Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 6: Fall Out Boys

The continuation of my playthrough of Pokemon Uranium, the popular fan-made Pokemon game, this one has us finally meet the titular nuclear Pokemon of the game and progress with the plot and main story of the mysteries surrounding the nuclear Pokemon of the region! Also, a very anti-climactic gym battle happens here.

A bit of a shorter update than the previous ones, mostly because I did a fair amount of grinding in this part of the game. This was oringally supposed to be the back-end of the previous part before I cut it out and made it its own thing.

Last we left off, Theo and the boat captain buggered off, but we can still talk to Cameron. Cameron goes into this long, long speech about the benefits of using nuclear energy, and emphasizing that it's not always just nuclear bombs and unholy three-eyed fish mutations. The writers of this game clearly did some research about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, even if not all of them are showcased as prominently in the game's story. Again, while I appreciate the hard work that went into the creation of this fan-game, theme-wise the game probably could've used a bit of a once-over -- so that it isn't just a huge text wall in the middle of an already long cutscene. I definitely appreciaet it, though. 

Cameron also notes that he doesn't approve of using electric Pokemon as an energy source... which I guess is inhumane, but maybe pay them with berries or something? Give them free dental and weekends off? It's not like getting a Manectric to power my house is that much different than getting a Manectric to unleash thunderbolts on my enemies...

We can talk to Cameron about our missing presumed dead mom, and Cameron is way more emotional than Kellyn ever was. I'm genuinely not sure how much of it is intentional, but it really does feel like daddy Kellyn feels like someone who's way less emotionally invested and is just using dead mom as an excuse to bury himself in work. I know people grieve in different ways, but as an audience, Cameron does feel like the first person to make me, the player character, invested in dead mom as an actual person instead of just a reason that Kellyn is man-angsting.

Also, apparently the two of them were rivals!

Is it just me, or is there a sense of "the one that got away" in Cameron's talk about Lucille? I'm genuinely not sure if he's just good friends, or if they were actually good friends if you catch my drift.

Yeah, the mystery is what Lucille saw in Kellyn.

Mom's really big on changing the world, it seems. Meanwhile, Kellyn throws tantrums at construction effort trying to rebuild the destroyed nuclear plant to provide the people with Tandor with clean energy just because his wife died there in an accident. When I type it out like this, Kellyn sounds even more like a whiny tit. 

More talk about the mysterious nuclear Pokemon, but Camern just sort of shrugged it off as slight discolouration. And it's like, okay, maybe in real life moths or raccoons being a little discoloured and breeding a bit weirdly isn't that much of a cause of concern. But this is a world where the moths can summon hurricanes and the raccoons can infuse elemental energy into their fangs...

Another NPC later on who I didn't screenshot compares it to shiny Pokemon, which actually feels like a legitimate excuse to why everyone's relatively blase about these mysterious glow-in-the-dark monsters.

...but the whole "won't listen to orders and is super aggressive" really should be a red flag, huh? Also, hints about stronger moves, interesting!

Clearly Cameron has never played Pokemon Colosseum before. 

This went on and on for a while. Informative text-dump!

There is a small little home-base for Camern's workers, by the way.

That blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes!

You can't actually return to the mainland, and are locked into this area with whatever party you had while talking to the sailor man. The little home-base that Cameron and his workers hang out in have a healing lady and a shopkeeper selling some basic goods, but there is no PC and no way to return, so you're stuck with whatever you brought with you. 

Fortunaetly, I had some of my heavier hitters in my party. Unfortunately, this means I am stuck with the under-leveled Coconut and an Egg.

But also fortunately, Power Plant Epsilon is a great place for level grinding, as you'll soon see. 

Ura steps into the grass, and... oh no, it's a Nuclear Pokemon! They glow green! Nuclear Pokemon take super-effective hits regardless of what you hit them with, and some of them have moves I've never heard before like "Gamma Ray" and "Radioacid" and "Nuclear Waste!"

Again, it's basically the Shadow Pokemon from Colosseum, but I appreciate the mechanics nonetheless.

