#oneaday Day 761: I Think They Were Lying When They Said “Final”

In an about-face from recent activities, I’ve been playing a relatively mainstream game today in the form of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Despite being a big release, however, one could put forward the argument that the Final Fantasy series is actually becoming somewhat niche again thanks to mixed opinions on the more recent titles.

Said mixed opinions are largely due to the fact that here is a series that is absolutely not afraid to reinvent itself every so often — with varying results.

Up until Final Fantasy IX, you pretty much knew what you were getting — a traditional-style JRPG with random battles. Sure, each one had its own unique ability system, some of which worked better than others (FFV‘s Job system was a highlight for many, while FFVIII‘s ridiculously abstract Junction system was both needlessly overcomplicated and far too easy to game) but for the most part, you could rely on the fact that you’d have a lengthy quest involving dungeons, towns, a world map, an airship and eleventy bajillion random battles along the way which, from FFIV onwards, used the series’ iconic Active Time Battle system, offering gameplay somewhere between real-time and turn-based.

It was said prior to FFIX‘s launch, however, that that particular game would be the last “traditional” Final Fantasy title. And in many ways, that game did feel like a farewell to the series, featuring numerous references to all the previous entries in the franchise, a great story, some lovable characters and an utterly bewildering finale. It was also to be the last Final Fantasy to grace the PS1.

Final Fantasy X, the first entry in the series to arrive on the PlayStation 2, shook things up. While it was still fundamentally an RPG with random battles, a lot of elements which people had taken for granted had changed completely. Gone was the traditional experience and levels progression system, replaced with the Sphere Grid, a flexible system that allowed for a degree of character customization — or a lot of character customization if you elected to play in the “Advanced” mode. Also gone was the traditional world map, with the whole game structured as one continuous journey through the world rather than jaunts through key locations punctuated with running across a peculiarly-scaled map screen. Also gone was the Active Time Battle system, replaced by a more cerebral turn-based system in which players could manipulate turn order with the use of certain abilities. It was a neat system, but Active Time Battle returned with Final Fantasy X-2 — itself a departure for the series by being the first ever direct sequel to a previous Final Fantasy game.

Final Fantasy X-2 was great. Some people hated it for the fact that its tone and attitude was so different to that of its predecessor which, despite all its changes, told a pretty good tale, despite having one of the most irritating main characters the franchise has ever seen. Some people hated it for the fact it was as camp as a row of pink tents. Some people didn’t even give it a chance after seeing the seriously cheesy intro sequence. But beneath the girlish nonsense lay a deep JRPG with an excellent character development system that combined elements of FFX‘s Sphere Grid and FFV‘s Job system.

Then came Final Fantasy XI, which was an MMO. This caused even series mainstays to shy away, and also proved that Square Enix had a lot to learn about making MMOs. It was difficult, progress was painfully slow and its tech was rather janky — due in part to the fact it was a cross-platform release on PC and PS2 (and later Xbox 360). But somehow despite this it was still recognisable as a Final Fantasy on some level — particularly once you started getting into the story missions and boss fights. You’d be forgiven if you skipped this one, however, as it required a time investment that many players aren’t able or willing to give. That said, it’s still going relatively strong today, meaning there must be something there that people like.

Final Fantasy XII reinvented the series once again, taking a few lessons from Final Fantasy XI and applying them to a single-player game. Ditching the concept of random battles altogether, Final Fantasy XII took place in an open world divided into zones, much like an MMO, and saw combat taking place on the field. There was a far greater focus on exploration and freedom than in any previous Final Fantasy game (except, arguably, the very first one, which pretty much plonked you down in the world and told you to get on with it with nary a hint of coherent plot) and, for the first time in the mainline single player series, the game focused far more on game mechanics than plot. This wasn’t a bad thing — it was great fun to play, and the new systems worked brilliantly — but the plot was rather lacking, ending up as a rather poor imitation of Star Wars without the space combat. It just wasn’t a very interesting story, which caused it to suffer. This, coupled with the fact that the game was so fundamentally different to what people thought Final Fantasy was — despite the fact it had been continually reinventing itself since X — caused many people to treat it with a degree of caution. The soundtrack was a bit rubbish, too — a big deal in a series that was known for its stirring, memorable music.

And then came Final Fantasy XIII, the first “next-gen” Final Fantasy. Conscious of the fact that some JRPG fans had shied away from the Westernness of XII, XIII took on a much more traditional JRPG structure. It was linear for the most part, it featured battles which took place on a separate screen, it had a levelling system somewhat reminiscent of FFX‘s Sphere Grid and it had a strong cast of characters participating in a plot best described as “bewildering”. It was certainly a spectacle to watch, and remains one of the best-looking games of all time to this day. Unfortunately, its extreme linearity coupled with the fact that it was still throwing tutorial messages at you by the time you were a good 20 hours into it caused many people to, again, respond negatively to it.

