#oneaday Day 986: A Very Big House in the Country

One of the appealing things about this weekend away was getting the opportunity to spend some time at my friend Tim’s childhood home, which is an impressively large mansion in the middle of nowhere in the British countryside. It’s up for sale, so it’s also quite possibly something of a farewell for Tim, but for most of us it’s the chance to spend some time in the sort of place you normally only get to visit if you’re attending someone’s wedding.

It brings up an interesting consideration though. Most people, when confronted with the possibility of winning the Lottery or something will claim that one of their first priorities would be to purchase a gigantic house. And while a gigantic house is certainly a fine status symbol, a lot of people clearly don’t think of some of the issues that only come about in big country houses.

For one, when was the last time you looked behind the TV and found a dead bird? That’s exactly what happened to us last night when attempting to set up the TV in order to chill out with some DVDs.

Spiders, too. Everyone gets spiders in their houses but it’s nothing compared to the behemoths you get lurking between the beams in an old wooden-framed house. And mosquitoes. And all manner of other little creepy crawly bastards.

And low doorways. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve banged my head on a low doorway this weekend, even when I’m well aware of where the danger zones are. It still hurts.

And yet despite all this there’s still something kind of wonderful about being in a house with multiple staircases, about fifteen bathrooms and a bizarre layout. Even if its just enjoying a few Resident Evil fantasies.

#oneaday Day 985: BANG

As I mentioned yesterday, this weekend was set to see us shooting each other with Airsoft weaponry. And indeed that is how we spent a healthy proportion of the day.

I haven’t done Airsoft before today, but it’s a lot of fun. A big part of the appeal is the fact that the weaponry involved is very realistic — most of the guns available are based on real-life guns to varying degrees and thus must be painted bright orange so as to not get the participants arrested. The gun I got was modelled closely on a Beretta and made entirely of metal, so had a pleasing amount of heft to it and a satisfying degree of kickback when fired. It made a great noise too.

I haven’t fired guns on many occasions in my life but it’s an oddly thrilling experience. I recall in the first week of university several of us decided to try going along to a trial session of the Rifle Club. It was a lot of fun but also had an element of danger — the instructors repeatedly reminded us that firing the gun at the floor would probably kill us. Scary.

More recently, I’ve done paintballing a few times. Paintball is good fun, but the weaponry isn’t particularly realistic. It really, really fucking hurts when you get hit, though. And you get a lot of the satisfaction of crawling around in the undergrowth and shooting at far-off enemies.

Games such as paintball and Airsoft give you a good insight into what soldiers must go through on a regular basis. It makes me feel like I most certainly couldn’t be in the army. I’m sort of fine with that — although it’s fun to fire these fake guns, I imagine it would be absolutely terrifying to fire a real one that could actually kill someone.

Anyway. It is late so I am feeling the call of bed.

#oneaday Day 984: Stagging

I’m away for the weekend. Specifically, I’m in the middle of nowhere in Worcestershire for my friend Tim’s stag weekend (or “bachelor party” as you Americans prefer to call it). We’re having a weekend of drinking, board games and shooting each other (but mostly Tim) with Airsoft guns. Sounds like fun.

Of my friends who have got married whose stag dos I’ve been to, none of them have done the stereotypical “get hammered in Amsterdam, hire hookers then leave Stag Boy in an embarrassing position to be discovered by the police/his parents after several hours of considerable discomfort”. And I’m actually quite grateful for that. Although everyone jokes about that being the way that stag dos are “supposed” to go it never struck me as particularly fun — especially not for the Stag, who will probably be left rethinking his friendships in the hours between being chained to the lamppost and having to explain to the nice police officer why he is naked and covered in margarine.

My own stag do was relatively stereotypical — paintballing in the daytime followed by drinks in the evening — but I chose to invite my female friends also, and nothing embarrassing happened. Not that I remember, anyway. I remember it being a rather fun night — there are certainly a bunch of photos suggesting it was lurking around somewhere — but I didn’t leave it thinking “wow, my friends are a bunch of bellends.” Which, again, I’m quite grateful for.

A stag do should be an opportunity for the groom-to-be to have some time with his closest friends — regardless of gender if he so desires — and have a memorable “send off” before married life. That looks like exactly what this weekend is going to be, so I’m going to take the time to relax and enjoy it hopefully as much as Tim will.

Bed now. The drinks have been flowing freely and we’ve been playing Cards Against Humanity for the past few hours. Hilarity, as usual, ensued, but I’m more than ready for sleep now!

