All posts tagged in online leaderboards
Nov 26, 2019
The Wild Area and online options become accessible early on in Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield. If you don’t like spoiling new 8th generation Pokemon or like to catch as many Pokemon on your own before trading, I recommend getting all of your badges in the main game to fully enjoy everything the online multiplayer feature has to offer. You must have all 7 Gym Badges (last one is the Dragon Badge) in order to find Gigantamax Pokemon in the Wild Area. I go into more details and which select few Pokemon have Gigantamax forms here. See below for more information about playing with other players and ongoing official competitions by Nintendo for rewards and bragging rights!
Link Battles and Link Codes
Link Battles are between you and other players online. If you only want to play with your friends specifically, you can set up a Link Code. A Link Code is a 4-digit password that your friends will have to input in order to join. This is set up this way because everything you do is broadcast live via Stamps (more on that later). Link Battles allow you to choose Single Battle for one-on-one battling and Double Battle where two players can send out 2 Pokemon at one time. Finally, there’s Multi Battle which is similar to a Double Battle but four players are involved and get to control one Pokemon each.
Link Trades and Surprise Trades
Link Trades are the way to go if you have a certain Pokemon in mind that you want to trade with a friend. You can also connect with someone randomly online and both come to an agreement for a trade. If there’s a Pokemon you know you don’t need anymore, Surprise Trades can be really fun! Select the Pokemon that you want traded and go about your business in-game until your Y-Comm alerts you that they found you someone and the trade is complete. As adorable as Skwovet is (the pudgy-cheeked squirrel), you’ll probably come across it often in Surprise Trades as it is the new Ratata. Other times you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what players send out there!
The Victory Station
Go to your menu and click on VS (Victory Station) which displays stats such as whether Shield players or Sword players are winning in categories like “Hatched the most eggs” and “Cooked the most while camping” by comparing numbers with 100 players online. From there, you can select either Battle Stadium for various online competition options or Live Competition to host or participate in battles via LAN.
Battle Stadium
- Casual Battles: Anything goes in single and double battles and it’s all just for good fun or to just test your skills as a Trainer.
- Ranked Battles: Compete for the highest rank with other players around the world. You’ll be matched up with others in your tier so that the battles are fair. At the end of each season you’ll get in-game rewards based on your position in the Leaderboards.
- Online Competitions: These are limited live and official ongoing competitions. Check out the announcement here for details on the very first competition, Galar Beginnings. You’ll want to sign up now for the period between December 6th-8th, 2019. All players will receive a Participation Gift after completing at least one battle.
- Rental Teams: This new feature allows you to share your Battle Team for the public to use, or “borrow” someone else’s to play around with in battles.
Ranked Battles
Nintendo just announced that Ranked Battle Season 1 is now under way until the end of December 2019. During this time, the rules listed will remain the same with restrictions to Pokemon that you can use. Another season will be starting on January 1st, 2020. For this time around, you’ll be entering in Double Battles, using only 4 Pokemon from your team, and all of your Pokemon will be at Lv. 50. At the end of the season, if you’ve competed in at least one match, you can get the following rewards from the Mystery Gift menu.
- Master Ball Tier: 3 Gold Bottle Caps and 600 Battle Points.
- Ultra Ball Tier: 1 Gold Bottle Cap and 300 Battle Points.
- Great Ball Tier: 3 Bottle Caps, 1 Ability Capsule, 1 Jolly Mint, 1 Timid Mint, and 100 Battles Points.
- Poke Ball Tier & Beginner Tier: 1 Ability Capsule, 1 Jolly Mint, 1 Timid Mint, and 50 Battle Points.
Battle Points, or BP, can be spent by talking to an NPC in the Pokemon Center in Hammerlocke in exchange for special items.
Y-Comm and Searching Stamps
Going to your Y-Comm and changing your Local Communication to Internet will allow you to see what everyone online is currently up to by displaying Stamps at all times on the bottom left of your screen. This includes Link Trades, Surprise Trades, Link Battles, and Max Raid Battles. In your Y-Comm menu, it is possible to filter your Stamps if you are looking for specific battles to join or only want to see the Stamps of your friends. I usually set mine to Max Raid Battles and pay attention to the specific red ones as they are the “incredibly/massively strong Pokemon” ones. If someone else found a rare Gigantamax Pokemon, you can join in with a total of 4 players. You’ll want to act fast as this can fill up quickly.
If you find your own Gigantamax Pokemon, I recommend Inviting Others as it’s a very tough battle to fight alone or the three other NPCs given at random can be pretty terrible. You’ll come across a few Magikarp that will often faint and then come back after a few turns at full health, only to faint again.
In every Max Raid Battle, any Pokemon can faint up to 4 times before you lose and get kicked out of the den. You also lose if you go over 10 total turns. Therefore, either set up a Link Code for your friends, or wait the full 3 minutes to give players the chance to join. It is possible to have a mixture of players and NPCs if you can’t fill out all four slots.
Playing with Others Keeps Things Interesting for a Long Time to Come
Even if you have finished the main game of Pokemon Sword and Shield, there are still competitions to enter for rewards and your Pokemon to show-off. If you want to fill out your Pokedex, you’ll need to spend some time in the Wild Area, and to trade for version exclusive Pokemon. Hosting or joining others in Max Raid Battles and Dynamaxing Pokemon is also another fun way to share in the experience and to get the most out of your game.