Now enter Final Fantasy XIII-2, a game where Square Enix seem to think they’ve learned from the mistakes of the past. And in some senses they have done — gone is the straight line corridor design of XIII and in are much more open-plan areas which require exploration to discover all their secrets, for example. But in some senses, they’ve taken a few steps backward, too — the plot, for one, which is complete nonsense, even for a Final Fantasy game. There’s a lot of time travel, though it’s not until a good while into the game that you start to see this used in an interesting manner with parallel timelines and whatnot. Chrono Trigger it ain’t. For the most part, it’s used as a bit of a lazy excuse for whatever disastrous event is afflicting the next location you go to — it’s always “a paradox”, and dealing with it usually involved beating the snot out of some giant monster. 16 hours in and this format is starting to change up a bit, though, so I’m hoping for a bit more variety later in the game. (Yes, obligatory disclaimer here: I haven’t finished it yet.)

There’s a few technical issues which mar the experience, too. While XIII was criticised somewhat for its relative lack of character interaction, it did at least have properly-directed and blocked scenes for all the important conversations. XIII-2 occasionally takes the lazy way out, with characters standing woodenly in place and flapping their mouths at each other. This wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the fact that the character you aren’t controlling at the time you initiate the conversation freezes in place when the conversation starts, meaning that if they’re in a position where they block the camera, the entire cutscene might be watched through their back. And sure, Serah has a nice bum, but it’s nice to see the faces of people you’re talking to.

All that said, these considerations don’t stop XIII-2 from being an enjoyable game. They stop it from being a truly great, essential purchase game, but they certainly don’t stop it from being fun. The battle system is straightforward and satisfying (if a little easy for the most part) and there is certainly plenty to do — and usually plenty of options for things to do at any one time rather than forcing the player down a linear path, too. There’s a lot to like and a bit to dislike. If you hated XIII, it’s worth a look to see the changes that have been made. If you hate Final Fantasy or JRPGS in general, it’s probably not going to change your mind. If you’re one of the relatively few people who enjoyed XIII, you’ll enjoy the new (if batshit crazy) plot with numerous guest appearances from recognizable characters. And if you passed up playing XIII because of its mixed reviews, you can still get an enjoyable experience out of this thanks to its “Beginner’s Primer” feature as well as numerous explicit explanations of past events throughout the course of the game.

Were I to believe in review scores (which I don’t, really) I would give it a solid 7. Good, not great. Worth playing, but not essential. Flawed, but enjoyable.

#oneaday Day 760: I Love You, Kana

I’m on a bit of a “narrative-based games that challenge the conventions of what is ‘normal’ and/or ‘acceptable’ for video games to tackle” kick at the moment, if you can even have a “kick” in such a thing. So it was that I found myself playing Kana Little Sister recently.

“What is Kana Little Sister?” I hear you ask. It’s another one of them visual novel type things from Japan, meaning lots of reading, occasional decisions to make, anime-style pictures and, in many (though not all) cases, some naughty pictures. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can acquire a legal copy that works on modern machines right here. Link is pretty much NSFW, just so you know.

It will probably not surprise you to note that there are likely to be spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned. Spoileriffic stuff is below the break. All discussion here is based on a single playthrough which achieved Ending No. 6, aka “Live Now”, aka “Intellectual Ending No. 3”, so any and all spoilers will relate to that route only.

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#oneaday Day 759: I Said Byte, Byte, Mrs Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is here!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the official website.

Still no clue? It’s a little computer (and I mean little — it’s about the size of a credit card) that costs approximately £16 and is capable of outputting 1080p video via HDMI. David “I Made Elite, No Not the Call of Duty thing” Braben was involved in its development and has been a vocal spokesperson in the run-up to its release, but the device itself is the brainchild of one Eben Upton, a former lecturer at Cambridge University.

You’re probably thinking that £16 is pretty cheap for a fully-functional computer, and that there must be some sort of catch. Well, it’s not a “catch” as such, but don’t expect to be playing The Old Republic on this little beast. Boasting 128MB or 256MB of RAM and a 700MHz ARM processor similar to that found in a low-end smartphone, it’s not going to set the world alight with its performance, but that really isn’t the point of it.

Instead, Upton, Braben and the other industry luminaries who have worked on the project are hoping that the device will inspire a quiet revolution in computer science teaching. Due to the system’s low cost, it will be a simple matter for schools to outfit themselves with a veritable arsenal of Raspberry Pis, allowing large numbers of kids the opportunity to get hands-on time with a real computer and learn some useful skills.

