Throughout my life, I haven’t been the best at rhythm games. I’m able to make a pretty good run at them when I’m in the right frame of mind but even then, my reactions to the on-screen prompts can be a bit off. Which, considering one of my favourite games of all time (The Binding of Isaac) has the potential to train lightning-fast reflexes into you, is a bit odd.
Nonetheless, given a flash sale and some Steam Wallet funds laying around – Thanks Joel – I decided to pick up a game that had caught my eye on visuals alone: Melody’s Escape.
The premise is simple. You play as a girl called Melody, with your goal being to avoid obstacles along a side-scrolling track. The obstacles and speed at which Melody travels is determined by the song playing in the background.
Melody herself is customisable in one of the game’s menus. You can change her colour palette, her outfit and her hairstyle to create an avatar that reflects your personality. Of course, me being me I gave her a cute black dress and long anime-style twintails.
What are you escaping? Well, nothing. There’s no monster chasing after you, no wall of infinitely approaching death behind you, just running along this course. Melody puts her headphones on before the start of each track, so she is listening along to the music you are playing.
Perhaps, the music is an escape for her as much as the game is an escape for you.
“Very accurate and fast music analysis: Melody’s Escape features extremely accurate beat-matching algorithms and is optimized to analyse a song in its entirety within a few seconds.”
The game comes with 6 preloaded songs, which are obviously what the algorithm has been optimised towards. On these songs, note detection is spot-on perfect with held notes syncing perfectly to the audio. Obstacles appear in the form of slopes to grind down, walls to kick down, tunnels to duck/slide under and when songs get faster, Melody will make great leaps or, if she’s flying, glide through areas.
There are various difficulty modes, allowing players to choose how they want to enjoy the game.
“Relaxing” features minimal obstacles and orbs, with only a single direction needing to be pressed per intensity level
“Medium” has all 4 directions for prompts but both orbs and obstacles can be collected with either WASD/arrow keys for keyboard or D-pad/face buttons for controller
“Intense” is the true rhythm game experience. Orbs are more frequent and closer together requiring precise button presses and orb collection is now unpaired from obstacle traversal
“Overload” will act as a true challenge. Even more orbs and obstacles now require both buttons to be traversed successfully
“Autoplay” can be used to see how a song is going to play in terms of intensity, or if you just want to appreciate the game’s visuals to your favourite music
I super dig the minimalist art style in this game, it’s gorgeous
Speaking of favourite music, I did a fair few courses using some of the music I have on my PC. Both to experience the game with the music I enjoy listening to, and to test how well the algorithm handles different genres of music.
As advertised the algorithm can analyse a song incredibly quickly and accurately determine the tempo and intensity of sections. Only a few songs out of the ones played before writing this article had the prompt “no stable 4/4 tempo detected”, but the course still played perfectly fine.
There are moments where the game’s input will be slightly off with how the song is actually going, but in my opinion it’s not massively noticeable. The game has a standard audio/video latency calibration system, so you can adjust inputs as you grow used to the game.
Black dress? Pink twintails? This is just a style I’d wear normally!
To conclude, Melody’s Escape is incredibly addictive and tonnes of fun. I’d have loaded up the game to check a fact I’d written down in the article and go “one song won’t hurt”, then I’d play more songs after that one to see how I could do on them.
The game is cheap on Steam at £6.99 (or local equivalent price) and when I bought it on sale it was 50% off making it even more value for money. Those who are into rhythm games will enjoy the harder difficulties as it quickly becomes a Dance Dance Revolution sidescroller, and those who are enthralled by the visuals will find Medium and Relaxing both their speed but with a good amount of challenge.
“Find something to believe in. And find it for yourself. And when you do, pass it on to the future.
Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
I rediscovered this quote recently, and it ended up resonating with me quite heavily. For all the different issues that can be found in the Metal Gear franchise; a lot of the underlying themes tend to be ageless in their relevancy to modern issues. Whilst the above quote is not exactly commentary on nuclear war, mass surveillance or modern society in general, it provided me with a moment of reflection.
