Batman revives him with a new gadget he uses to restart his heart.  To bring Bane full circle at the end of the game Bane is forced to used the unfinished TN-1 on himself in an attempt to kill Batman, this turns him into the hulk-like creature he is in the other Arkham games and destroying much of his memories, including Batman's identity.

What Works (End of Spoiler Section)

Like the previous game all of the main bosses are unique and require a different strategy to bring down.  For example Deathstroke is a one-on-one match where he can counter-attack anything you throw at him and vise versa, which requires you to time every move you make just right.  Another is Copperhead who poisons you so you hallucinate, thus you must fight her and her many duplicates.  Then their is my personal favorite Electrocutioner, the only villain I didn't recognize in the game.  His fight has a fair amount of build up, but when you go to punch him once he is knocked unconscious, to put that into perspective the random henchmen take more than that to bring down, it is freakin' hilarious.

Another thing I like is the large amount of content, between the main story, the optional enemies, and all the collectables the game keeps you invested for quite a while.  And the size of the map is perfect for this type of game, big enough to move around a lot, yet small enough you aren't spending large amounts of time moving from point A to B.

Gameplay wise it is almost identical to Arkham City, which works very well; you fight, level up buy an upgrade, and repeat.  The only problem here is that some upgrades require you to preform feats of skill, in a specific order.  Which doesn't affect the game too much, but it would be nice for those who cannot preform some of there tasks to be able to get the upgrades as well.

My favorite part of the game however has got to be the characters themselves, I went into detail on Bane in the spoiler section, but the others are great as well, especially the costumes.  I have always been a fan of Arkham's character designs, and Origins may have the best yet, fixing minor annoyances I had like Penguin's bottle eye and Batman's underpants.  And the complete overhaul they gave Bane and Deadshot make them better than before.

One thing I didn't expect to like was the voice changes.  Conroy and Hamill have been the voices of Batman and Joker since I was a child, and have been regarded as the best portrayals of the characters by just about everyone.  But with Hamill's retirement from the Joker and the need for a younger Batman it makes sense they needed replacements.  The new Batman is a mix of Christian Bale and Conroy, gruff enough to hide his identity, but not enough to make him unintelligible.  Joker on the other hand is phenomenal.  Troy Baker manages to mimic Hamill's voice perfectly, and his range also allows him to play Black Mask and have them be two separate characters.

But of course what good are great characters without an equally great story.  Arkham Origins is another well written chapter in the Arkham franchise.  In may not be as good as Arkham City, but in my opinion it is better than Asylum, if you liked the other two games, you will more than likely like this one as well.

An welcome addition is the inclusion of unlockable suits, Arkham City introduced the idea of alternate costumes that can be used in story and challenge mode, but they were all DLC.  Origins gives players a few suits that can be unlocked without paying, and then there are a lot of DLC suits as well.

What Doesn't Work

As I mentioned before there are reports of the game having serious bugs/glitches, and even not working all together.  While I personally have yet to have any major problems, I have notices it takes a while to load an area, and it also takes forever to save your progress.  The biggest issue I've had so far is that my WBID despite being entered and linked still denies me my 1 Million suit.  But this is a small problem since the Noel suit you unlock is way cooler anyway.

I mentioned earlier how all the main bosses are unique and interesting, sadly the same cannot be said about the optional ones.  All of them have the same strategy they attack you with a number of thugs that continue until their boss is defeated.  The only exception to this is the Mad Hatter, he messes with your brain and sends you to Wonderland, this is pretty cool as it changes the game a bit.

One of the biggest letdown is in no way the game fault, there is a multiplayer mode, however every attempt I've made to play it has been met with a message that I can't find a game.  But it kinda looks like it will be your standard 3rd person shooter so whatever.

Another problem I had with this game is the challenge mode.  While still a fun mode the challenge mode this time falls a little flat of its predecessor.  in Arkham City Challenge mode had 4 playable characters, and a crapload of maps.  Origins so far has 2 playable characters, more may be on the way but for now it sort of feels like a step back.  Honestly this is a minor complaint though.

Final Verdict

Arkham Origins may not be the best of the franchise, but it is still a very good game.  I for one look forward to seeing what the new studio has in store for us in the future and I am proud to give Batman Arkham Origins a B+.

What I Want In The Future

Keeping with my new way of doing reviews, in this section I will list some things I want in future installments of the franchise.  With Arkham Origins there is now a second timeline for the franchise to follow, allowing for stories like the introduction of members of the Bat family, or tying up loose ends created in Arkham City like the Hush sub-story.  Another big thing I want a new mastermind, as great as the Joker is the Arkham games have really overplayed him.  I don't mind if he has a sub plot, but making him the main villain for every game kinda ruins him.

Another big thing I want to see is the return of different playable characters in the story.  In Arkham City we are allowed to take control of Catwoman, which sometimes felt awkward, but other times helped progress the story.  Later they added a Robin story that was really well done.  I want more like that, maybe Batman gets injured for part of a game, or Nightwing happens to be closer to a crime, basically mix it up a bit.

More multiplayer options.  I stated earlier that multiplayer is giving me some problems, but why not make some more options?  Imagine a mutliplayer challenge mode where players team up to take down enemies, or a mode where some players take control of villains and others try to take them down, or even a campaign unique to multiplayer that would be episodic and have character selection, something like Halo's Spartan Ops.  This goes into the next item on my wishlist.

I want more playable characters and costumes.  Over the course of the series there has been 7 playable characters, a relatively decent amount, but with the dawn of new consoles the possibility to expand is realistic goal.  Besides, Arkham City has Nightwing and Tim Drake as Robin, meaning there was a Batgirl and my personal favorite former Robin...Red Hood.  If nothing else I would love just the inclusion of Red Hood, honestly I thought Arkham City would have been perfect for him; a large walled off city full of criminals the city doesn't care if they kill each other off, Red Hood could have cleaned up.  Plus adding in playable female characters like Batgirl or Huntress would open the franchise up to a wider audience.

As for costumes, I like how Origins had some you could unlock, but I would like more options, why not give us one for each sub-plot you finish, but make them related to the challenge.  For example a Bane based subplot could give you the Knightfall costume, or take down Mr. Freeze to get a thermal suit and so forth.  Or maybe even have a shop in the Batcave where players can trade points for a suit of their choosing.  Or imagine if the suits had perks that altered gameplay, perhaps add this to a tailor system and choose the perks for the suits yourself.  If you haven't noticed I'm a sucker for alternate costumes, and having to buy them seems a bit unfair, especially if they are announced before the game is even released.  Giving players a large amount of costumes would allow for more individuality that would on turn make the game more immersive for players.