This is a hot-button issue in the UK at the moment, as the Livingstone-Hope Next Gen Skills report published last year found that computer science teaching in the UK was, to put it politely, somewhat lacking. The National Curriculum prescribes that children should be equipped with certain information and communication technology skills by the end of their school career, but the goals are distinctly unambitious and, more to the point, have not exactly moved with the times. There’s a strong focus on Microsoft Office and little else — no exploration of web design, website administration, database management, programming, and certainly very little in the way of creative design work such as Photoshop.

Part of this is a cost issue, of course — even at educational pricing, Photoshop is still pretty frickin’ expensive — but that doesn’t diminish the fact that kids aren’t leaving school with the computer skills that they’d need to find jobs in the tech industries. They’re maybe leaving with enough knowledge to allow them to fulfil a secretarial role, but that’s about it. They certainly wouldn’t be building a website, looking after a CRM or even inputting data into a CMS. Any knowledge of social networking and blogging is done on their own time — and all credit to the kids of today, they take to it like a duck to water.

What the Raspberry Pi team hopes to achieve with the little computer that could is to provide kids with a piece of kit that is built for tinkering with. Many pieces of consumer electronics in the home these days are locked down tightly to prevent modification and experimentation — in the case of games consoles, users are even punished for unauthorised system modifications in many cases. There’s also a high barrier for entry to development in many cases — expensive software packages, development kits, membership in “developer programmes” all build up costs to a level unfeasible for the hobbyist to contemplate, especially if they’re not sure whether or not they’ll be able to develop the skills necessary to enjoy success.

The Raspberry Pi, running on Fedora Linux and designed to be expandable with all manner of external hardware, is a low-cost step that will allow a much greater number of people access to some truly open hardware with which they can experiment, tinker and learn all manner of exciting things. And even if they find that their brain is completely incapable of wrapping itself around complex computer-related concepts, they’re only out of pocket by £16 when all’s said and done. (Plus the cost of monitor, keyboard and other bits and bobs, but that’s beside the point.)

Hopefully the Raspberry Pi will convince schools to throw out the abject tedium of the National Curriculum’s ICT programme and start exploring more relevant, exciting topics surrounding computing. It might also convince schools to hire ICT teachers who actually know something about computers, rather than treating it as a second-class subject to be handled by teachers of completely unrelated disciplines as a means of filling up some of their free periods. What a brave new world that would be.

Will it be a success? Impossible to say at this juncture, as the simple existence of the product doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be buy-in from the people who it is aimed at. But we’ll see.

To find out more, check out the official site. You’ll be able to order one for yourself at the end of this month, and educational packages including additional equipment, documentation and all manner of other goodies are on track for a September-ish release from the sounds of things.

#oneaday Day 758: Keep Moving!

Thus far the return to a regular fitness routine has been going pretty well. I’ve shaken off all vague feelings of illness, so I can’t use that as an excuse any more, and I have a variety of activities that I’m able to do so I don’t get bored. Also, as stupid as it sounds, associating the act of running with one of my favourite characters from Katawa Shoujo — that’s Emi, for anyone not tuning out when I mention that game now — gives me a positive attitude towards it, even if I suck in comparison to people who are fitter and slimmer than me.

Fitness is tricky business, though, as anyone who has tried to get themselves into a decent routine and struggled will attest. Just arbitrarily deciding that you are going to “get fit” isn’t enough for most people, in my experience. You need things to aim for and the means through which to motivate yourself.

I thought what I’d do today is share what I’m doing in the hope that it might rub off on some of you. Feel free to pinch any of my ideas if you’re struggling with the whole “motivation” thing.

First up, I have a selection of things to do — I don’t do the same thing all the time. If you’re a gym member, it’s easy to think that you should be using the gym as much as possible, and when you’re there, it’s also very easy to get stuck in a rut doing the same routine over and over and over again. And sure, sticking to a routine can allow you to work on the parts of the body that you’d really like to focus on, but good grief it gets boring after a while.

So mix it up. When you’re at the gym, try some different machines. If you do weight training, use the machines sometimes and the free weights at others. Try using barbells if you normally use dumbbells. Challenge some different cardiovascular machines. Bump up the difficulty. Set yourself more lofty targets — ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. Challenge yourself to meet those targets without stopping for a rest, or with only a certain number of rests, or completing a certain amount of distance in that time period.

