1078: Things I Hope We See the Back of in 2013

As I noted yesterday, 2012 was a reasonable year, if a relatively unremarkable one. However, it did play host to a number of trends that really, really need to fuck the fuck off. Here is a selection of my picks for things that I would very much like to not see any more next year.

Gangnam Style

LOOK! LOOK AT THE FUNNY KOREAN MAN! HE DANCING! HAHAHAHAHA

No. Fuck off. When your “viral sensation” gets performed on X-Factor, you know it has officially jumped the shark.

The phrase “jumped the shark”

I can remember it now, but I originally had to look this up five or six times before I could actually remember what it meant. It is a Happy Days reference, for heaven’s sake. Is there not something a bit more, you know, timely you could refer to? Or perhaps just say what you mean? Speaking of which…

Using the term “nice guy” to mean “creep”

I have ranted at length on this subject before so I will spare you that this time and simply say that by doing this you are simply perpetuating the stereotype that people who describe themselves as “nice guys” are creeps and rapists-in-training. Some of them are creeps, to be sure, but some of them are simply shy people with poor social skills. I count myself in the latter category, and have referred to myself as a “nice guy” in the past, and now feel hideously guilty about that. So quit tarring everyone with the same brush and find a new term to describe creepy guys who make women feel uncomfortable, regardless of what they call themselves. I suggest “creepy guys who make women feel uncomfortable” or perhaps just, you know, “creeps”. Capitalising Nice Guy or adding a ™ is not an acceptable way of creating a new term.

Reducing complex sociological issues to binary debates

This is apparent when you look at a number of different issues in today’s sociological climate, but it’s particularly evident any time someone starts talking about sexism and/or feminism. If you’re not in support of the most vocal, outspoken, ranty people who are standing up against sexism, you’re a misogynist. If you are someone who speaks out against sexism, regardless of whether or not you’re being obnoxious in your arguing techniques, you’re a “feminazi”. If you try and have a reasoned, rational debate on this subject, you’re “part of the problem”. There are no shades of grey here.

(Clarification that I am annoyed I feel obliged to include: My beliefs: sexism is bad, regardless of who it is directed towards. Women are awesome. Men are equally awesome. If the world learned this and treated people accordingly, it would be a much nicer place. Yelling incoherently at people is not the same as re-educating them.)

“dot TXT” Twitter accounts

NaNoWriMo participants, fanfic authors and bloggers are all pretty brave to put their work out there for public scrutiny, so how do you think they might feel about having extracts of things they have written or said quoted out of context, posted to Twitter and then retweeted to all and sundry? Yeah. Cut that shit out. On the subject…

Public shaming

Twitter users like “@fart” spend an awful lot of time trawling the social network for examples of things like “ungrateful teens” at Christmas, retweeting what is apparently their most offensive tweet and then, as a bit of frantic backpedaling, encouraging their followers not to harass these people. (I’m aware @fart isn’t the only one, but he’s certainly one of the most well-known.) Sites like BuzzFeed then collect together these tweets and post them as evidence of “first world problems” and other such bullshit. An example was here, but it has since been removed by the author, perhaps partly as a result of this article on Slate.

Public shaming of people for things like this is a horrible way to behave that makes you little more than a bully — especially in cases such as this, where we see that all is not necessarily as it first appears. Call people out if they are genuinely being publicly offensive, sure, but don’t hold them up for ridicule.

Tumblr

Back in 2008, I posted this short entry in which I lamented the fact I didn’t really know what Tumblr was for or why anyone would want to use it. Now I know: it’s for telling the world how awful white people, men, and white men are. The second a white person says something stupid, you can count on there being a Tumblr for it within a matter of minutes, which runs whatever “joke” there was well and truly into the ground, often setting world records for how quickly it can make grumpy people like me want to set fire to anyone who makes such a reference.

White straight cis male guilt

Much of the above leads to white straight cis male guilt. (If you don’t know what “cis” means, it is an abbreviation of “cisgender”, which is where an individual’s self-perceived gender matches their sex, and the opposite of “transgender”. I had to look it up, despite the number of people who are now using it regularly, often in an attempt to make themselves look super-socially aware.) Being a white straight cis male is not anything to be ashamed of, but from the number of people who preface pieces of work by seemingly apologising for being the person they are, you’d think it was the worst thing in the world. The white straight cis male viewpoint is just as valid as the black gay transgender female perspective, and nothing to feel guilty about.