See, though... all Nuclear-type Pokemon take super-effective damage from any attack I use against them, meaning that even Cerebella with her low-damage attacks, or the under-leveled Coconut are able to one-shot or two-shot most nuclear-type Pokemon. Throw in the fact that it's constantly raining, and three members of my party -- Cerebella, Coconut and Wigglefoot -- get bonuses to their water-type attacks.

The fact that this is probably the only area so far that features evolved Pokemon (like Kinetmunk here) also means that the experience yield is actually pretty decent -- Uranium suffers a bit from the same problem with the Johto games in that there aren't a lot of evolved Pokemon in the wild, so experience points from wild Pokemon's a bit hard to come by.


And thus begin a bit of a capture-session of all of the available Nuclear Pokemon nearby. I'll have a running theme of the Nuclear boys I capture. This nuclear Kinetmunk is called Thorium, based on the real-life radioactive element.

Also, it's the first Kinetmunk I have captured, and the pokedex registers their base form -- none of the Generation VII style "alternate forms" thing going on here. 

Nuclear Costraw (radioactive psychic leech with a mohawk!) is radium, the most famous radio-luminescent element and one made famous by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie's discovery.

Thanks to a wonder trade earlier, I'm already spoiled on what this evolves into, as well as the existence of Nuclear Pokemon in general... but I'm not going to act like that's some huge damning spoiler since I've already reviewed the entire fan-dex once. 

OH GOD THOSE HOLLOW, BLANK EYES. It looks so much creepier on Owten's :3 cat-face!

I don't actually put too much thought into the names, but nuclear Owten is named after radon, a radioactive noble gas, which kinda-sorta fits the fact that he's a flying-type.


Nuclear Tancoon looks like he should be called strontium to me. I really don't have a whole ton of reasoning.


There are a couple of SUPER Scientists, using the HG/SS sprite with the ripped-up lab coat. They're SUPER! Unlike the wild Pokemon, though, these are actually just sane members of Cameron's group who are undergoing field work, and not insane mad scientists. One informs us that Nuclear-type attacks don't work too well on Steel-types.

This one has a "Paraudio", but I don't know what it's supposed to be. A duck with weird body proportions and a headphone?

Our critters slowly level up! Taxonomaly replaces the now-pretty-useless Fairy Wind (it's basically Gust) with Draining Kiss (it deals more damage and heals you), while Coconut gets Ground STAB with Sand Tomb.

Man I sure hope none of my Pokemon buddies will get irradiated from how often I have them fight radioactive monsters. I'm sure the rain washes the radiation right off, right? (It doesn't IRL, but the Pokemon doesn't get affected by radiation. )

OH SHIT THE EGG IS HATCHING


OH SHIT IT'S ADORABLE

Yeah, Nupin here is one of my favourite weird looking critters from Uranium and I'm very, very pleased to own one! Don't ask how "the largest single-celled organism in the planet" is born from an egg. Pretend it's a particularly large amoebic cyst or something. He's Grass/Electric for some reason, but I love him!

Sorry, Starspawn, I guess you're permanently off the team.


I name him E. coli after the pathogenic bacteria, and right now he doesn't really know awhole ton of moves. Alternate names I considered: Paramecia, Amoeba, Pythoplankton, Streptococcus, Van Leeuwenhoek, and a bunch of other microorganisms.

Look at him with his dumb single eye and his weird slug-like body and the magnet head ornament! I love him. I don't think I paid that much attention to Nuppin when I originally reviewed the dex, but owning one? Yeah, yeah this is fun! 

Okay, E. coli, you're going to get strongkt real fast. I move the EXP share from Coconut to E. coli, gave him the ever-broken Giga Drain (the equivalent of handing a newborn a bazooka) and while training Coconut, I just allowed E. coli to leech the nutrients and experience points from his larger brothers and sisters. Just like a real bacteria!

Also, check out just how funny Cocaran's back sprite is in that picture. That expression on the coconut shell is just screams "aw jeeze did I do it right? Aw jeez I'm afraid I screwed up, oh dear."

It became night pretty quickly, and as you can probably tell, Coconut the Cocaran level up very, very quickly due to the rain boosting his Water-type moves. He's Grass/Ground, but he has access to water-type water gun (because crab I guess). He's a physical attacker, though, so the mighty Crabhammer attack is going to see a lot more work. 

