Where’s Bidoof? - A Review of Pokèmon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
To prepare for a lockdown in Australia, I bought three games to play and to make content for this blog. Unfortunately, I’ve had to scrap the other two posts because:
I have nothing to say about “Persona 5: Dancing Star Night”. It’s a dancing rhythm game, and I don’t know how to talk about that. It’s a good game, and seeing the Phantoms Thieves dance in silly costumes is funny. That’s literally all I have to say about it.
I also thought “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” would make good content. I could even make reference to that time “Stardew Valley Made Me Suicidal” and see if this game would make me want to kill myself as well. But it became very clear that this is a game you're supposed to play with friends, given by how much they try to emphasise the online features. This causes a problem for me because I don't have friends.
So I gave up on that game, and now we’re just left with one.
I’ve never played a Pokèmon Mystery Dungeon game before so when deciding which game to buy, I looked at the back of the box, saw you played as a Pokèmon and went: “WOAH hold on! Can you play AS Bidoof in this?”
I know when I talked about his last time, I never stated playing as Bidoof as a requirement for my perfect Pokèmon game. But that was because I never thought I was possible to be able to catch Bidoof’s pure majesty, his elegance, HIS PERFECTION in a first person perspective. I assumed we would have to be forever stuck as a spectator to this god-like entity, but could this game really do it?
I had to find out.
It starts with one of those quizzes you took as a kid to find out what Pokèmon you were, which was actually strangely nostalgic for me as I got picked Charmander. Obviously I was hoping for Bidoof but let’s not kid ourselves, it would be an insult to Bidoof if you even suggested that I, a mere peasant could be compared to a beautiful Bidoof. So for the time being, I was fine with Charmander.
However, at the end of the quiz if you are unhappy with what Pokèmon you are, you can change it to whichever one you want. I did not see Bidoof in this screen.
There was Mudkip, for if you think memes from 2005 were the pinnacle of comedy. There was Pikachu, for if you’re 6 years old and a yellow rat is the only Pokèmon your small child brain knows. There was even Chikorita, for those who dream of being a useless, green potato.
But there was no Bidoof.
That’s okay though! The box said there was a party system as well, so maybe we can get Bidoof to join our party. And on the topic of your party, you also get to choose who your first teammate is. I chose Eevee, because Eevee is brown like Bidoof.
Being my first Mystery Dungeon game, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I sure as hell did not expect it to be a rouge-like. After learning that you literally go into “mystery dungeons” that change layouts every time to “rescue (team)” Pokèmon, I was quite surprised. Again, no idea why, it’s literally in the title of the game.
But after my initial shock subsided, I started noticing some things. Most notably is the fact that I’ve only seen Pokèmon from the first 3 generations. This is very concerning because Bidoof was introduced in the 4th generation.
This confusion made me do something I don’t normally do for video games. I looked up information on it.
According to serebii.net: “Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX features a wide variety of Pokémon. As this is a remake of the original games, it focuses on the first 386 Pokémon”.
The first 386 Pokèmon? Bidoof is #399! Why didn’t anyone tell me this? I can’t believe they did this to me yet again! First Sword and Shield cuts Bidoof from the Galar Dex and now this?
Why must you make me suffer Nintendo? You know I’ve only wanted ONE thing from you. Just put Bidoof in every video game you make! That’s it! Just that one simple thing!
Put Bidoof in Smash Bros. Put Bidoof in Mario Kart. Put Bidoof in Splatoon. Put Bidoof in that new Zelda game. Fuck it, put Bidoof in the old Zelda games too.
So now what am I supposed to write this post about? I’ve not played nearly enough to write an actual review, so hang on let me find something new.
Hello and welcome to my review of the Oculus Quest which is a virtual reality headset created by Oculus VR, a division of Facebook Inc.
Normally I would try to stay away from things owned by Facebook, but the HTC Vive is almost double the price, so since I’ve already spent over $150 on video games and I have rent to pay that wasn’t happening. The Valve Index is also not sold in Australia and is even more expensive than the Vive.
The Oculus Quest is cool because you don’t need to connect it to a computer to work, it’s all wireless. You won’t be able to play the big beefy games wireless however as it doesn’t have the specs to be able to run it. But you can buy a cable to connect it to your PC. The first party one is a USB-C cable called the Oculus Link which is $80!
It’s also out of stock right now. All other USB-C cables that are over 5 meters also seem to be out of stock (there’s only like two companies that make them).
You can buy a USB-C to USB-A cable but those are much shorter (3 meters or less) apparently because the signals degrade faster with USB-A or something I dunno. I only write computer code for a living why would I know this?
So unfortunately, this mean I won’t be playing Half Life Alyx anytime soon, instead we’ll look at one of the games you can put on the Oculus Quest without a computer.
The game we will look at is Beat Saber which is… wait, this is another rhythm game. God dammit.
But the Oculus Quest gets a 10/10 because I’ve had a headset mount on my computer for years and it’s nice to see it finally used.
Ignore the cables.