The only thing you should feel guilty about is not giving viewpoints other than your own the time of day, regardless of your ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, sex and any other factors. You can give respect to viewpoints other than your own without diminishing the relevance of your own contributions.

Variations on that Keep Calm and Carry On poster

If I never have to see an “amusing” poster that says “Keep Calm and [something that isn’t Carry On]” again in 2013 and beyond, I will be happy. Indeed, if I never see a piece of merchandise that has the original “Keep Calm and Carry On” slogan on it again in 2013 and beyond, I will be happy. For those who were unaware, the original poster was put out in very limited quantities in 1939 to raise the morale of the British public in the face of the rise of the Nazis, and was subsequently rediscovered in 2000, at which point it exploded and was everyfuckingwhere. Ironically, the reaction on seeing a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster is now a crushing sense of distress at the state of the modern world rather than a feeling of increased morale.

Data limits

We’re living in the future. We really are. We carry around gizmos in our pocket that are straight out of Star Trek, and yet our usage of them is artificially limited by mobile phone companies’ desire to squeeze as much money out of us as possible. That didn’t happen in Star Trek.

Negativity towards new tech

The new consoles that have been released recently — 3DS, Vita and Wii U — were all met with negativity upon their initial release. The situation with 3DS has improved somewhat, but Vita is still struggling a bit, and it’s too early to say with Wii U so far. These are all great bits of kit that, in many cases, don’t deserve the beatdowns they get. In 2013 I’d like to see a much greater focus on the things that these systems do well, and things that people who have bought one can appreciate, rather than endless Why Not To Buy One pieces.

Sales figures being equated to whether something is any good or not

People don’t like buying stuff that isn’t selling (see: Vita) but this doesn’t mean that those things aren’t actually any good. The Vita (sorry to keep harping on about it, but it’s a good example) is a gorgeous piece of kit, but people are ignoring this arguably more important fact because its sales figures aren’t very good.

Fact: pretty much everything I’ve enjoyed this year has been a “niche” title that hasn’t been designed to sell in massive quantities. Not everything has to be a blockbuster.

Unnecessary mobile social networking apps

If you’re considering seeking funding for a new mobile app that “lets you Like anything!” or is yet another Instagram ripoff then just stop. Now. No-one is going to use your product for more than five minutes. Before you design your app consider whether or not the world really needs it or would at least find it somehow beneficial. If the answer to either of those questions is “no”, then reconsider what you are doing.

Blind reposting

This has been a particular issue on Facebook this year. People see something that they think is amazing (like that supposed Morgan Freeman quote on the school shooting) and then blindly reshare it to their Facebook friends without checking to see whether or not it’s actually true. It subsequently spreads and spreads and spreads, because very few people along the way bother to fact-check it. When someone does fact-check it, discovers it to be bollocks and says so, they are often lambasted. “It does no harm,” people will say. “It’s a nice quote, does it matter who said it?”

Well, perhaps not in the case of a thought-provoking quote misattributed to Morgan Freeman, but when you see the massive virality of scaremongering posts accusing, say, Red Bull of containing a chemical that causes brain tumours, that’s when you can hopefully start to see where the problem lies.

Let me introduce you to Snopes.com. If something sounds suspiciously like bollocks, it probably is, so check it out on Snopes.

____

I could go on but I’ve already written nearly 1,500 words so far. I think if all of the above just went and vanished in time for the new year, I’d be happy for maybe a few days at least. Then something new will undoubtedly come along to irritate me, and I can write another post like this on December 31, 2013. See you then.

(Actually, I’ll see you tomorrow, but you know.)

Oh, and happy new year for later, I guess.

1077: New Year’s Honours

I know it’s December 30, but I’m out for New Year’s Eve tomorrow night (just at a friend’s house — I don’t really do obnoxiously loud, drunken parties any more) and probably won’t feel particularly inclined to write a lot tomorrow evening. So I thought I’d look back on the year that was, as is traditional for regular bloggers to do around this time of year.

Actually, looking back, I didn’t really do that at this time last year. Instead I apparently wrote a bit about the board game Pandemic, The Old Republic (was it really a year ago I was playing that and actually enjoying it before the move to suffocating free-to-play pretty much removed everyone’s desire to ever play it ever again?), Minecraft and insomnia. (The above subjects may be somewhat related.) This leads me to believe that the year that was in that instance (being 2011) was not something especially worth looking back on.