But don’t necessarily stick to the gym. Go outside and do something like cycling or running. While you may feel horrendously self-conscious attempting to perambulate your wheezing carcass at a faster speed than your normal zombie-like shamble in an environment that contains other people, there are plenty of ways to tune out the outside world. Loud music, for example — and we’ll come back to that point in a minute. The clothing you wear makes a difference, too — hide your face under a hoodie or a hat and you’ll feel much less self-conscious, plus you get the added bonus of being able to pretend you’re Ezio Auditore running away from the city guards. That and keeping the windchill off your ears, too. Also bear in mind that there’s a strong possibility that anyone who sees you running — especially in inclement weather conditions — will be impressed at your dedication to bettering yourself. (This rule is also known as the “Fat People Shouldn’t Be Ashamed To Be Seen At The Gym Rule”.)

On the subject of music, pick something that inspires you. No-one else is going to hear it (unless you have crap headphones that leak sound everywhere, and even then only if you’re exercising around other people and playing your music at full volume) so it can be absolutely anything you want, even the most shameful of crap in your iTunes library. In fact, in the age of Spotify, you can feel free to try out different genres of music to see what gets your pumped up. You may find that 80s cheese does the trick, or thumping dance beats, or — God forbid — dubstep.

Podcasts are a good thing to insert into your earholes while you’re exercising too, not because they’re inherently energetic in themselves, but because they provide the illusion of time passing more quickly. By concentrating on the sound of peoples’ voices and what they are saying, you’ll find you naturally stop clockwatching, simply letting your body run on automatic while you listen to, say, the Minotti brothers yelling at each other on the Exploding Barrel Podcast, or the Squadron of Shame waxing lyrical about chin-strokey gaming topics.

My personal recommendation for listening material is to check out some soundtracks, both movies and games. Action movie soundtracks and games that are full of spectacle typically provide excellent soundtracks to work out to — particular favourites of mine include the soundtracks to Speed, the Matrix series, Metal Gear Solid, Split/Second, Shadow of the Colossus (particularly awesome when lifting weights), the bizarrely cheerful soundtrack to the iPhone version of DoDonPachi Resurrection and Space Channel 5. If you’re a JRPG fan, battle themes are particularly awesome to work out to. If you can create a crescendo of intensity culminating in the most epic final boss themes you can find, so much the better. There’s no better feeling than finishing that last set of reps as the choir starts belting out One Winged Angel.

Finally, and I think this is probably the most powerful motivational factor in my case: track your progress. It’s very easy to get stuck in a rut, but to see measurable results provides powerful inspiration to push yourself harder and go a little further. Exactly how you do this is up to you, but as a gamer and social media junkie I use Runkeeper to track cardiovascular workouts (including mapping my runs when I go outside) and the very excellent Fitocracy social game/network to log complete workouts. I also share my completed workouts on Facebook and Twitter. While some may not like the “spam”, it’s easy enough to ignore, and the few people who do congratulate me on a job well done after the fact makes it worthwhile.

On that note, if you can build up a support network for yourself — be it people you regularly work out with or online friends who cheer you on from afar — you’ll find yourself motivated to succeed, particularly if they’re the sort of friends who would rib you mercilessly if you give up. If you’re going through a programme like the Couch to 5K thing I shared with you all the other day, then work with a friend or team to get through it together.

Above all, though, have fun with it. It may feel like work at times because it is — it’s something you need to make yourself do, and made of activities that your body often doesn’t feel like doing if you tend to live a fairly sedentary lifestyle. But unlike going to actual work, you’re free to tackle it and make it fun in whatever manner you please rather than sitting in a cubicle allowing your soul to be sucked out through your ergonomically-designed management keyboard.

I hope that’s made some of you think a bit. C’mon, if I can get off my arse and get active, I’m pretty sure that you (yes, you, with the beard/glasses/pointy nose/weird hair/lovely hair/nice tits/flatulence/worryingly prominent erection/kind face/greasy trout in your hand/jar of olives clutched to your breast/smelly armpits [delete as applicable]) can do it too.

#oneaday Day 757: SEX!

Let’s talk about sex. Sex in video games, to be exact.

I read this article over on Eurogamer today. It makes its point in a rather crude manner, noting that video games “can’t do sex”, going on to cite numerous examples including popular media’s backlash against Mass Effect‘s sex scene and BioWare’s subsequent retreat into their characters’ underwear; sex-focused games such as 3D Sex Villa 2; Second Life‘s notorious sex industry (which likely accounts for a considerable proportion of that virtual world’s economy) and numerous others.

But I sort of think that the argument in that article is a bit flawed. There seems to be something of a confusion in the distinction between “sexual content” and “porn”. I don’t think anyone is advocating the inclusion of outright pornography in our games, though this is often the assumption that mainstream media makes when news emerges of sexual content in a high-profile game. But the Eurogamer piece jumps from discussing Mass Effect’s soft-focus sideboob to games that are just plain porn. There’s no middle ground, it seems.