For a bit of context, I currently consider myself to be in a somewhat formative period of my life, and whilst life itself is a journey in which learning is one of the few constants, there are definitely key events that are coming together all at once:
Recently finished a three-year degree course, with an official graduation just under a month away
Preparing to live the rest of my life as a transgender woman, and all the issues & connotations that come with it
Embarking on a job search whilst simultaneously trying to discover what I want to get out of a career
And this website itself, dedicated to forming a personal and professional identity through my works of writing
How do these relate to the quote?
University was not the easiest journey for me. There is no denying that I have come out of it a more well-developed individual, having grown in multiple ways since my first day of induction and having learned valuable skills relating to an area of interest along with developing transferable skills useful for my future career.
But there was also a fair bit of myself that went on the back burner, a case of “I’ll resolve this later”, and as more work piled up and deadlines loomed, my psyche saw this as a way of being able to push these issues further down because “You don’t have the time to think about these now”.
This is both insanely unhealthy generally and considering the world of good seeing a counsellor did for me in my final days at uni, the complete wrong approach to take in hindsight.
So, we jump back to now, where the structure of university has departed my life, and whilst the more unpleasant memories have gone with it, all the issues I pushed down now have nothing holding them back, like flood defences that have weathered their final storm. The driving force of finishing my degree is not here anymore.
And whilst I have an amazing support network behind me in the form of my friendship groups, I know I cannot, and should not, allow them to choose what direction my life takes next. Can I rely on them for advice? Of course. Can I ask them for support if things hit a rough patch? Yeah. Can I ask them to make any of my decisions for me? Nope.
I like to consider myself independent… to an extent. Whilst there are some practical skills I’ve picked up over the years that will assist me in my adult life, there are also some that have never really developed. The most frustrating one I am lacking in is the ability to swiftly reach a firm decision on things, often spending time dawdling on the details until something comes along that lights a fire under my feet.
Though… I do take refuge in the fact that there is practically always a way to recover your stride in life. Going off the beaten path can prove difficult, but that path will eventually lead back to a smoother road to travel along. There is also no shame or stigma that should come with needing to start anew, taking stock of what once was and using that to plot a new trajectory in life.
Which does bring me nicely to the second half of the quote that inspired this personal post:
“Believe in what?” – Raiden
“That’s your problem.” – Snake
I know I will eventually find something to properly believe in, something that will act as my guiding life in light, and maybe, someday, act as inspiration for someone to follow the path my shadow creates.
I just cannot expect it to come from someone else, because it does, then I didn’t really find it for myself.
Due to a close friend of mine having done a playthrough of Pokémon Heart Gold, I decided to pick up my old copy of Pokémon Diamond to do my revisit of the fourth generation of these games… and then I did a playthrough of Soul Silver anyway, partially to see if any of the complaints I had lodged towards it actually stood up. (That’s a topic for another time)
When planning out my teams for both games, I decided to carry an Electric-type to deal with both Water- and Flying-types, especially as in both games I was using a starter Pokémon that is vulnerable to those (Cyndaquil and Turtwig respectively). Thankfully, both games have an Electric-type found in the wild very early on.
Shinx, which evolves into Luxio and then Luxray, for Diamond. Mareep, which evolves into Flaaffy and Ampharos, for Soul Silver. How do these two evolutionary lines compare?
A note before I start: I’ll be basing my comparison off their Generation IV movesets and stats, with a section at the end to talk about how they developed as the games go on.
Stats and Abilities
Stat/Pokémon
Luxray
Ampharos
HP
80
90
Attack
120
75
Defence
79
75
Sp. Attack
95
115
Sp. Defence
79
90
Speed
70
50
The base stat totals of each Pokémon
Right away we can see that the offensive capabilities of these Pokémon are complete opposites. Luxray is designed be a physical attacker that can still hold its own with special attacks whereas Ampharos is more geared towards special attacks with less of a focus on physical attacks.