And is this year? As I’ve been writing these first few paragraphs, I’ve been pausing occasionally to consider this question. Was 2012 in any way notable or interesting? It certainly wasn’t a “bad” year as such — no, 2010 had that pretty much covered and thankfully I haven’t had a year that bad since — but neither was it a particularly exciting year. I guess that’s sort of good, though — if the most you can say about a year as it is ending is that it just sort of passed by relatively without incident, then I suppose that’s a good thing.

There were good things, of course. The fact that I’m sitting in a flat/apartment/whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit in Southampton — a place I’ve been trying to get back to ever since 2010 went and fucked everything up — is testament to the fact that Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really, and I’ll certainly take Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really over Things Are Going Really Fucking Terribly and I Just Want to Cry All Day and All Night. I’ve done both, and I don’t recommend the latter.

But yes. The move back “home” to Southampton is a big positive step. I am now within walking, biking or short driving distance from the vast majority of my friends that I would like to see much more often, which makes me feel good. Okay, none of them have come to visit me yet, but I think I can excuse that, what with it being a rather busy and chaotic time of year and all. Also, delaying their arrival a little increases the chances that we will have got rid of the hundreds and thousands of massive cardboard boxes that are seemingly breeding in this place as we unpack stuff and assemble new pieces of furniture. (We now own a new wardrobe. It’s a bit bigger than we initially thought, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the rooms in this place are pleasingly large.)

What else happened in the last year? I did jury service for the first (and hopefully last) time, in which I got to see how the court system worked for a relatively major case which had to be subsequently abandoned and restarted at some indefinite point in the future. It was an interesting experience, though I would have enjoyed it more if I had a regular job in this country I could just easily take time off from, was not suffering with some sort of hideous plague and was not in the process of moving house (and consequently spending several nights sleeping on the floor of a house with no furniture in it). As I predicted it might do, jury service prompted an immediate re-examination of my life and consideration of whether or not law would be Something Interesting to Look Into.

Regarding Something Interesting to Look Into: this is an occasional crisis of confidence I have at various points in my life where I wonder whether or not I’m on the “right” path career-wise. I’ve been back and forth over a few careers, after all — classroom teacher, private music teacher (though that was never enough to support myself on), retail store employee, software trainer, regular contributor on a mainstream video games site, regular contributor on a specialist social/mobile games site — and frequently find myself pondering what next steps might be. Where do I go? Do I want to go there? Should I stay doing what I’m doing — which is comfortable, fun, relatively challenging and something that I’m good at — or should I do some sort of complete (early) mid-life crisis turnaround, retrain as something that I’m not currently and make a career out of that? I honestly don’t know. But now’s not really the time to be thinking about that.

It’s funny. When I titled this post “New Years Honours” I anticipated that I was going to be able to make a list of Specific Happenings in 2012 that were particularly noteworthy, but this has turned into something of a ramble, really. I apologise. Still, it’s something to think about.

All right, let’s make a list of a few things just to round things out.

Best Video Games I Played: School Days HQ, Katawa Shoujo, Trails in the Sky, Pandora’s Tower, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, The Walking Dead

Best Wee I Did: Friday morning this week, it was well over a minute long.

Favourite Technology Purchase: My Novatech laptop, which runs everything from visual novels to TrackMania 2 in relatively portable form without a hitch.

Most Pleasing Restaurant Chain Discovery: Yo! Sushi — I don’t care how authentic it is/isn’t, it’s delicious.

Medium I Abandoned Completely and Don’t Feel Any Regrets About: Movies.

Medium I Embraced Wholeheartedly and Don’t Feel Any Regrets About: Anime. Also visual novels.

Amount I Earned by Emptying my Small Change into the Coinstar Machine in Sainsburys: About £80

Amount I Earned by Music Magpie-ing Almost my Entire CD Collection (Except for the Stuff They Wouldn’t Take Like Spice Girls and Other Stuff That Escapes Me Right Now): About £80

Amount I Anticipate I Will Probably Get for Selling My Knackered Old Car Next Year: About £80

Most Expensive Purchase: New sofa

Most Expensive Purchase That is Probably Impossible to Get Into Our New Flat: New sofa

Meme I’m Most Sick Of: Grumpy Cat

Number of People I’ve Blocked on Twitter for Arguing Too Aggressively or Unreasonably (Not Necessarily Towards Me): Too many to count

Number of Completely Unnecessary Mobile Social Networking Apps I Have Encountered in the Course of my Job This Year: Too many to count

What I Can Smell Right Now: Smoked mackerel

What I am Going to Do After This Blog Post: Make a warm milk, go to bed, play Trails in the Sky.