Or is there? Well, yes, but you have to look outside of the mainstream and outside of the pornographic games industry to find it.

Probably the most common example you’ll find of this “middle ground” is in the dating sim/visual novel/eroge genre. I’ve played a few of these over the years for curiosity’s sake and while some are just interactive porn stories (Paradise Heights springs to mind — there are no choices to make and a lot of fucking) others like True Love, Kana Little Sister, Three Sisters’ Story and, yes, Katawa Shoujo use their sexuality as something more than just a titillating scene for players to jack off over or something deliberately provocative to attract the ire (and thus inadvertent publicity) of the mainstream media. (This latter interpretation is a cynical view, I know, but I’ve seen too much video game marketing over the last couple of years to believe it doesn’t happen.)

Rather, these games use sexual scenes in context. Katawa Shoujo is perhaps the best example, with sex scenes proving to be a way for us to get to know more about the characters. We learn that Emi is adventurous and willing to try anything once; that Lilly, despite her prim and proper appearance, enjoys her sexuality; that Shizune is dominant in all aspects of her personality; that Misha is confused; that Hanako believes no-one will see her as anything more than a “princess” to be saved; that Rin craves intimacy, to find some way to connect to another person. All of these scenes feature explicit erotic imagery and text, but none descend into being porn — sex for the sake of sex. During the sex scenes with Rin, for example, there’s a lot of philosophising about what might be going on inside Rin’s confused, creative head. Lilly uses one of her sex scenes to show Hisao what it’s like to be blind. Emi’s “Anal.” scene is endearingly awkward as only teenage sex can be. And Hanako’s encounter with Hisao is faintly horrifying after the fact.

“I can’t fap to this!” was the war cry thrown up by members of 4chan upon playing Katawa Shoujo, but that’s not a bad thing — do you jack off every time there’s a sex scene in a movie? No, because that’s ridiculous. Sex doesn’t equal porn.

The same is true to a lesser extent in True Love, another dating sim based in a high school, though in this instance it’s a regular education institute rather than a special school. In True Love, gameplay revolves around managing the protagonist’s schedule so he builds up a series of different statistics ranging from creativity to sportsmanship. Different statistics will attract different members of the game’s cast, and this then sends you down their various narrative routes where, again, along the way you get to know them a whole lot better and, again, you get to shag them at least once in a scene that, while erotic, is more focused on characterisation than providing something for the player to get their rocks off to.

Three Sisters’ Story actively punishes players for being promiscuous, though not until it’s far too late to do anything about it. Throughout the course of the game’s story, the player gets the opportunity to have sex with the three sisters in question, but also has the opportunity to turn them down, too. If the player elects to have sex with all of them over the course of the game, the story doesn’t end well for our protagonist, even after he saves them from abduction. A degree of self-control on the player’s part is required in order to get the best ending. Do they want the sexy scene now, or do they want the story to end well?

Moving out of the visual novel genre, Silent Hill is another series which has always used sexual imagery to striking effect. Rather than being outright explicit about it, however, it tends to make use of more abstract imagery, leaving the player to interpret things for themselves. At no point in the game do we see exactly what made Angela so wrong in the head, but we can interpret that it was sexual abuse from her father. At no point in the game does James speak about his resentment over his wife’s illness depriving him of sexual gratification, but we can determine that from the appearance and behaviour of Maria, the various times Pyramid Head shows up and the grotesque mannequins who form the bulk of the game’s enemies.

You can’t fap to Silent Hill, in short.

Look at Catherine, too. The game’s just come out in the UK so a whole new wave of reviews has been hitting. I was rather surprised to see at least a couple calling it out for not being daring enough with its visuals — i.e. not showing any tits, muff, cock and/or balls. Despite the game’s focus on adultery, sexuality and adult relationships, there are no explicit sex scenes in the game, and nothing more than sideboob in the nudity department. But the thing is, there doesn’t need to be. Catherine didn’t need explicitly pornographic scenes to get across its point. Sex is a key theme in that game, but that doesn’t mean we need to stop for a fuck break every so often. Sometimes implying something can be just as powerful as showing it and — God forbid — making it interactive: Heavy Rain‘s painfully awkward interactive sex scene says “HHNNNGGG” at this juncture.

So can games “do sex”? Why yes, yes they can. Unfortunately, those games which do do sex and do it well tend to be confined to the specialist interest, cult classic or underpromoted independent title department. So why don’t we see large publishers taking more risks, producing more adult games with sexual themes and/or content?

Part of it is a marketing issue. Getting too explicit with the sexytime in a game will net a release an “Adults Only” rating from the ESRB, and that’s a big no-no for a lot of game retailers, thus hurting physical sales for the publisher. Given the growth of digital downloads, however, at least part of this problem goes away — there’s no shame in purchasing an Adults Only title online, and publishers can simply sell it themselves, which is generally a better deal for everyone involved anyway.