OH SHIT I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS

Always a fun surprise to get evolutions in this fan game because while I know about how many evolutions a line will get, I genuinely have no idea when or how to get to those evolutions.


HAHAHAHA. Cararalm just looks so pissed off all the time! Look at that cracker-shaped head with eyestalks sticking out, and his shell is a fat palm tree, and his legs are palm tree legs. I love Cocaran's design too much to say this is an improvement, but Cararalm isn't a bad design! It's just that I like Cocaran a lot more!

The stat boost ain't nothing to sneeze at either, particularly with Crabhammer really working from his significantly higher physical attack stat. Most of this is just training Coconut up to evolve, although some of my other Pokemon got to level up, too.

THANK GOD! Finally, a useful move! Cerebella has been a bit of a dead-weight while grinding in this area thanks to only knowing the low-power Water Gun and Confusion, but not anymore! 

I found the actual nuclear plant building, which is remarkably intact. Like, I know it's a nuclear meltdown and not an explosion, but the fact that all it did is punch a couple of holes in the windows and ceiling is honestly not that bad, all things considered.


Almost everything is apparently destroyed in the explosion and fire, but the building's still mostly intact. And I bet I'll find something that survived explosion, fire, ten years' worth of nuclear radiation, glowing rabid Pokemon, and a crumbling building.


I wouldn't go inside, honestly, it seems super unsafe, but the game (and Ura's shitty father) wants me to. 

Closure is one thing. But there's also forcing your firstborn to walk into a crumbling, radioactive building populated by a swarm of angry, radioactive psychic leeches and feral wildlife.


Yep. A fucking tracker. Why don't you come down with me, uncle Cameron? You're almost as bad as dad!

Also pictured: one of the few times where the game warns me about going into an area with unskippable cutscenes. 

I am genuinely amazed that a book and a random ripped-off page manages to survive not only the nuclear explosion, the fire and Cameron's many, many expeditions for the last ten years. So either Cameron is lying and never checked out the building; Cameron's incompetent; or these books just magically appeared five minutes ago.

Honestly, how hard could it have been for the writers to have the cryptic information and notes be delivered in something like a hidden computer drive or some shit?

Okay, some cryptic sci-fi stuff on Report #1. Something something project under the codename "092" (the nuclear number for Uranium IRL, that's a cute little touch), something something radiation biofiber, and apparently "092' is able to reconstruct itself from damage? Maybe? Are they making some sort of biological, radioactive superweapon? Like a radioactive Wolverine or Mewtwo or something?

An example of why the early-game Giga Drain TM is kinda silly... E. coli ended up trying to learn the significantly weaker Mega Drain while I was leveling it up. 

Oh no, a locked door! Which somehow survives the nuclear explosion, the fire... you get it.


I didn't take a screenshot of the second part of this report (number 3, I believe), but the MRI apparently detected anomalous brainwave in the specimen, and it seems it's... "incapable of independent thought"? Something about suppression or whatnot. Why would you want to suppress if it's incapable of thought? Isn't that a good thing, if you're building a biological weapon?

Report #2 here talks about a power core, a lot of nuclear fuel, something something activated, and able to produce limitless energy. Limitless energy is good! All that other talk about independent thought, suppression and reconstruction from damage, unfortunately, leads me to think of some sort of superweapon instead of an energy source. What are they doing in this power plant? 

I kind of wish that these reports would show up in my inventory so I can reread them. 

Something something interface, something something generator, full control, something something chief researcher, Dr ----- --s or whatever. I bet it's mom!

Also, great work, Cameron, going so many times into this abandoned nuclear plant and completely missing not just the burnt notebook pages, but also the key. Somehow the nuclear explosion scattered the pages of the notebook all over the building, but not destroy them. Logic!

After the key opens the door, I find the final page in a room with kooky-looking machinery. Something about a breach (probably of the nuclear containment sort), something about confidentiality, a relocation underground, and the fact that Project 092 is... terminated, I guess? Ominous.

Ura sees some pretty lights on a console! A stasis tank! Maybe it'll have the Fallout protagonist within!