Why I am Still Thinking of Things to Put in This List When I’ve Clearly Run Out of Ideas: I don’t know.

Good night.

1076: My Favourite T-Shirts

[Author’s Note: This post is a response to my girlfriend’s accusations that posts about video games are “boring”. She wants “boring”, I’ll show her “boring”.]

[Supplementary Note: Both she and I are joking. But I’m still going to write about My Favourite T-Shirts just because I can.]

I have a lot of T-shirts. I primarily wear T-shirts. I work from home so, to be honest, you’re lucky if I get dressed at all for my average working day, but most days I do manage to cover up my disgusting hairy flabby body with some form of cloth-based accoutrements that generally take the form of jeans and a T-shirt. Consequently, I have collected a wide variety of T-shirts over the years, relatively few of which I have actually paid for.

The reason for this is that, as many of you will know, my brother is one John Davison, veteran of the games industry and, at various points in his life, a member of the staff of publications as diverse as Games-X, Mega Drive Advanced Gaming, PC Player, PC Zone, Electronic Gaming Monthly, the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, 1up.com, What They Play, GamePro, Gamespot and doubtless some others I’ve missed along the way. (Kudos if you recognise the earlier ones, incidentally.)

Why is this relevant? Well, because as anyone currently working in the games industry knows, working on a mag or website means freebies. Freebies are somewhat ridiculed these days, with wearing a freebie T-shirt to a professional engagement seen as a big ol’ faux pas, but I’ve never had a particular problem with people wearing them, largely because I spent a healthy proportion of my childhood wearing them. Nowadays, the ones that still fit (which is quite a few, due to the fact that freebie T-shirts inevitably come in gigantic sizes) have a certain degree of retro charm about them, though I must confess that many of them have fallen by the wayside and/or into the bin over the years.

So, then, without further ado, here are my Top Five Favourite T-Shirts.

The “More Drinks Kevin” MDK T-Shirt

I like this T-shirt (which I don’t have a picture of, I’m afraid) for two reasons: 1) it bewilders people who have no idea why my T-shirt says “MORE DRINKS KEVIN?” on the front and “MDK” on the back and 2) it has long sleeves, meaning it’s nice and warm. This is, I think, the only T-shirt from the numerous freebies my brother gave me over the years that I actually still have. It has survived my numerous house moves, the collapse of my life a couple of years ago and my subsequent clawing back to my current status of “not doing too badly, thanks.” I don’t wear it that often, but it’s a nice reminder of simpler times.

Rattlesnake! Theatre Group Official Shirt

I have two of these (and no pictures right now) and they are among my most-worn T-shirts. They are old, grotty and horrible and really only suitable for bumming around the house in, but I like them a lot because they remind me of one of my favourite times of my life — going to the Edinburgh Fringe with the Southampton University Theatre Group (which we inexplicably redubbed “Rattlesnake!” temporarily for the trip) and putting on two shows for two weeks.

Persona 4

I have a Persona 4 T-shirt. It doesn’t fit very well so I don’t wear it very often, but I like it. It came free with my copy of the game. It is bright yellow (the kind that is not just “yellow” but “YELLOW!”) and features a minimalist TV design with colour stripes and the “You Are Not Me” phrase from the game.

“FK In The Coffee”

I have a lot of time for anyone who enjoyed Deadly Premonition, because Deadly Premonition was brilliant. Consequently, anyone who successfully identifies the reference on this T-shirt is destined to be a lifelong friend.

Minimalist Pony T-Shirt

I like this T-Shirt because it allows me to declare myself as a card-carrying Brony to people who are “in the know”, while to others it simply looks like some sort of retro pixelated design. I’ll let those of you who haven’t seen this type of T-shirt before into a secret: the key is in the colours.

Those are my favourite T-shirts. I hope you liked them.

[Supplementary note: I’m not sure these actually are my favourite T-shirts, but they’re the first ones that sprang to mind that were vaguely interesting. I have a lot of T-shirts. Maybe if this post proves popular I’ll share some more. Won’t that be nice? Yes, yes it will. Now I am going to bed. Good night.]

1075: Those Trails in the Sky Get Longer

[Author’s note: See, I resisted the temptation to make another “Tits” joke in the headline. You should be proud of me.]

After a bit of a break to play some other stuff, mainly Persona 3: FES, I am back on my Vita and proceeding nicely with Trails in the Sky.