An interesting point to note is the surprisingly low speed stats on both Pokémon. Electric-types are traditionally faster to reflect the speed at which lightning moves in real life. Jolteon, accessible in HeartGold/SoulSilver (HG/SS) and Platinum, has a whopping 130 base speed stat with offensive capabilities to boot. Raichu (the next best option in Diamond and Pearl) has 100 base speed with offensive capabilities balanced between physical and special attack.
About abilities, Ampharos only comes with one, “Static”. Static confers a 30% chance for an attacker to be afflicted with the status effect of “Paralysis”, provided the attack is physical in nature. Paralysis reduces the speed of the afflicted Pokémon and gives a chance for their turn to be skipped. During gameplay I noticed a fairly good proc rate on Static triggering, and Paralysis can be a boon in fights that will be drawn out over multiple turns (such as Whitney’s Miltank).
Luxray has the potential for two abilities: Rivalry and Intimidate. In my experience, you’re going to want the latter.
Rivalry increases offensive stats by 25% if the opposing Pokémon is of the same gender and reduces them by the same margin for the opposite gender (no modifier on genderless Pokémon). This can turn battles into a problem because, unless you use an external guide, you aren’t able to know the gender of your opponent’s Pokémon until you’re in the battle.
Intimidate has more utility behind it. Upon entering battle the opposing Pokémon will have their Attack stat lowered by one level, with both Pokémon in a Double Battle being affected. This is incredibly potent on Luxray, as being a pure Electric-type means it’s only weakness is Ground-type moves, the majority of which are physical moves dependant on the Attack stat.
It also has an outside of battle effect. When in the first slot of the party; a Pokémon with Intimidate gives a pseudo-Repel effect of preventing wild encounters if the encounter would be at a lower level, making back-tracking through earlier areas smoother.
Movesets
Luxray has a natural disadvantage when discussing moves, Electric-type moves tend to come as special moves and out of the four physical moves available, Luxray only learns two.
And it doesn’t even matter because Spark and Thunder Fang are mechanically identical moves with Thunder Fang being strictly worse than Spark. Both have 65 power and a chance at Paralysis, but whilst Thunder Fang has 95% accuracy and a 10% chance to induce Paralysis; Spark has 100% accuracy and a 30% chance to induce Paralysis. Thunder Fang does have the slight benefit of also giving a chance to make a Pokémon flinch (making it miss it’s turn if the attacker moves before it) but, due to it’s usefulness, I’d prefer the higher chance of paralysis.
The only other physical move of note learned on level up is Crunch, a Dark-type move with great power and a 20% chance to lower the defence of the opposing Pokémon. Dark-type is surprisingly useful on a physical attacker; it’s super-effective against Psychic- and Ghost-type which tend to favour Special Defence, leaving them more vulnerable to this move.
Technical Machines (TMs) and Hidden Machines (HMs) go some way to alleviating the poor level up moveset. Iron Tail is a high power, medium accuracy Steel-type move that helps round out type coverage. Strength is essentially a super-powered version of Tackle, but still goes some way to round out offensive capabilities (and provides some usage outside of battle). And Thunder Wave is a highly accurate move that is non-damaging, but is guaranteed to inflict Paralysis.
On the other hand, Ampharos has a much more diverse moveset both through level up and TMs.
I may be slightly biased here in the fact that Ampharos is an adorable loaf who must be protected at all costs
For a start, Thunder Wave is learnt by level up rather than needing a TM and is learnt by the first stage of the line (Mareep) early on, meaning it gets to see usage throughout the game at crucial points such as the aforementioned Miltank and for capturing the cover legendary Pokémon.
Both Discharge and Thunder are learnt on level up, but the TM for Thunder comes early in the game so it’s probably easier to teach it then, it’s inaccurate but can deal massive damage. Discharge on the other hand is learnt at level 34 which should come near the end of the mid-game and will be your go-to Electric-type move for the foreseeable future.
In terms of type coverage, the Bug-type move Signal Beam comes at level 42 and the Rock-type move Power Gem comes at level 59. Neither of these moves help to fight against Ground-type Pokémon but do provide more utility beyond Electric-type moves.