#oneaday Day 983: The Mighty Jungle

If you own a PS3 and enjoy games that are just plain odd, do yourself a favour and drop £10 on a copy of Tokyo Jungle right now. While it may not be the deepest, best or most polished game in the world, it’s super-interesting, super-weird and super-fun.

If you own a PS3, it’s entirely possible that you’re already familiar with this strange little game, but in case you aren’t, here’s the pitch.

The bulk of your time will be spent in Survival mode. Here, you are cast in the role of one of the game’s many, many unlockable animals (beginning as either a Pomeranian dog or a deer) and tasked with surviving as long as possible. As soon as you’re thrown into the post-apocalyptic Tokyo streets, time starts passing, and you only have 15 years in which to secure your animal’s legacy. By hunting for food (other creatures if you’re a carnivore, plants if you’re a herbivore) to keep your hunger bar at bay, marking territory and finding a suitable mate, you’ll ensure your species’ survival into the future. By completing various objectives that appear at regular intervals, you’ll earn “Survival Points” which act as your score and as a form of currency with which you’ll unlock additional content as you play through the game.

As you play through Survival mode, you’ll come across scattered data items hinting at the game’s backstory — the reason the humans disappeared. Collect enough and you’ll unlock a “story mission” in which the game flow is much more directed. Progress through the story to learn the truth while playing Survival to unlock additional content.

To describe Tokyo Jungle in such simple terms is to do it an injustice, though. It’s a game about crazy emergent stories. Like that time your army of gazelles successfully took down a gigantic pig by unleashing a kick so devastating it practically launched said pig into orbit. Or the time your lone alley cat, near death by starvation, launched a kamikaze attack on a zebra and won. Or the time your dog bit a cow on the arse and was then trampled to death.

Things only get more bizarre and surreal when you start finding various items of equipment for your animals. Your stories start to become like the rantings of a madman. Remember that time that the beagle in a poker visor and green wellies chased a rabbit back and forth across Shibuya Station for five years before getting eaten by a crocodile? Remember that time the army of hippopotami in bikinis successfully fended off an attack from an army of chickens? What about that time your pig in a straw hat snuck through the bushes while the cats were fighting the chimpanzees and joyfully eviscerated all of them?

In many ways, Tokyo Jungle is a bit like a roguelike. While its levels aren’t randomly generated, there is a degree of randomisation to the objectives you’re expected to complete, and starting a new game with a new kind of animal tends to put an interesting twist on how your dynasty will unfold. The relentless pursuit of longer and longer survival periods and high scores — that’s what the game is all about. Simple. Effective. Addictive. And batshit crazy. It’s hard not to love it.

#oneaday Day 982: Must Try Harder

I’m not normally one to put down the hard work of others, particularly in my own field of writing, but I feel compelled to say a few words about some things that have been published this week.

Here’s one.

Here’s the other.

Now, lest I come across as some sort of joyless bastard, I am aware that both of these pieces were written in jest in an attempt to be — I assume, anyway — “satirical”, but the fact is that they both utterly fail in what they are trying to do, leaving them both looking rather foolish — particularly the deranged scribblings of the Borderlands 2 piece.

There are several things that irk me about these two pieces. Firstly is the fact that they exist at all, and on high-profile, (arguably) respectable sites that actually pay their writers. It’s hard to feel that this sort of thing is justifiable when there are plenty of people across the world writing purely for the love of writing about games. My team over at Games Are Evil is just one of many groups who don’t write about games as their main, paying job but still put in a ton of effort to produce great content and strive to improve their own work over time. The scores of community writers over at Bitmob are another great example. The countless bloggers all over the world. Those who run enthusiast sites in their own time in an attempt to get noticed. All of those produce higher quality work than the two pieces linked above — and yet these are the articles that are deemed worthy of pay. There’s no justice there.

The second thing that has vexed me somewhat regarding this matter is the amount of praise they have got — mostly from fellow professionals, it has to be said. The first piece in particular drew a frankly astonishing amount of fawning, with quotes including that it was the “most clever [review of Borderlands 2]” that one tweeter had ever read; that it was “anarchic stream-of-consciousness, like the game itself”; that it was the “most incredible piece of games journalism ever” and the “Ulysses of games journalism”.

Now, I’m all for celebrating good writing. But this was not good writing. Even from the perspective of it presumably being some sort of parody (or “anarchic stream-of-consciousness”) it just didn’t work. The number of utterly bewildered comments beneath the article is proof of that — and it’s the same for the Eurogamer piece.

The thing is, I know both writers are capable of much better — and I have nothing against either of them personally. The author of the Borderlands 2 piece is not only the editor of one of the biggest video game sites in the UK, but also a novelist. I expect considerably better from him, in short — or if he’s going to try something clever, it should be something that actually works.