Wait no shit I didn't mean to press that button

Hell no, it'll probably wake up Godzilla or some shit.

It doesn't matter if I choose yes or no, by the way (I picked no), because it'll just go into ERROR ERROR ERROR


Like such. ERROR ERROR ERROR

Then I randomly fall down into the basement because, hey, guess what, sending a kid alone into an irradiated crumbling building is not a good idea? And then an angry nuclear suction-mouthed fat penguin dinosaur thing attacks me!

For some reason, Ura has the time to whip out the PST in order to comprehend the mutated, radioactive Birdo. CRUSH DESTROY KILL indeed.

Protect me, Wigglefoot!

Or, y'know, I trivialize this boss fight by just using a quick ball and capturing this Trawpint. I call him tellurium. Not much to say here, we've seen nuclear Trawpint before thanks to the wonders of wonder trading.

Somehow I don't think this critter is the mysterious Project #092. 

God damn it Kellyn if I die I will haunt you every night because this is all your fault, passive-aggressively forcing your kid to investigate a nuclear plant filled with rabid raccoons just because you have some vague abstract desire to bring closure


I'm haunting you too uncle Cameron because you just put a tracker and a communication device instead of going with me

I LIVE! And apparently only slightly irradiated. Well, there goes any chance of having kids, I guess.

Or not, because apparently radiation exposure can be treated just like that. Thanks for saving me, I guess.

Some kind of partially-destroyed notebook that survived a nuclear meltdown, a fire, a crumbling building, a fuck-ton of rabid psychic worm-leeches and whatever the fuck Trawpint is... and also something you missed, you shit.

Is your idea of a scrutiny peeking your head in through the front door, shrugging and walking out? Because that's what I suspect happened considering how these things are just lying around on the floor.


That's actually a good point, the building was a power plant, not a laboratory. What was Lucille doing? I guess she ran off into the basement to protect her experiments or some shit? Or is it her experiments that caused the nuclear meltdown in the first place? Mysteries abound! 

Yeah, this mysterious "092" is probably the cause of the tragedy ten years ago. Make copies of it, Cameron, but investigate it yourself. Kellyn can't be relied to do shit. He'll just cry and mope and angst about it for ten more years. 

Thanks! Ura will take kindness when it's given to him. 

Yeah, fucking demolish the damn building already. The implication about this, of course, is that Cameron doesn't give a shit if the nuclear Pokemon are killed when the nuclear plant is demolished, but I guess they're sorta radiation zombies or some shit? Not the attitude that a Pokemon Ranger should be taking, though! Being the responsible adult, Cameron tells Ura to fuck off and return to the mainland, because radiation is bad for health.

I will inform Kellyn that he is an irresponsible shitbag asshat and his nostalgia combined with his desire for his son to vaguely investigate a past tragedy nearly caused said son to die.

I'll do the latter, though. Theo is a brat, but we were all brats at one point or another. 

The entire previous route is locked to me now, so if you are a player who put off catching those nuclear Kinetmunks, Tancoons, Owtens and Costraws, tough luck. 

Back to the non-irradiated beach. 

Listen, dad, I nearly died, you're irresponsible, I'm calling child welfare and suing your dumb scouter-faced ass.

No? You'd rather talk about the letter and the glow-in-the-dark Pokemon? You are a shit father.

No, really, Kellyn literally doesn't have a single line of dialogue telling Ura that he's thankful that he's safe, or apologize for literally sending him into danger, or anything. What a shit parent. 

With all that story stuff out of the way, Beachball gym go! This gym... doesn't really have a puzzle. You just walk through a bunch of corridors and fight trainers until you reach the final boss. It's not a bad thing, it's just that twenty years of playing a Pokemon game and entering a non-first gym without a puzzle is just odd. 

Everyone uses beach-themed Pokemon. Or, well, aquatic ones, I guess, because I'm sure that Folerogs don't live on beaches. That's Fortog's evolution, by the way, and he looks like a weird hybrid between a dog and a frog.

It's otherwise just Folerogs, Cocarans, Brailips, Tubjaws and the odd Lombre or two. 