Finally, Ampharos has a lot of options presented when looking at TMs. Thunderbolt is less powerful than Thunder, but carries a much higher accuracy percentage. Focus Blast is a high power Fighting-type move with the same accuracy as Thunder, but can provide some utility against Ground-type Pokémon who often carry a type weak to Fighting. If you want to field Ampharos as a disruption strategy; Toxic lets it induce the “Badly Poisoned” status effect on other Pokémon, a slowly increasing damage-over-time effect.
Generation V onwards
Nothing much changes for Luxray, it’s moveset improves somewhat through the addition of Wild Charge and Volt Switch in Generation V, the former being a level up move and the latter being a TM move. Wild Charge is a high power physical move that inflicts recoil damage onto the attacker in proportion to the damage dealt and Volt Switch is a special move with decent power which allows the attacker to switch out from battle, potentially in anticipation of a super-effective move.
Hidden abilities being introduced as a mechanic gives Luxray access to the Guts ability. Guts increases the Attack stat by 50% whenever the Pokémon is inflicted with a status effect. Whilst this does give utility against users of such moves; the moveset remains a pressing issue here and I maintain that Intimidate is the best ability.
Meanwhile, Ampharos has unlocked the power of Super Saiyan 3.
Mega Ampharos is introduced in Generation VI, along with the mechanic of Mega Evolution itself. Like all Mega Evolutions, the stats are changed:
Attack goes up to 95
Defence goes up to 105
Sp. Attack goes all the way up to 165
Sp. Defence goes up to 110
Speed goes down to 45
And the ability is changed to “Mold Breaker”, which allows moves to hit, even if an ability on the field would prevent it doing so. Ampharos was slow before Mega Evolution, so a slight reduction in speed in exchange for vastly increased offensive capabilities and slightly improved bulk is a fair trade-off. Dragon-type is also gained in the process, which does open up weaknesses towards Ice, Dragon, and Fairy-types, but grants resistance towards Fire- and Water-types.
Ampharos’s moveset also gains more diversity as Generations go on. Like Luxray it gains access to Wild Charge and Volt Switch, the special nature of Volt Switch makes it a good utility move but due to the slowness of Ampharos it’s less likely to be an evasion tactic.
The addition of Dragon-type for Mega Ampharos gives access to Dragon Pulse in it’s level up moves; this move has decent power and provides type coverage against the popular endgame Dragon-type. With the usage of a Heart Scale from Generation VI onwards, Ampharos can relearn Zap Cannon, a move with the same power as Thunder with lower accuracy, however, a successful Zap Cannon is guaranteed to induce Paralysis.
Conclusion
Despite railing against Luxray a fair bit in this article, Sparkplug (my Luxray) was an incredibly valuable member of my team. It having physical Electric-type moves proved invaluable against Cynthia’s Milotic.
However, Wilhelm (my Ampharos) proved to be way more versatile, having access to Thunder Wave made potentially difficult gym leader encounters more manageable, with Focus Blast learned from a TM making battles against Steel, Ice, and Rock-types end quickly (if it connected).
Both Pokémon have upsides and downsides, but in my opinion Ampharos comes out on top. It has a better moveset and utility in the game I was focusing on and it obviously gets a massive buff when Mega Evolution comes around, with decent new moves being added to round it all off.
At the end of it all, everyone has their own preference towards what Pokémon they want to use on their team. Some prefer pure power, some will take what comes along first, and some will make their decision way in advance. Whatever you choose, your Pokémon grow along with you on your journey and not only become valued team members, they can become like friends.
As Vantar’s bellows stopped wheezing, and the gears in his body locked up, signalling the end of his life – in this body at least. A sombre mood washed over us all as we reeled in the aftermath of what seemed like a simple task on our journey. Honesty switched between itching to finish off the small dragon that was with the gremlins, and making sure the vital components inside Vantar’s immobile body were retrieved intact, the rest of us just sort of… watched…
I could’ve done more…
After the memory gears and soul gem were retrieved, the captain, a goblin, came in to check on how we had done, and, whatever we were feeling he picked up on as well, and offered us our passage fee back as compensation for the loss of an ally, along with offering a warehouse to store Vantar until we could repair him.