Since taking a step back from mainstream games journalism (my day job focuses on mobile and social games, and Games Are Evil focuses on the “alternative” side of computer and console gaming) I have regrettably confirmed a few suspicions I had about the state of the games journalism sector in the UK. A noticeable, vocal proportion of it is made up of a very insular “old boys’ club” which appears to believe itself immune to criticism, meaning that it feels more and more liberties can be taken with what sort of work and attitude is acceptable — and anyone who steps out of line to say “hang on a minute…” gets summarily ridiculed. I found myself the recipient of such scorn last year when I pointed out my discomfort at the tone and content of the Games Media Awards Twitter feed, and consequently have shied away from publicly criticising things ever since. I was in two minds about posting this entry at all with that in mind, but in this instance I felt the need for a bit of cathartic release if nothing else.

There are plenty of fantastic games writers out there who don’t need to resort to… whatever these two pieces were resorting to. Satire? Parody? Childishness? I honestly don’t know, even after rereading them both several times.

Demand better from your articles about games. For all the pontificating about how games journalism is “broken” and how it should be “fixed”, if these pieces are anything to go by it seems to be getting worse rather than better.

#oneaday Day 981: Sword Art Online

So, I guess it’s finally happened — much to the delight of my dear friend Lynette, I might add — I appear to have “got into” anime. So much so that this post is the first ever use of my all new “anime” topic category, although I will probably go back and add that post about Haiyore! Nyaruko-san if I remember.

I’ve already talked about Haiyore! Nyaruko-san in that post I just linked so I won’t say too much more about that for now, save for the fact that discussing it with a hardcore fan of H.P. Lovecraft allows you to have an even greater appreciation of how clever that show is despite its utterly barmy, chaotic exterior. Check out this blog (spoilers to the fucking MAX) for even further indisputable evidence that the creators of that show both 1) know and 2) love H.P. Lovecraft and the authors who followed him.

Anyway. Enough of the Crawling Chaos; what I really wanted to talk about today is the show I started watching after I finished all of the currently-available episodes of Haiyore! Nyaruko-san — Sword Art Online.

I’d come across the name Sword Art Online in much the same way as I heard about Haiyore! Nyaruko-san: through Peter Payne of J-List. Sword Art Online is, it seems, rather popular right now, so there’s a lot of merchandise surrounding it. I’m not normally one to go for things that are popular right now, but I figured I’d give it a try as 1) the premise sounded intriguing and 2) the female lead is an attractive redhead. (Well, technically she’s ginger, I guess. Still counts. Do not underestimate the power of an attractive redhead when trying to get me to do something.)

For those unfamiliar and/or curious, Sword Art Online’s basic concept is thus. It is The Near Future, and computer gaming has evolved enough to have full-sensory virtual reality experiences. The latest title to get everyone excited is the brand new massively-multiplayer online role-playing game Sword Art Online. Prospective players queued around the block to get their hands on a copy, but only 10,000 units were available in the first run. On the game’s launch day, said 10,000 players all logged in and began to immerse themselves in the virtual reality world, only to discover that there was no means to log out. The creator of the game, mad with power, had decided to “lock” everyone in the game until someone cleared the whole thing. Not only that, but he’d rigged it so that if someone’s character in the game died, the VR equipment would kill them in reality. Not only that, but if someone forcibly removed the VR equipment from the player, that would also kill them.

Thus begins an intriguing tale that is partly conventional fantasy, but with a layer of high-tech sci-fi atop it. The blend works extremely well. The challenges the characters face are “real” so far as they are concerned — their lives are on the line, after all — but at the same time, the fact that it is a game regularly shows itself with players popping up menus to change items, levelling up and using crafting skills simply by whacking things with the relevant tools. What’s impressive is how straight the show plays all this, and how seamlessly it switches back and forth between these two disparate elements — one moment it’s all a bit Highlander, the next there’s a cast member cooking “S-class ingredients” by tapping them once with a knife, causing them to explode in a shower of data fragments. In this way, it’ll attract two different — though admittedly somewhat overlapping — demographics and provide plenty to make them both smile and cheer.

I have to confess, I’ve always had something of a soft spot for the whole “fusion” thing between high-tech sci-fi and low-tech fantasy or historical stuff. It’s for this reason I’m quite surprised the Assassin’s Creed series hasn’t really grabbed me over the years. I did really like the concept of the old .hack games on PS2, though, even though I never finished them — though hopefully I’ll be rectifying that soon. There’s something about the whole concept of “MMO gone mad” in particular that I really like, though — .hack had a wonderfully palpable sense of menace about it, for example, and Sword Art Online certainly lives up to that. Perhaps it’s nothing more than the fact that you can literally see how close characters are to death when they’re in a pinch. I don’t know. I like it, whatever it is.

