In an indifferent universe without inherent meaning, it is up to the individual to forge worthwhile reason for themselves, and for the sake of survival, and the future.


Otherwise, one’s mental health goes south pretty quickly…

This week has been kind of a fucking mood, in a profuse honesty that I must forcibly jettison from within my being to even have a chance at clearing my head enough to begin writing this article. I think it somehow makes things a lot easier to feel all torn up about something, when there is a legitimate event that occurs to point a finger at. Like, oh yeah, my good friend was trampled by a herd of feral guinea pigs yesterday and they’re still in the hospital recovering. Day ruiner for them; week ruiner for me though empathetic vicariousness. However, no such chaotic Caviidae centric commotion occurred; this past week has just been riddled with the angst of life and the incessant nothingness of the void howling with a deafening silence…and the howling dark continues thusly…


Hello darkness my old friend…

Which is why I’m trying to stay on track with some kind of productive schedule, to keep my head in the game when it clearly screams for sweet release of another nature. Yesterday was kind of a stopgap between projects, as after finishing Doom: Revelations, I didn’t feel as if I had enough time to start a new game in which I could get settled into and familiar enough with in such a short period of time, which lead me to delaying such a choice, in not wanting to rush the beginning a new adventure, so I did a Sampler Platter of demos with…varying levels of satisfaction. However, I knew that dilly-dallying on a new chosen title would betray me in short time, so I ended up landing on a game that represents the polar opposite of stuff I’ve been doing recently, many of which have been filled with over the top, gun toting, battlefields of destructive mayhem, and decided to go with something a bit more slower paced and down to earth.

Enter: Pokémon Pokopia


…why did the song from Lamp-chop’s Play Along”This is the song that never ends” just pop into my head?

In a lot of ways, this was a long time coming, as I’ve been a fan of both Animal Crossing and the Pokémon series since their inceptions, so to opt out of a game that effectively combines the two seems absurdly ludicrous as even a momentary speculation. However, since the game has been out for five months, it was clear it wasn’t at the top of my recreational agenda, I grant you that, but I have been locked into quite a few virtual projects since then, in which sacrifices had to be made. Better late than never in my view, and considering the popularity with which Pokopia has struck up within the Nintendo fan base, I’m guessing this series is one that has a long future ahead of it.


A tunnel that represents a 1/1,000,000,000,000th scale model representing the amount of time Nintendo wants you to spend with this game

As already mentioned, the elevator pitch for Pokémon Pokopia is an easy peanut butter and chocolate kind of grand slam piece de resistance: what if we took the cozy life sim qualities of Animal Crossing, and fused it together with the insanely warm otakuism of the Pokémon franchise? With that simple; voila! You have Nintendo’s new designer drug that makes crack look downright fucking pedestrian in comparison. I feel as if a lot of popular games now a days represent one that is a synthesis of sorts, marrying two concepts that had some how eluded developers up until that point, but now fused together, creating something of a pop-culture juggernaut, that has the addictive consumerist masses in a prophetic choke hold, with a truly domineering sensibility in the face of where occupying mental real estate is concerned.


There are over a thousand of these mother fuckers wandering around at this point; the surprise seems a bit grandstanding, quite honestly…

So yeah, I don’t usually spell out some of the more familiar game concepts to my readers, as I imagine most people reading my work have a baseline gaming literacy level, but for those of you who are somehow unfamiliar with either property, in a nutshell, in Animal Crossing, the gameplay is a no stakes, move at your own pace cutesy life simulator, where you decorate, garden, make friends with the neighbors…its like playing the most inoffensive game of playing house you can imagine. I joke that Pokémon is Nintendo’s take on child labor based dog fighting, which is only a slight exaggeration of whats going on, as you capture and train little monsters to fight each other as a bunch of ten year olds exploring the world for the first time, in what is otherwise one of the most basically structured RPG’s you can imagine.

You’re here for the rest of your life, kid

Taking a little from column A, and a little from Column B, and you have a mix of sensibilities that is Pokopia, where you kind of attempt to make your own little ecosystem, through the means of attracting Pokémon to your little garden of sorts, as you slowly build a quaint little life for yourself, resplendent with collectables galore, with which you can decorate, build stuff, give your Pokémon buddies gifts….just a silly little time with silly little guys to goof around with.


Loss and heartbreak around every corner and par for the course in this idyllic realm…but we ignore those parts to maintain the facade of the utopia we are so truly meant to be

That’s about it; these types of games never truly have an overarching story or ultimate goal, as the idea is the world is persistent from then on, so one just merely exists within the realm with which you choose to create, and live out your happy little life. Obviously, the developers are removing a huge element out of the Pokémon side of design, by effectively taking the “bite” out of the series by removing the battle system, but it wouldn’t be a cozy game series if fighting was involved*** (we are going to pretend Stardew Valley doesn’t exist for a second). Clearly, Nintendo wanted a more chill experience, and there are already a billion Pokémon spinoffs that do involve fighting, so while massively popular cozy life games have proven you can mix some fight within your world of friendliness, Pokopia is as the name suggest…a utopia…of a Poké persuasion, and in an ideal world, there is no fighting, or some such idealist nonsensical garbage…


I’m gonna try crafting myself a will to live, Bulbasaur…see if that works out for me

There is plenty to discuss about Pokopia, as it does represent a fairly ambitious project, so while this introduction embodies more of a soft, floaty pretense of general concepts involved rather than a deep dive on harder details exploring the nitty gritty semantics of the title, I do kind of have to stretch this out over a series of articles, or else I will have effectively crammed a weeks worth of content into a single post, and what a grotesquely, short sighted, miserable fucking waste of ideas that would be. One has to learn how to pace themselves with these kinds of things….show some restraint: to hell with binge culture.

In any case, plenty to look forward to in the coming days, as we dive into Pokémon Pokopia…and its mad, insatiable, obsessively maddening, and addictive proclivities it has in store…and all that entails.

~Pashford