It’s your fault…
Jørgen tried to reject the offer, rationalising that the captain is a tradesman and shouldn’t give up the gold for the journey. The captain refused to budge, giving us all our eleven gold back. I silently took it, and then made my leave from the hold, not saying a word to the others.
He’s gone, because of you…
I found a quiet part of the ship, near the rear, somewhere where I wouldn’t be bothered or disturbed. Being alone with my thoughts didn’t seem like the best idea, but, I couldn’t face the idea of talking to the party.
Especially because I could’ve helped.
I’m the cleric, I’m the healer, I’m the one who’s supposed to help people, helping people is the one good thing I have left in my life after those forsaken dragons took everything from me. Instead I tried to go beyond my station, I tried to think I could handle combat better than the people who have the equipment for it.
Getting a new trident didn’t save Vantar, stabbing blindly at the gremlins didn’t save Vantar.
Marieya takes out her shortsword, and pricks her finger, wincing slightly at the pain before letting a few drops of her blood into the ocean, her tears joining it soon after.
I offered you gold before the journey started, hoping for an uneventful passage, I’m offering you blood now as an apology, I’ve offered you everything ever since the day I found you… and why… please… tell me why…
Why couldn’t I have saved my new friend?
Because now, he’s gone, and whilst he can be repaired, who knows when we’ll get to do that.
He’s gone.
And it’s all.
My.
Fucking.
Fault.
Inspiration
This… is definitely a bit more of a personal write than anything else, and I’ve mainly written it as a way of working through some difficult feelings I’ve had over the last night.
I’m currently in a D&D campaign with some good friends of mine, and it’s my first time playing a proper campaign with people. It’s definitely taken some time to get used to things and how different systems work (along with remembering to speak/interact with the world around me), but I’m having fun at various points.
The character I play is called Marieya Ebontide, she’s a water-based cleric with access to some pretty decent offensive spells with good healing capabilities. Slightly on edge most of the time, with a severe phobia of anything relating to dragons, but she does what she can to help out.
Last night… we had our first party death, and whilst the party member is a Gearforged, and so we can repair him after a while; both myself and Marieya have taken it a bit harder than was expected. Mainly because I’m supposed to be the dedicated healer, especially because it was only after the fact that I remembered I had Healing Word, which I could’ve used as a bonus action to try help this party member out.
Things should work out, but I needed to write this to get these feelings out of my head, and to try reconciling with them.
And if I can give Marieya a bit of character development at the same time, that’s a definite plus
Once again, the princess had been unable to get to sleep. It was like this for several a night for them, usually spending multiple hours restless and feeling like it was impossible to get settled. On most nights they would choose to occupy themselves with another activity, setting up a board game to play against only them, or perhaps choosing to endless trawl through the various books in their room.
On one night, they decided to change out of their nightwear and instead go for a walk into the nearby forest. Their outside outfit was beautiful, but practical, comprised of sturdy riding boots, well fitted leather trousers, and an ornate cold weather jacket, trimmed with fur around the cuffs.
Leaving the castle grounds through the kitchen, they began their amble. The forest was maintained by the royal gardeners, so whilst the dense woodland gave a foreboding impression; it was anything but. Wildlife teemed throughout the trees, ranging from the smallest woodlouse scurrying underneath a log when the princess approached, to the largest racoons who also ran away, but instead chose to duck behind trees.
Eventually, the princess reached a clearing, and took a seat on a large, ancient tree stump. They sighed, realising that their predicament was unsustainable, and that eventually a consultation with the court physician would be needed. Time passed, and still the princess felt no tiredness or no desire to go back to their room.
The clearing was quiet, and all the creatures of the forest had displaced around the princess, leaving them alone with their thoughts.
Until they noticed something on a small log to their right. On top of this log, was a slug. It was unremarkable in size being only a few inches long, with light brown spots along the top of its darker brown body. Unbothered by the princess’s presence, it slowly slid along the surface of the log, unaware of the world around it.
“So, I guess you’re my company for the night” the princess said, talking as if the slug would be able to respond. “It’s not fun having insomnia, especially with all the different pressures I know I’ll face during the day. I guess you don’t have to worry about any of that, do you?”