Part of it, too, is fear of backlash from the mainstream media and, subsequently, politicians who don’t understand the first thing about the industry, assuming it to be toys for children. California had a narrow escape just last year, and it’s doubtful that publishers want to take the risk of making the people in charge think that censorship of a creative industry still finding its feet is a good idea.

Do we “need” sex in games? If we want to explore the full gamut of human emotions in the interactive stories that we tell, then yes, we do. We need to get over the assumptions that everyone playing games is too young to be able to handle sexual content. We need to get over childish tittering at every sight of sideboob. We need to have realistic characters who have realistic relationships.

What this doesn’t mean, however, is that we need sex in all games. And those games that we do have sex in should justify its inclusion somehow, otherwise we’re right back to accusations of peddling porn again. Katawa Shoujo and its ilk are doing it right. Mainstream publishers could learn a lot from the risks that independent studios and those who tackle the development of a game as a creative rather than a technical or marketing project.

Who knows what the future holds? I certainly don’t. But it’s clear that the industry as a whole still has a lot of growing up to do as yet.

#oneaday Day 756: Emi’s Inspiration

Bettering yourself is a difficult thing to do. First of all, you have to really want to change, which isn’t necessarily the same as not liking something about yourself. It’s the difference between self-pitying cries of “I hate that I’m like this!” and inspirational yells of “I may be like this now, but you better watch out, cause I’ma kick your ass!” or something equally obnoxious.

There are lots of ways you might want to change yourself. It could be eating better, working on a new creative project, getting more exercise. Chances are, there is something you would rather do better — probably even several things. Once you’ve picked one, that’s where the challenge comes in — motivation to begin.

Inspiration can come from the strangest places. In this post back in 2009, I commented on the strange effect that changing my Second Life avatar from one which loosely looked like me to someone rather more buff an’ ting had on me. I suddenly felt inspired to better myself, and to attempt to hammer and chisel my flabby body into some sort of shape, to be more like my virtual self.

Well, I can’t say that it had a massive effect on me — I’m still overweight and would very much like to change that — but that initial push over the edge gave me some preliminary interest in fitness, and the knowledge that yes, I could do it if I applied myself.

Later on, I tried the Couch to 5K running programme, which takes 9 weeks to get you from wheezing, sweating mess up to someone who can run continuously for half an hour without stopping. It’s an excellent system, and one which has a very positive impact on anyone who tries it. But again, it can sometimes be difficult to get started.

One of the interesting things that those of us who have played Katawa Shoujo noticed was the inspirational effect that some of the characters had on members of the community. I’m not necessarily even talking in the “overcoming their disability” sense — rather, I’m referring to certain admirable character traits which a number of the girls in the game demonstrate to both protagonist Hisao and the player themselves proving to be a powerful motivational factor.

The most oft-cited example of this is Emi, an amputee girl and track star who describes herself as “The Fastest Thing on No Legs”. She overcame her disability to become a strong, fit runner, so why shouldn’t a person without a physical disability be able to do the same thing, too?

You can probably see where this is going.

What would happen, then, if you combined the infectiously cheerful, never-give-up personality of Emi with the well-paced Couch to 5K programme? Well, you get the following chart, which I include here after the break as a courtesy to that certain subset of you who have played Katawa Shoujo and are considering taking up running but having absolutely no idea where to start. Indeed, even those of you who haven’t played Katawa Shoujo but would like to be able to run for more than five seconds without HHNNNGGGGing can benefit from this. (To support the programme, I also recommend downloading this app for iPhone.)

As for me, I’m back into an almost-regular gym routine but haven’t done a long run for quite some time, so am planning on ploughing through the whole Couch to 5K programme again — with Emi’s help, of course — very soon. I shall be providing occasional progress updates on here when I can be bothered and/or when I don’t have anything interesting to write about that day.

Why don’t you get up off your arse and join me? See you on the track.

(Click Continue Reading if you’re on the front page to see Emi’s chart.)

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#oneaday Day 755: WHY CAN’T I HOLD ALL THESE FEELS

I properly broke down and cried at a video game tonight. That’s never, ever happened before. I’ve had games that have brought a tear to my eye, games that have profoundly affected me emotionally and made me think about them long after I’ve finished playing them, but I can usually hold back the tears and prevent myself from looking too foolish and/or compromising my hairy, manly exterior.

This was not the case with Freebird Games’ To The Moon, an independently-developed, narrative-heavy game created with popular game making software RPG Maker XP, whose final scenes utterly destroyed me. (In a good way.)