Trails in the Sky, for those who missed the earlier post I made about it, is a role-playing game for the PSP and Vita from Falcom. It also happens to be one of the best role-playing games I’ve played in recent memory, for a diverse array of reasons, some of which I’ve already talked about and others of which I will touch on today.

Plot-wise, Trails in the Sky isn’t your conventional JRPG. I’m over 30 hours in now and there’s been no trace of any villain wanting to take over the world, call down a meteor, kompress time [sic], sit inside a mountain going “MWAHAHAHAHA” or indeed any of the other things that JRPG villains typically want to do. In fact, I’d be hard-pushed to identify a single “villain” as yet — there have been villainous groups and individuals, sure, but not a single character that I’d particularly identify as a specific “antagonist”. No-one with silvery-white hair flowing down their back; no-one with a good line in evil laughs; no “evil empire” to fight back against. The closest we’ve had is a few men clad in black, and they’re clearly working for someone.

While this may cause you to worry about the game being directionless — what’s an epic RPG without an antagonist taunting you throughout making that final boss smackdown all the more satisfying? — in actual fact the opposite is true. The focus may be different, but there’s most definitely a plot with direction and good pace going on here.

The focus in this case is the relationship between the two lead characters Estelle and Joshua, foster siblings and a classic case of a “will they, won’t they” relationship that will undoubtedly come to smooches by the end of the game’s 50-hour quest. The main thrust of the game’s story is the pair’s journey around the game world, training their abilities and learning more about themselves, each other and the way they feel about one another. Third and fourth party members come and go, but Estelle and Joshua are permanent fixtures, with the player taking direct control of Estelle for the vast majority of the game.

Estelle is a great lead character, largely because she’s not a traditional female protagonist. She may be pretty cute visually — as a redhead/brunette with twintails, she’s seemingly designed to appeal specifically to me — but personality-wise, she’s certainly far from demure, cute or helpless. She’s spunky, loud, opinionated, brash, sarcastic and quick to anger. At the same time, she doesn’t deny her feminine side to herself — even if she seemingly tries to hide it when others are around. There are a number of scenes, particularly late in the game, where she tries to come to terms with her own feelings towards Joshua that give us some interesting insight into what she’s really thinking behind her slightly-abrasive facade.

The side-effect of Estelle’s somewhat tomboyish nature when she’s around other people is that said other people tend not to treat her in a particularly “girlish” manner, often deriding her for not particularly conforming to gender stereotypes and acting in a “mannish” or “boyish” manner. She takes it in her stride throughout, often swiping such comments aside with a sarcastic rebuttal or two of her own, and you get the impression that she is someone who is thoroughly comfortable in who she is — or at least comfortable with the “public face” she shows to people. Despite her self-assuredness, though, a sure-fire way to make Estelle skittish and nervous is to bring up the possibility of her getting together with Joshua, which in many cases makes her literally want to run away or furiously deny any such accusations, even if it’s blatantly obvious that she’s thought about it more than once in her life.

I’m looking forward to seeing the game through to its conclusion. It’s structured very nicely in that you always feel like you’re doing something, and grinding has been absolutely non-existent so far. Wandering monsters provide relatively trivial amounts of experience points, and are primarily used to acquire the “Sepith” gems used to craft new special ability items called Orbments, and if you’re that way inclined, you can race through most of the game without stopping to have random encounters at all if you don’t want to — though you may find yourself struggling to acquire better spells if you do so.

In short, it’s nice to play a JRPG that focuses on the good things about the genre — exploration, discovery, questing, character development and narrative — and doesn’t force players to live with frustrating and outdated conventions like grinding. If you’re an RPG fan toting a PSP or Vita, you should consider Trails in the Sky an essential purchase, as it is a fine example of how the genre is alive, well and more than happy to not follow the traditional Final Fantasy “OMG WORLD IS ENDING” route. (That’s not to say that doesn’t have a place, of course — I still love saving the world, but I’m well aware many others are sick of it.)

Check out the official website to find out more — and I believe there’s a sequel inbound at some point in the near future, too.

1074: Loving the Vita

It’s fashionable to bash Sony’s latest handheld, the Vita. This is partly justified, because it hasn’t been selling particularly well — especially when compared to Nintendo’s latest powerhouse the 3DS, which seems entirely likely to repeat the success of its predecessor the DS family. The poor sales can be attributed to its relatively high price and the fact that its proprietary memory cards are unnecessarily expensive and can’t be used in anything else, unlike the standard SD cards that the 3DS uses.