There was no response from the slug.
“Though I suppose you’ve got your own set of worries, presumably involving birds and other such denizens of this forest, looking to make you their meal.”
Again, there was no response.
“I guess I don’t have it so bad, I just need to be able to talk to the right people to find out how to get the help I need. Thanks, slug, you’ve been a great listener!”
As the princess stood up, they gave a slight curtsy in the direction of the slug, who, once again, had no response to their monologue.
The princess returned to their room, changed back into their nightwear, and got back into bed. Whilst the sleep that followed was short and marred slightly be unpleasant dreams; it was still what they needed and gave them the ability to face the next day with a bit more confidence.
Visits to the forest clearing continued in the coming weeks, with the princess returning to that point every two to three nights, and each time, the slug had returned to that log. Forest nights continued the trend of the princess talking aloud to themselves, treating the slug as a personal counsellor, articulating the problems and concerns they were facing at court and with their duties.
Up until, one night, when the princess was happily skipping to the clearing, ready to talk to their gastropod friend…
…and there was no slug on the log waiting for them.
The princess felt a slight dip in their heart, worrying that the fate they had described in their first meeting had finally come true. They sat on the stump for a while, hoping the slug would arrive, but hours passed, and nothing happened.
They returned to their room, and went to bed, upset at the situation. A cycle of returning to the clearing each night repeated for several days, and each time they returned, there was no slug to be found. The princess was rapidly losing hope at the idea of being able to see their slug friend again.
On the night they intended to be their last in the clearing before attempting to seek out a remedy to their insomnia; the princess took their seat on the stump again, sighing sadly at the situation that had unfolded. And then they turned to the log where the slug normally sat with them.
And to their pleasant surprise, the slug had returned.
An overwhelming feeling of relief and excitement washed over the princess, as they began talking about all the different issues they had encountered since their last meeting, whilst expressing thanks that the slug had came back to them. All throughout this the slug continued to give no response, but was sat perfectly still on the log, almost as if intently listening to the princess.
The one-sided conversation continued long into the night, until the princess realised that they needed to get back to their room for some measure of sleep before they would be woken up to begin their day.
“Thank you, my slimy friend” they said, curtsying and using their index finger to gently pet the slug goodbye. The princess would often return to the clearing on late nights in the hope of clearing their head, sometimes the slug would be waiting for them, and sometimes the night would go by without the slug appearing at all.
All that mattered to the princess was that when the slug was there, the conversation continued from wherever it last left off.
Inspiration
So, aside from a short story told across multiple tweets I wrote about 2 or 3 weeks ago, this is my first foray back into creative writing for a while, so apologies for any roughness in the prose or punctuation.
It’s a bit of a weird story as well, the inspiration came from the fact that I myself do suffer from insomnia a fair few nights (partially my own fault for how much caffeine I drink some days). And when I go to the bathroom at night, a slug has usually slid in from a hole in the wall, and even though they can’t respond to me, I’ll usually make light conversation with them as a way of passing some time.
The bit about the slug disappearing also came from my late night experiences, because for a while I didn’t see the slug until they returned about a week or so later, though, that’s not the real moral behind that plot point.
Even though we live in a world where remote communication is more accessible than ever, and in the current times, the only way some people are able to chat to their friends, sometimes time will pass where you won’t get to talk or see the people close to you for a while. What’s important with people like this, is that you’re just able to pick right up where you left off with each other, even if it’s several months after your last conversation.
So, after much putting off, I’ve finally decided to try rally myself and start working on my WordPress site properly.
I still have a lot to do, a lot of design work to consider, and getting to grips with using the back end features of a content hosting platform, as opposed to just having my work published on another site.
This is pretty much just a mile marker post for me, so there’s a definitive point of where I started to try pull my various portfolios and interests together. If you’re reading this as a way of starting to go through my work, I hope for one of two things:
You’re interested in my work and are exploring everything I’ve done
I’ve actually kept up to date with maintaining this so this isn’t the only post
Rosalia Rambles 