Will Legendary Pokemon Get Us Interested In Pokemon Go Again?

     Thursday we received huge news in regards to Pokemon Go. Legendary Pokemon have finally been introduced. So how do legendary pokemon events work? Well, there will be legendary eggs that will sprout in certain locations and it will be a collective teamwork to defeat a legendary pokemon in a certain time limit. If successful, you and everyone else will catch the legendary pokemon. Sounds cool and all, but will this be cool enough to get people back into playing Pokemon Go?
      Pokemon Go was the game of the summer last year. Instead of staying indoors like usual, it made us go out into the unknown and discover our neighborhoods, dead bodies, and risk getting into car accidents all to capture that Dragonite in your neighbor's backyard or visit your local church to refresh on poke lures. not to pray or some other crap like that.
     But alas, our love for Pokemon Go was brief and just like the season it came and went. We were playing it in July and by the time Sept came we deleted our apps and put the phone down. According to Forbes by mid-July, Pokemon Go lost over 79 percent of its users. Niantic, the company responsible for the app, hasn't been hurting since the momentum of the app died down. They still have millions of people using Pokemon Go. Niantic has also been doing events to keep who was left reason to play the game like having certain pokemon appear on holidays and even adding generation 2 pokemon, and Ditto, but so far none of it has been enough spark and interest to get former players to pick up their phones and start playing again. Will the long awaited inclusion of legendary pokemon finally do this?
     Compared to the other events and announcements this is huge. We've been anticipating legendary pokemon from the beginning of the game. Even so much people had try hacking them in. For me, this does enough spark interest to re-download the app and see what's the fuss about, maybe for others as well. Will it garner enough interest to bring back former app users? We'll have to see. Luckily, we will actually see as there will be an Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago will be streamed today. At this event we will see a legendary pokemon and it will be up to participants to defeat it. Depending on how everything works out we'll see the results and if people will be outside catching pokemon for the rest of the summer and later on.

Does It Suck? - Smosh Food Battle: The Game

 

     For those who don't know who Smosh are, they are a comedic YouTube duo comprised of one Ian Hecox and one Anthony Padilla. They upload videos of them in querky nerd skits referencing movies, video games, and current pop culture on YouTube that millions of people, mostly kids, watch. Since the creation of their channel in 2005, they have garnered more than 14,000,000 subscribers and billions of views. They have their own gaming channel as well, Smosh Games, which millions are subscribed to as well.

     So what do you do when you are one of the top elite of nerdy gamers on the internet and made a business out of it? You further expand your business and make a video game of course. That's exactly what they did. Smosh Food Battle: The Game has been out for a while, and honestly I've been curious about how the game would turn out when I heard about it along with some of their fans. The question is: Does It Suck?

The Rundown

Smosh Food Battle: The Game is an action adventure game. You control Anthony as he goes on a quest to rescue  people from his town from monstrous donuts. You start on a world map as you make progress not only by beating levels, but collecting stars. You will eventually need stars to go on until the ending. You get them by exploring the levels solving puzzles and beating enemies, getting three per level. The game is basically Metroidvania as you will need to acquire and upgrade weapons in order to beat the game. You need weapons to further explore levels and you will need to upgrade them to beat harder enemies. The way you do this is by collecting food.

The upgrade system involves you forging food items and combining them into items like food or clothing. With this being a free and pay app on your phone, unless you can buy your items, unlike me, you will be replaying levels, a lot.

The Controls

The controls of the game are simple. You tap on everything with the touch screen of your phone. When you play as Anthony, you drag your finger on the screen to steer him in whichever direction you want him to go. When fighting enemies, depending on the weapon you have, you tap on the enemy to hit them. I had a bit of a problem with the controls in the first time playing. They seem to be all over the place. I would try to attack an enemy and would often bed up running into them leaving me wide open to get hit. It does take awhile to get use to and work around this. Luckily the enemy AI is simple and you can pick up their attack patters.

Music
Honestly, I'm not really a fan of the music. It's somber and doesn't match the feel of the game. It's almost like you're playing the musical score of Desperate Housewives while fighting giant donuts.

Visuals
For an app game on your phone or iPad, the visuals are nice. Ian and Anthony are drawn is a cartoonish style that is reminiscent of a cell-shaded Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. This matches the over the top style off the game. Playing the game with killer donuts and edible food weaponry is like something out of Looney Tunes. I mean your fighting donuts, would everything be drawn epically like Gears of Wars or something?

Final Verdict
So, does it suck? Not at all. Smosh Food Battle: The Game is pretty decent. I wasn't expecting it to be this good. I'm impressed with how the final product turned out. Even if you are unwilling to fork over some cash for crystals or whatever, replaying the levels doesn't seem like a chore as you can always find something new to explore or find new and interesting ways to destroy donut monsters. The ONLY drawback is how everything works with the touch screen. It's not bad, it just can get get a tad bit annoying sometimes. It can leave you to be resourceful and work around it. Maybe that was Ian and Anthony's plan? What the hell it's free, play it. Smosh Food Battle: The Game gets 3.5 Killer Bearclaws out of 5.