To call To The Moon an RPG is to do it a complete injustice, as it’s not one, despite appearances, not to mention the software with which it was created. It most closely resembles a point and click adventure with Chrono Trigger-style top-down 16-bitesque visuals, but that, too does the game an injustice. In fact, discussing game mechanics with regard to To The Moon is almost irrelevant — it is a story first and foremost, albeit an interactive one in which you, the player, participate.

I shall try and minimise spoilers in this post, but in order to understand some of the things that are interesting about this game, you at least need to know the basic concept. So here it is.

It’s the future. Exactly when is never specified, nor does it matter. What does matter is the existence of a technology which allows for the rewriting of memories. This is used by our heroes of the hour, Drs. Watts and Rosalene, in order to grant the last wishes of the dying — at least, so far as they remember in their final moments. Their patient in To The Moon is an old man named Johnny, who is slowly losing his grip on life. He wants to go to the moon. It sounds like an impossible, inexplicable wish, and much of the story revolves around understanding this desire and attempting to make it come true — at least so far as his memories are concerned. That’s all I’ll say on the plot.

Unlike the “sit back and read” nature of Katawa Shoujo, To The Moon sees you directly controlling the game’s two protagonists. The nature of the game’s story, however, sees additional layers being added on top of the traditional “player-protagonist” relationship. Drs. Watts and Rosalene work their way through Johnny’s memories largely as invisible, relatively passive observers. Meanwhile, the player is sitting another layer back from these two, observing their reactions to everything that is going on, and reaching their own understanding of the events that are unfolding. It’s a really interesting narrative technique, and the doctors’ glib comments throughout are a perpetual source of dry amusement in an otherwise fairly serious narrative.

It’s not a difficult game to play — there are a few puzzles, but they’re relatively incidental — nor is it a long one. But that doesn’t matter — the important thing is the story and how it is presented. And somehow, through some sort of magical combination of 2D pixel art and a gorgeous, melancholy soundtrack, To The Moon manages to provide an incredibly intense emotional experience.

If you’re anything like me, you may not feel it at the beginning, but by golly you will feel it at the end. If you have taken the time to invest yourself in the setting, characters and narrative, you will likely find it a profoundly powerful experience. You may not find yourself full-on weeping at it as I did, but it would take a hard-hearted soul to be completely unaffected.

It’s for experiences like this that I, personally, play games.

#oneaday Day 754: Hindsight

Every so often, I like to look back over my old blog entries and ruminate on everything that’s come to pass in the time since writing them. Since starting this site back in 2009, and particularly since starting daily posting early in 2010, I think it’s fair to say that a lot has changed. And, pleasingly, mostly for the better.

My early #oneaday posts largely focused on how miserable I was working as a teacher. I had a feeling before I even started that position at that primary school that it was going to be a difficult time — my previous stint as a secondary school teacher had ended with me suffering a nervous breakdown, after all, and I wasn’t keen to return to that place in my mind.

I had thought I should give primary teaching a shot, however, as several family members and friends had said they thought I’d make a good primary school teacher. (I have since forgiven them for saying these things.) Given the amount of unnecessary fighting and workplace bullying I had to put up with to get a foot in the door of primary teaching, I also wasn’t about to give up easily.

But give up I did. Not for lack of trying, but because I recognised the signs of my own decline from last time and wanted to escape before my brain collapsed again. That and I had the opportunity to go to PAX East in Boston, which was something I desperately wanted to do and proved to be, to date, probably the happiest, most fun time of my life.

Subsequently came the chaos that was the end of my marriage. This, in stark contrast to PAX East, was the most difficult, unpleasant experience I have ever been through. The way I felt after breaking down at school that first time was absolutely nothing compared to the sense of guilt, rejection, anger, stupidity, frustration, sadness, regret and all manner of other feels I felt during this dark period of my life. I felt like I was going under, and that this time I’d never make it back up again.

Ironically, I think some of my best writing was done during this period. I guess it’s true what they say: inner pain fuels art.

Make it back I did, though, thanks to support from family and friends. I moved away from the city I’d called home for nearly ten years (even during the periods when I didn’t actually live there) and moved back in to my childhood home.

I was in two minds about this. On the one hand, to be pushing thirty and back living with my parents felt kind of pathetic, like I’d failed at life. On the other hand, I was and am grateful to them for supporting me at that difficult time. I felt hugely depressed for much of the time I lived there as I desperately tried to rebuild my life, struggling to find a job when the only thing I was really qualified was teaching — the career that had nearly killed me.

By a stroke of good fortune, I eventually found myself working for GamePro, initially on a fairly casual basis, then gradually building up my contributions until I was effectively a remote full-time employee, responsible for the majority of the site’s news output. I had a noticeable impact, too — the traffic figures showed that my work was attracting lots of new visitors to the site, and I was developing a good reputation as the face of GamePro’s news posts.