Of course to do all that you’ll need a Nintendo Switch Online account. You can find the pricing plans here, however, I recommend getting an Amazon Prime account now as you get Twitch Prime and 12 months of Nintendo Switch Online at no extra cost. Find out more about that amazing limited time offer here.
- Aug 1, 2019
Astro Bears is a competitive arcade-style party-game created by indie developers SONKA. This is an updated version of Astro Bears Party that now includes new Bears, planets and play modes for the Nintendo Switch which released this July 19th, 2019. If you already owned Astro Bears Party, you will get this re-release for free. Below is a quick review of Astro Bears on the Nintendo eShop which you can purchase here for $6.99 US.
How to Play
You play as a Bear of your choice, with the mode of your choice, which have access to the following abilities: jumping/flying and dashing. Your Bear will run automatically so you have to have quick reflexes while controlling the direction of your Bear. Jumping and flying is useful if you don’t want to run into your opponent. Dashing is more difficult to master in terms of usefulness because you can rush to corner or “cut-off” your opponent quickly if you see the opportunity. Moreover, every time you jump, you leave an “archway” which gives the game another layer of strategy.
What you want to avoid is the colorful “ribbon” that trails behind your opponent which becomes longer the more you move. Honestly, I get some real Care Bear vibes from how cute and colorful the Bears are in this game with these ribbons. The ribbons will follow every action you take so if you jump, it will also leave a line higher up. Depending on whether you choose your ribbon to be finite or infinite, it will change how long the ribbons get the longer you play. When your ribbon is infinite, it starts getting really hard to even avoid your own ribbon which you can also run into and lose.
The planet sizes were what disappointed me the most about Astro Bears because even the biggest planet is rather small. This is why the game can last mere seconds because you don’t have very far to go. I understand that that’s the point but I still feel like having more of an open and bigger planet to play on like Mario Galaxy, would have kept me more interested for longer. Although, it is an interesting concept to have the planet by see-through as you can see where your opponent is going.
Different Types of Modes
Astro Bears has 3 modes to choose from: Party, Competitive, and the new Jetfish Hunting which is a local 1-2 player team-up to beat online high-scores. All modes are basically the same with minor differences save for the last one which I will discuss in more detail below. As mentioned previously, the main objective for all modes is to make sure you don’t run into your opponents’ ribbons which are trailing behind them as they automatically run around your chosen planets. You can jump, dash, fly and control which direction you want your little space-bear to go.
Party Mode
This basic mode lets you play up to 4 local players where you each have your own screen (i.e. 2 players is split-screen). Choose how many points it will take for you to win the session between 20, 40, 80 and 160, the planet size which goes from small, medium, big and huge, if the ribbon is finite or infinite, and the theme. You get 4 points every time you win a round so it can take very few minutes or even seconds to get to 20 points total. The themes only have you changing the lines of the planets to a couple different colors which is a little pointless.
Competitive Mode
You have the same choice of 2-4 players in this mode but this time you must select 3 Bears each with their own unique stats. In order to win the overall match, you need to at least win one round with each one of your Bears. You will not be able to choose your planet size or whether your ribbon is finite or infinite as the game will randomize it for you. Furthermore, it seems that the larger planet sizes are excluded from this mode. I can see that being the more competitive approach as it is fairly chosen with no one having to fight over which options to pick. The point system is also a little different so this mode is better if you want the matches to last a little longer.
Jetfish Hunting
This mode is a great addition if you’d rather play with your friends and not against. Rather than trying to get your opponent to run into your ribbon, you are trying not to run into each other while collecting as many Jetfish as possible. There is no time to communicate with each other to coordinate who is going after the closest Jetfish as the game is too fast-paced. However, it doesn’t take long to get more skilled at playing this game as the rules are quite easy to learn.
When playing Jetfish Hunting, you can either compete for the highest score locally or on online leaderboards. The former is more like playing against yourselves if no one else in the family will be playing this game. My partner and I got very meager scores together before we died several times so as you can see we have no chance in competing online as of now.
Choosing a Bear
You have to choice between 8 Bears: Bishnu, Wojtek, Neil, Cybear, Xiaoli, Randy, Igor and Aki. All Bears will have varying stats of Speed, Turning, Jet Capacity and Jet Regeneration. Basically what you want to do is figure out what are your strengths when playing and maybe do as I did and choose the Bear that will either compliment those strengths or compensate with higher stats in the area you struggle with. An interesting feature I noticed with Cybear and Randy is that Cybear can get hit twice before losing as he has an extra layer of protection, and Randy’s stats are randomized. Here is a list of the descriptions we get for each Bear:
- Igor – the proud husband and father,
- Bishnu – the crazy one everyone likes,
- Xiaoli – the fastest runner of them all,
- Neil – the one who likes to eat while swimming,
- Wojtek – the pierogi-loving war vet,
- Cybear – the villain with an extra life,
- Aki – the cosplayer and tech geek,
- or Randy – the one we know nothing about!
More Information
For the low price of Astro Bears I wouldn’t dissuade people from picking up this title if you want to easily grab and play a multiplayer game with friends. Although, don’t expect to have hours of fun playing this game or to replay it often. Rather, expect to have minutes of fun playing this game as the concept is unique, the controls respond quickly as needed, and the 3D graphics are quite nice. The soundtrack is also worth noting that it was very nostalgic to retro gaming and was inspired by the 80s. For as long as I played this game, and again that’s not very long, I did enjoy it. Below you can see a little bit of gameplay including the Jetfish Hunting mode.