But even though I know these criticisms are valid and warranted, it still bugs me a little that this means people are quickly writing off the Vita as a no-hoper, as a stillborn, with some even going so far as to compare it to disastrous past industry efforts such as Nintendo’s dreadful Virtual Boy. That’s just ridiculous.

Fact is, the Vita is a wonderful piece of kit. For your money, you get a gorgeous shiny gadget with a deliciously bright, big, high-resolution LED screen, two not-very-good-but-functional cameras (front and back) and not one but two touch-sensitive surfaces (again, front and back). Games specifically designed for Vita look beautiful on that big shiny screen, and the system runs downloadable PSP titles perfectly — though the lack of UMD drive means that those who have an extensive collection of physical PSP games will either need to keep their old handheld around or re-purchase their games as downloadable versions.

The PSP support is an aspect of the Vita that I can’t help but feel is understated. I know, I know, you could buy a used PSP for a fraction of the price of a new Vita, but how great the games look on that LED screen shouldn’t be underestimated — plus with the latest system firmware, it’s possible to apply bilinear filtering to the games to smooth out edges without making them look overly-blurry, and assign the Vita’s right stick and touchscreen to various functions. You’d be surprised quite how much more comfortable it is using the right stick to move the camera in games that previously used the shoulder buttons for this purpose — the PSP, let’s not forget, didn’t have a right stick and had that peculiar and uncomfortable “nub” instead of an actual stick on the left.

The other aspect of that PSP compatibility is that it makes the old “Vita has no games” argument sort of invalid — because not only do you have a healthy selection of largely good-quality Vita titles to draw on, you also have a huge selection of downloadable PSP titles to work your way through, too. If you’re a JRPG or SRPG fan in particular, the Vita is a fantastic system. The first three Persona games; Trails in the Sky; all the Final Fantasy games up to IX plus spinoffs Final Fantasy Tactics and Dissidia Final Fantasy; Tactics Ogre; the list goes on. (It goes on longer if you’re American, because you also have titles like Growlanser and Gungnir to enjoy, too. Damn you, Atlus, for not having a European arm.)

As for the actual Vita games themselves, there are some real gems there. Everybody’s Golf/Hot Shots Golf is fantastic fun, and packed with content. Gravity Rush is a beautiful, stylish, challenging game that makes good use of the Vita’s accelerometers alongside a more traditional control scheme. The Vita version of Need for Speed Most Wanted is a very good one, ideal for a quick race on the go. Lumines Electronic Symphony is a fantastic puzzle game — though not very toilet-friendly, as sessions tend to go on for quite a while. LittleBigPlanet is an ideal fit for the Vita’s interface and touchscreen. And then there are a bunch of cheaper download-only games that are also fantastic — the strange and abstract world of Sound Shapes; the John Cleese-voiced, Unreal Engine-powered brain training of Smart As…; the freebies like that ecosystem game I’ve forgotten the name of and hilarious pass-and-play party game Frobisher Says.

And then you have PlayStation Minis, which is home to some surprisingly brilliant games — Velocity by FuturLab being one in particular you should really check out. And then there’s the newly-added support for PlayStation Mobile, which offers super-cheap ports of some of the best iOS and Android games out there.

Need I go on? Yes, the cost of entry may be higher than a 3DS or a PSP, but the Vita is packed with a ton of possibilities that people just aren’t talking about enough. “The story” about the Vita always seems to be that it’s “Sony’s big failure” — and while that may end up being true, it’d be nice to see, just once, a feature in the professional press detailing the many things this system does wonderfully well rather than yet another predictable article heralding its apparently-imminent doom. We’ve all seen this article many times over — so how about ditching the negativity for a bit and exploring the many good things the system does offer so those of us who do have one can unearth some of the platform’s hidden gems — because they’re out there.

If you happened to get a Vita (or PS3, for that matter) for Christmas, do feel free to add “Angry_Jedi” to your PSN friends list!

1073: It’s-a Me!

As I said I probably would, I picked up New Super Mario Bros. U or whatever it’s called today. Mario in HD is a pleasing sight, though I’m one of those people who still likes the blocky old pixel-art too, and to whom SD graphics aren’t as offensive as they appear to be to some. But I digress.