By a further stroke of good luck, I found myself in a new relationship with someone who understood me and my likes a whole lot better than my wife ever did. This developed quickly and eventually gave me the means and the opportunity to fly the nest once again. This, coupled with my work for GamePro, made me feel my life was finally getting back on track.

To date, I think GamePro was my favourite job I’ve ever had. Which is what made it all the more upsetting when GamePro met its unceremonious demise late last year. I saw a variety of panicked-looking emails from other members of staff but since I wasn’t physically present in the office, I’d obviously missed out on some sort of important news. I hoped against hope that it wasn’t what I thought it was, but it was.

I thought for a horrible moment that it was all over again, that things had come to a disastrous close thanks to my reliance on a volatile industry for my career. It had been going so well, though, and right up until the plug was pulled, GamePro’s traffic figures were skyrocketing. But it wasn’t enough.

Now I find myself writing regularly for specialist business sites Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps. I find myself using terms like “monetization” (a word for whom I have expressed considerable disdain in the past) and “user acquisition”. I compile reviews and a weekly business-to-business report on trends in the social and mobile gaming industries.

And y’know what, I’m enjoying it. It’s satisfying work of a different kind to that which I did on GamePro, and not as high profile to the public, but that’s okay — it means less likelihood of being denounced as a paedophile by psychotic commenters simply because I posted a news story about an academic institute’s game exploring LGBT issues, after all. (Yes, that really happened.)

Life is pretty good right now. I’m in an awesome relationship, I have a job I enjoy where I learn new stuff regularly, I live in a nice place and for the first time in quite a long while I’m reasonably financially stable.

It’s been a long road to this point, and there’s plenty more steps on my life’s journey (unless I get hit by a bus tomorrow, obviously, and even then I might survive), but things are looking pretty sort of kind of okay right now. Long may it continue.

If you’ve been following this nonsense for years, another hearty thank you for sticking by me through all the past angst. I hope my catalogue of misfortunes, my fall and rise has been entertaining, enlightening and/or helpful to at least some of you.

And if you’re a new follower, uh, welcome. You caught me at a good time.

#oneaday Day 753: I Love You, Katawa Shoujo

This is the sixth (and definitely final… for now) of several posts regarding the notorious amateur-developed visual novel Katawa Shoujo. If you are intending to play this game and would like to avoid spoilers, this post is somewhat less spoilery than the recent character-specific ones, but might still spoil a few bits and pieces. All spoilery discussion is below the break.

If you’re still reading this, it’s highly likely you already know what Katawa Shoujo is but just in case you aren’t and/or you haven’t read the previous posts where I included this exact same paragraph, it’s a visual novel developed by 4 Leaf Studios, made up of members of the much- (and usually justifiably-) maligned 4chan community along with other itinerant creative types from around the Internet. It was developed following extended discussion over a sketch by Japanese doujinshi artist Raita, and is the very definition of a “labour of love”, having come from discussions on 4chan all the way to a full-fledged, professional-quality game between the years of 2007 and 2012. It’s been described by some as “eroge” or an erotic game, but I feel this does it an injustice; there are sexual scenes in the game, yes, but the point of the game is not to get to these scenes — rather, they are part of the plot, and not necessarily a “victory” for the player. They are also not terribly frequent compared to the rest of the game, which focuses on interpersonal interactions and psychological issues.

If you want to check out Katawa Shoujo for yourself, take a peek at the official website. My previous post regarding Emi’s path can be found here, and if you’re too lazy to scroll down, yesterday’s post on Rin can be found here, the previous day’s post on Shizune can be found here, the previous previous day’s post on Hanako can be found here, and the day before that’s post on Lilly can be found here. I’ve now finished the game 100%, so perhaps I’ll shut up about it now.

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 753: I Love You, Katawa Shoujo” →

#oneaday Day 752: I Love You, Rin

This is the fifth (and possibly final… maybe) of several posts regarding the notorious amateur-developed visual novel Katawa Shoujo. If you are intending to play this game and proceed down the “Rin” path and would like to avoid spoilers, I recommend you skip this post. I’ve even put the spoilery discussion below the break. Aren’t I nice?

If you want to check out Katawa Shoujo for yourself, take a peek at the official website. My previous post regarding Emi’s path can be found here, and if you’re too lazy to scroll down, yesterday’s post on Shizune can be found here, the previous day’s post on Hanako can be found here, and the day before that’s post on Lilly can be found here. I’m at 96% completion as of tonight, with only a few scenes and endings left to clear up. In for a penny, in for a pound…

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 752: I Love You, Rin” →