Getting back on topic, Sword Art Online has some great characters, too, and the structure of the series means that we get to explore them in detail. While the majority of the game’s overarching plot surrounds protagonist Kirito and his relationship with aforementioned cute redhead Asuna, many episodes throw the spotlight on a seemingly incidental character and their own personal issues. I shan’t spoil any specifics here, but through these episodes we gain a deep understanding of both the character in question and also learn some more about Kirito and Asuna — the way they respond to situations, the things they are capable of (and the things they are not) and the nature of their feelings for one another. The fact that there is often conflict between the persona they want to portray in the world and the real life they are struggling to get back to also helps make for some intriguing, complex characters whom I would like to see more of.

I’m about ten episodes in to the series so far and I believe it’s still airing so I don’t know how (or if) it ends as yet. I’m well and truly hooked, though. If you’ve been looking for something new to watch, then be sure to give Sword Art Online a shot.

#oneaday Day 980: I Love You, Starship Ezekiel

It’s another visual novel post, I’m afraid. (I’m not sorry at all. Aside from finally running through Persona 3 FES, which I am loving, VNs have been pretty much all I’ve been playing recently. And I have no problem with this.)

Ahem. Let’s start again.

I saw Ell’s route of My Girlfriend is the President through to its conclusion this evening, and it was just as magically adorable as I was expecting it to be. It was also quite a bit shorter than the previous two routes I’ve completed to date — those for Yukino and Irina — and structured a little differently, unfolding over two “episodes” after the initial setup instead of three.

Spoilers after the break.

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 980: I Love You, Starship Ezekiel” →

#oneaday Day 979: Personal Thoughts on Demonbane

I wrote a piece on visual novel Deus Machina Demonbane over at Games Are Evil earlier today and I would be terribly thankful if you went and read it, even if you’re not a particular visual novel fan. Demonbane, while fundamentally not that different from most other visual novels — you read, read, read, read, read, read and occasionally make a choice — is, as I say in the article, interesting and noteworthy for the fact that it’s not your typical galge/eroge. The main point of the game is not to pursue a particular female character romantically, but rather to work your way through a more “traditional” (for want of a better word — its combination of thematic influences is anything but “traditional”) narrative that wouldn’t be out of place in a JRPG.

I wanted to talk a little more about the game than I had the chance to get into in that article, however, and I’m probably going to get spoilery from this point onwards, so if you are intending to play Deus Machina Demonbane and would like your mind to remain virgin pure beforehand, I suggest you stop reading now. For courtesy’s sake, I shall put in a “More” tag for your convenience. Click the “Continue Reading” link to… you know. Continue reading. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow.

Continue reading “#oneaday Day 979: Personal Thoughts on Demonbane” →

#oneaday Day 978: This Was A Triumph

The other day, Andie rather luckily spotted that Jonathan Coulton was performing a show in Bristol today. We hadn’t “been out” for a little while, so we decided on a whim to grab some tickets and head along to the performance.

I’m extremely glad we did. It was a wonderful experience. I’ve only ever seen videos of JoCo’s shows before, but being there live was even better — particularly as he was also accompanied by his usual companions Paul & Storm, who also acted as the “warm-up” act.

Paul & Storm are the perfect warm-up act. Blending some light-hearted stage comedy with some genuinely amusing songs, they have a wonderful sense of chemistry with one another and with the audience. They can adapt to the mood of the room at a moment’s notice and engage with hecklers faster than any dedicated stand-up I’ve ever seen. Plus their songs are just plain good — and The Captain’s Wife’s Lament always brings a smile to everyone’s face, however long it ends up going on for.

Jonathan Coulton, meanwhile, is a little more understated than the antics of his friends. His songs are often amusing, but in a way that ensures you have to actively listen to the lyrics in order to “get” them. Some of them assume knowledge of certain mathematical and scientific concepts — he does a love song as sung by Pluto’s moon to Pluto, for example, as well as one about the Mandelbrot Set — but he also does a great job of explaining to the audience what his songs are about.