It’s somewhat ironic that the most old-school Mario experience you can get today comes from a subseries with “New” as part of its title. Ever since the first New Super Mario Bros. launched on the DS and provided traditional 2D platforming with an up-to-date 3D aesthetic, this particular offshoot of the Mario series has remained firmly and staunchly set in its ways, providing gameplay that is not fundamentally any different from Super Mario World, which, let’s not forget, came out in 1990.

This is not, I hasten to add, a bad thing. Super Mario World is probably my favourite Mario game of all time — at least it was. It remains to be seen whether or not this new Wii U version will be able to uproot it, but I will always have a very fond place in my heart for the SNES classic. It was so perfectly balanced, so completely fair all the way through — even on the ridiculously difficult Special Island levels — and so packed with things to discover that I actually played it through several times, which I don’t normally tend to do with platform games. 96 levels (or, more accurately, exits) was a big deal at the time, too. It’s still pretty massive for a platform game even today.

New Super Mario Bros. U follows the Mario World tradition very closely, with a few bits and pieces from Mario 3 along the way. You have your top down map screen with multiple routes to your eventual destinations (castles housing bosses, naturally); you have a mixture of levels where the challenge comes from evading enemies and levels where your pixel platforming skills are tested to the limit; you have a selection of interesting but natural-feeling puzzles incorporated into the gameplay; and you have gameplay so intuitive that there isn’t a tutorial because there really doesn’t need to be one. (After playing so many Facebook games for work where the tutorial literally doesn’t let you press anything you want to press for anywhere between ten minutes and half an hour, this is a breath of fresh air.)

There are a few intriguing additions, however, some of which may have been present in the previous Wii-based New Super Mario Bros. game which I haven’t really played much of. First up, there’s the baby Yoshis, who can be carried around and fed, but unlike in Mario World, their special abilities can be used even in baby form. The pink one, for example, blows up like a balloon and can be used to reach otherwise inaccessible areas; the yellow one explodes in light, useful for dark caves. I’m not sure (yet) if there’s anything more to them than this, but they add some interesting new game mechanics which, as Mario games always have done in the past, encourage experimentation.

I really haven’t played a Mario game seriously since Super Mario Sunshine, which I didn’t really enjoy all that much, and certainly haven’t finished one since Super Mario 64. I was never quite sure how I felt about Mario’s shift into 3D — although I respected Mario 64 in particular, I always felt like I preferred 2D platformers, and the same is still true today. New Super Mario Bros. U looks set to scratch that itch with tight controls, challenging levels and an interesting-sounding cooperative mode that I’m keen to try out when I get some friends around.

I’m very much enjoying the Wii U so far, if you hadn’t already gathered. It’s a console designed for pure fun. Whereas both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are trying desperately to be that “one box you need under your TV,” Nintendo are once again sneaking past to provide a system that is fun, accessible and entertaining for the whole family. It may not be the most technologically advanced system in the world (though the Gamepad is super-cool — I’m looking forward to seeing some creative uses of that), the games may not be the biggest-budget blockbusters (though the presence of Arkham City, Darksiders II and Call of Duty in the launch lineup suggests that big-name publishers are at least willing to give it a shot for now) and it’s doubtful it will become any “serious” gamer’s primary console, but it does what it does extraordinarily well — and that is to provide “pure” gaming experiences such as those Nintendo has always provided. Hopefully we’ll see some niche publishers taking a few risks like we saw towards the end of the Wii’s lifespan, too — sequels or follow-ups to Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower would be just lovely, thankyouplease.

1072: Christmas Day

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a good one. Mine was nice and quiet and relatively relaxing, which is, I guess, what it should be. There were no kids in the house (despite Andie and my parents’ worrying obsession with the Santa NORAD tracker thingy) so it was pretty restrained.

Like I’ve said before, I sort of miss that feeling of excitement, though; that knowledge that on December 25th you’ll have something awesome to unwrap and then spend the rest of the day scattering over the living room floor to play with. I had some pretty great presents over the years when I was a kid, ranging from a Super NES (unbelievably exciting at the time — and which I still own to this day, I might add) to a toy called “Manta Force” that was actually a giant spaceship filled with smaller vehicles and little dudes. On a subsequent Christmas, I got the Manta Force Battle Fortress, which complemented the main Manta Force set with a mountainside base that had working guns. That was awesome, though I never managed to get hold of a Red Venom (the “bad guys'” equivalent of the main Manta Force mothership), which was a shame. Still, the Battle Fortress was great fun to have two-player face-offs with.

