soc_puppet: The Pokémon Ditto against a purple background; text above announces "Ditto was caught!" (Ditto was caught!)
Socchan ([personal profile] soc_puppet) wrote2025-08-10 11:27 pm
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Pokémon Friends again: Well, that didn't last long

I've been playing this game for just over a week now, and already the difficulty scaling is past where I find the rewards worth it. Most of the puzzles are around difficulty level 4 to 6 now, and I'm just not figuring enough of them out in the time limit I'm given. I'll still get some yarn when I finish the designated three puzzle set, but if I fail any of the puzzles, it's the lower quality yarn—even though the point total from all the puzzles, failures included, is higher than when I was playing the games on their lowest difficulty.

If I were getting more yarn per try, it might be worth it to me to keep playing. If the timers were more generous, it might be worth it to me. If I could choose which puzzles to play and which yarn to work towards, or if the difficulty scaling were a bit slower, it might be worth it to me. But at this point, I'll probably just play a few more days out of sunk cost fallacy driven hope, and then try to forget I even bought the damn game. Which is a shame, because I'd really love to have some sort of apartment-decorating game with the mechanics from the main room that I loved so much.

Honestly, I'd originally bought this game with the hopes of playing some of the puzzles with my niblings, but with how the game's set up, I'm not sure I'd even be able to reach all of the games, let alone be able to play in a way that didn't leave all of us frustrated in the end.

This disappointment aside, if Nintendo ever decided to put out a simple version of Voltorb Flip that works the same way as it does in HGSS, maybe for $2 or so, I'd buy that in a heartbeat. (They won't, they'd want to microtransaction and dark pattern the hell out of it, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it!)
soc_puppet: Words "Baseless Opinion" in orange (Baseless Opinion)
Socchan ([personal profile] soc_puppet) wrote2025-08-07 08:34 pm
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Video game review: "Pokémon Friends"

Pokémon Friends is a game about solving Pokémon-themed puzzles. Unlike previous titles Pokémon Trozei and Pokémon Shuffle, it's not a "match three" kind of game overall; there's a lot of 3D shape matching and identifying, some pattern making, some counting things, some "do things in the right order" kind of stuff. A general mishmash of logic puzzles.

The reviews for the app version are abysmal, probably because the free version of the app has very limited play time. Which is why I went for the whole Switch bundle, and also since I generally like these kinds of puzzles.

My thoughts )

If you're looking for a good set of puzzle games to chill out to on your Switch, though, you'd probably be better off just buying Those Games.
soc_puppet: Words "Baseless Opinion" in orange (Baseless Opinion)
Socchan ([personal profile] soc_puppet) wrote2025-08-02 12:22 am
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Bot Problems

I briefly saw (and participated in, for exactly one reblog) a thread on Tumblr about whether AO3 should allow works produced by Generative AI. OP was in favor, as was the first reblogger, where as at least one reblogger was firmly against all AI generated works on AO3, and several (myself included) shared the reasons why AI generated works currently are allowed on AO3. One of the rebloggers who is firmly against any AI generated works being allowed on AO3 said, "Like anything else in a shared social space, an enforced social norm requires actual social consequences for breaking it. This? Is just capitulation."

Anyway, that person also said that they're done talking about it, and I wanted to respect that, so I'm taking my thoughts over here. If you recognize the quote in question, or know who the person is, I will politely ask you to respect their boundaries and not go looking for the post and/or reblogging it from them with your own commentary; we can talk in the comments of this post, which they can safely ignore. I'm personally struggling with the point they raised, and will probably not be able to get to sleep without working some of it out, so I'm doing so over here where, again, they should be able to safely ignore it.

So. AI generated works on AO3. )

Anyway, those are my current thoughts. So now probably the thing that will keep me up is trying to decide whether to create a Tumblr poll about that last point ("Do you post AI generated works to AO3, and if so, do you admit that they're AI generated?")