He describes his music as being ’70s-style soft rock, and beautifully encapsulated this in a self-parodying song in which “soft rock” was used as a not-terribly-subtle euphemism. This piece also included a variety of spectacular, seamless and possibly improvised homages to various popular songs

More than being amusing, though, his songs are clever and often quite touching. Even when he’s singing about scientists destroying the world with robot armies, you know that he’s channelling concepts that the audience can relate to — loneliness, alienation, a sense of not fitting in with “normal” society — and that’s what makes him such a beloved performer among the “nerd” community.

While sitting in that venue this evening, listening to the songs and laughing at the silly jokes, I got a very similar feeling to what I felt when I went to PAX a couple of years ago. A sense of “this is for me. This is something I am a part of, and I like being a part of it.” It’s not a feeling I have particularly often, so I relish it when it shows itself. And that, really, is all I could have asked from this show — I’m happy it delivered.

It’s 3:30am now. I should probably get some sleep. (I’m up so late because I was attempting to finish the latest visual novel I’m playing, Deus Machina Demonbane, but it’s just going on and on and on. It’s good though. Watch out for a writeup on Games Are Evil tomorrow.)

#oneaday Day 977: The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Pleasure

If you own an iOS device and haven’t yet purchased a copy of Rayman Jungle Run, congratulations! You are the problem with mobile gaming. I won’t get into why you should play Rayman Jungle Run — you can read my review for that — but I will reassure you that it is a game that you pay for once and then never have to pay anything for ever again. (At the moment, anyway.)

On the surface, it’s easy to see why the freemium/free-to-play sector has exploded quite so much. People casually browsing for things are always going to be immediately more attracted to things that say “Free” on them rather than things that say “$2.99” on them, regardless of whether or not that “Free” comes with a caveat, which it usually does. But there’s a growing level of discontent and frustration with this fact, particularly among “core” gamers — or, more specifically, people who have been playing games for many years. We’ve reached a stage now where this demographic actually wants to seek out paid games and apps because they know that “Free” tag always comes with a catch — and, sadly, more and more paid games are also coming with “Get More Coins!” buttons and unbalanced gameplay attached in an attempt to squeeze more and more money out of their player base.

I always have a curious sense of hypocrisy over this issue. I mean, my day job is reviewing mobile and social games, after all, and from a critical perspective I have to consider each title from a business perspective as well as that of the player — is the game going to make enough money for the developer for it to have been worthwhile? I can do this with no problem — though I will call out titles that are obviously taking the piss with their monetisation strategies — but it doesn’t stop me from having a sour taste in my mouth whenever I’m “off the clock”, as it were. I’ve dialed back my consumption of iOS games massively since realising that the vast majority of them are little more than time and money sinks designed as not-particularly-subtle attempts to extract players’ money from them. And many developers and publishers don’t even attempt to hide this fact — we’re dealing with an industry that refers to users who spend a lot of money on in-app purchases and DLC as “whales”, after all, which should give you an idea of the sort of people we’re dealing with a lot of the time.

Now, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t make money from their creations. Quite the opposite, in fact — I told you at the start of this post that you should pay money and download Rayman Jungle Run, for example, because it’s great. But herein lies the rub — you should pay money for things that you think are worth money, things that you want to support, not things that are designed to psychologically manipulate you into pressing that “Get More Coins!” button. As soon as you become aware of a game’s business model, it stops being quite so fun — at least, that’s how I feel. Apparently I’m in something of a minority, though.

There’s a problem with the system as it stands right now, which is partly why this situation has arisen. The distorted sense of value that the App Store has brought means that if people see anything that costs more than a dollar, they won’t buy it unless they’re absolutely sure it’s worth the money. (These people are probably the same people who will happily spend four or five dollars on a coffee — yes, I’m aware that I’m English and automatically using dollars as my default currency, but that’s what you get after working for American employers for the last two years — and consequently are quite happy to throw their money at something they will piss out within an hour or two) To exacerbate this fact, there is no requirement for app developers to provide a free trial of their products. Some do anyway, either by offering a free “lite” version of the app or distributing the app for free then unlocking it via in-app purchase, but there are many cases where it is impossible to “try before you buy” — so people end up not buying at all, instead reaching for those ever-tempting “free” apps and their spiderweb of monetisation.

Free trials won’t solve the issue entirely, obviously, but they would be a good start. Personally speaking, I just find it a crying shame that a gaming platform with as much obvious potential as iOS (and, to a lesser extent due to lack of support by many developers, Android) finds itself focusing on shallow, fun-free timesinks rather than truly creative games — of which there are many available that go completely unnoticed. Quality games like Rayman Jungle Run should be celebrated and championed; crap like Tap Campus Life should be ridiculed.

That’s enough for now.

Oh, one final thing. Buy Rayman Jungle Run.

I thenkyaw.