I have so little respect for this gym that I forgot to heal up and challenged Cali with Coconut the Cararalm and Wigglefoot the Ludicolo on red HP despite the fact that as grass-types, they'd be the most useful against a Water-type gym. Whoops!


Okay, Cali, tell me more! Please, have a personality beyond "I am a beach girl".

...she got rescued when she drowned while swimming on a beach one day, and got saved by a Brainoar, and is now a beach gym leader. That's... that's kinda basic. But okay, sure. 

...Janine, is that you? You dyed your hair and swapped your clothes, but it's still you. It's a far more obvious palette swap compared to Roark and Davern. 

She's kind of a boring design, to be honest. Like, I like to mock just how utterly ridiculous and bombastic some of the gym leader designs in official pokemon games are, but when the alternative is something that wouldn't look out of place as a generic swimmer trainer, I can see why we go for memorable, wacky costumes like Winona, Claire, Olympia and Drayden. 

Round one, fight! My adorable, injured, giant electric-generating amoeba against a grinning psychic brain-goldfish! Again... I literally forgot to heal.


E. coli, my baby, is able to attack while heal simultaneously, and despite a three-level difference, Giga Drain does more than half damage and heals E. coli up.


Cali proceeds to waste her super potions on Brailip instead of attacking, which suits me just fine because E. coli just drains and drains and drains and sucks Brailip's health away. Death by encephalitis!

Tubjaw used to be a bit threatening, because I had nothing in my party to stand against it before catching Cocaran and leveling Lotad up... but now a couple of Shock Waves later, and Tubjaw gets turned into fillet-o-fish. 

...I don't know what that is, but either way, E. coli's running low on Giga Drain PP.


And it's a good thing we switched out too, because Sableau is Cassnail's evolution, and presumably still Water/Ground. It's adorable, actually. 

Taxonomaly downs the Sableau with two Giga Drains. She doesn't get STAB from Giga Drain, but still manages to do a decent amount of work regardless. 

Charlie hasn't seen any action because of the prevalence of water-types in the gym, so I thought I'd try him out to soften up the enemy Cararalm, since it's Grass/Ground, and I don't have any Ice-type moves. Flame Wheel nearly one-shots Cararalm, but Cararalm's Crabhammer (I forgot it can learn that, despite using one myself) one-shots Charlie.

I really should've had Taxonomaly stay in, she can use the super-effective Silver Wind. Oh well.

Cerebella just swoops in and Water Pulses for victory, because she needs the experience points.

Wait, didn't she talk about a Brainoar in her pre-battle speech? Her ace is a Cararalm? 

Hooray, I get the TM for Water Pulse! It's actually useful, as I mentioned before. Cerebella knows it, but...

...Wigglefoot the Ludicolo has decent special attack stats, and can replace Bubble for Water Pulse. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with Ludicolo since she is an official Pokemon and her type coverage is sort of doubling up with Cerebella and E. coli, but I'll have her hang out a bit until I find something to replace her. She's certainly done a whole lot of work in this gym for sure. 

3/8 badges get! You know, I didn't grind for this purpose, but if I had just been leveling Charlie alone this gym would probably be a LOT harder. Instead it's a cakewalk. Maybe I've been misinformed about Uranium's difficulty all along? Granted, I wasn't playing as seriously and sort of gave up after the first gym, so...


Oh, look. It's dad.

An emergency? What now? What, you need another letter delivered-


OH SHIT THERE'S A BIG KABOOM

AND SUDDENLY IT'S DAYTIME FOR SOME REASON

Shit, either Cameron really went all-in with the whole demolition thing, or some shit just went down.


Proooobably should've told Cameron about the whole "stasis tank failure" thing before going into that rant about the notebook detailing vague events that happened ten years in the past, huh.


...you know what, at least you're doing something. And I guess it's heroic. I won't make fun of you this time around, Kellyn.


Oh yeah, Ura is getting the fuck out of dodge. He's had enough encounters with radiation to last him a lifetime. Escape town!


...I tried to pronounce that word but it just sounds like a kid trying to imitate a fart.


Yeah, that gym foreshadowing isn't organically done in that dialogue at all. Time to evacuate! Presumably Beachball Town might be out of bounds for a while? Well, time to use that other ferry I wasn't able to use... in the next part!