This Christmas, I had a few cool goodies. Andie got me the world’s biggest My Little Pony poster, which I’m looking forward to assembling (yes, it requires assembly, it’s that big) and sticking on the wall of my new study. I got some books and some chocolate and a nice throw for our sofa that won’t fit in our flat. And lots of money which I am looking forward to spending — the Wii U I acquired shortly before we came away will doubtless be getting some new game love (I’m thinking Mario at the very least — I haven’t played a Mario game properly since Mario 64, I don’t think), and I fully intend to pick up a copy of 999 for the Nintendo DS because I really want to play Virtue’s Last Reward and everyone says I should play 999 first. So I will.

I’ve spent a bit of time rediscovering how lovely a piece of kit the Vita is, too. I downloaded a few demos and had a fiddle around with them. LittleBigPlanet for Vita looks lovely, for example, but still has floaty jumping that annoys quite a few people I know. There’s a fun “brain training” game called Smart As… that features John Cleese on voiceover duties that seems quite fun, too, so I’m contemplating grabbing that as I always used to quite enjoy the old DS brain training games. (It is £20, though, which feels like a lot for that kind of game in these days of cheap crappy 69p apps, but I understand it has a healthy amount of content in it.)

I’ve resisted the Steam Sales so far, with a couple of minor exceptions — playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed got me in the mood to replay the Dreamcast Sonic Adventure games which I remember being praised quite highly back in the day (and enjoying a great deal) but which everyone seems to hate these days. I also have to play the rest of Sonic Generations at some point, which genuinely is good.

But anyway. I am just rambling away a load of bollocks now so I will curtail that forthwith and simply wish all of my readers a very merry Christmas, and a pleasant holiday season onwards towards the New Year.

1071: Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve. Technically it’s almost Christmas Day. Exciting, huh?

I’ve noted this for the past few years, but I find it tough to get really excited about Christmas these days. I’m pretty sure this is fairly common for people once they get beyond a certain age, but it’s felt particularly pronounced for the past few years. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve had a few Christmases that haven’t been particularly merry, or because I’ve had a few years where my life hasn’t been exactly what I’d call “on track”, but eh. Whatever.

This year, theoretically, I am enjoying a Christmas where my life is getting back to where it should be; to where I want it to be. This is good. It still feels a little difficult to enjoy it though, to find it easy to lighten up, chill out and just accept that things are nice. The holiday season doesn’t magically make your anxieties and worries go away, sadly, as these are things that stick with you through the best and worst of times.

But let’s try not to be overly negative about the whole thing. Tomorrow is a day for eating to excess, for opening presents, for relaxing and doing as little as possible. It may lack that childish excitement over whether or not there’s, say, a Super NES under the tree (largely because I am now old and affluent enough to purchase myself the modern-day equivalent the Wii U if I want one) and it may lack that particular “spark” that believing in Father Christmas involves, but it’s a time of peacefulness, of trying to set your worries aside, and of enjoying good food and good company.

I’m sure tomorrow will be fine. And once the holiday season has passed by, we can really start to look forward to whatever it is the future holds. Hopefully the things that the future hold are good, and I can start enjoying life a bit more. That’d be nice. I would like to enjoy life a bit more.

Merry Christmas to everyone reading this. I hope you have a thoroughly pleasant day tomorrow, and eat your fill of turkey, stuffing, those little sausages wrapped in bacon and sprouts. (My fill of sprouts is “no sprouts”. It is not hard to eat my fill of sprouts. Sprouts are disgusting.)

1070: Victory and Answers at Last

I finished Persona 3: The Answer. I won’t lie, I am more relieved than anything, but after such an ordeal I find myself glad that I have now played the complete Persona 3 experience from start to finish. (This is, of course, excluding the female protagonist’s path through the PSP version, but I think I may need a bit of a break from Shin Megami Tensei for quite a while now — so that will have to wait!)

The Answer is a curious beast. All the while I was playing it, I had a big question in my mind, appropriately enough. That question was “should this exist?”

It’s a fair question. Does it need to exist? I certainly wasn’t unsatisfied with the way Persona 3’s original story ended, but I was also excited by the prospect of it continuing, which is why I immediately picked up a copy of Persona 3 FES as soon as it came out, despite having bought the original at full price. (Both are still on my shelf. And yes, it has taken me this long to finally get around to actually beating FES. For those who aren’t keeping track, FES came out in 2008. It is now nearly 2013.) I was excited by two things: firstly, the prospect of a “director’s cut” of the main Persona 3 story, and secondly, by an additional 20+ hours of gameplay that resolved more than a few unanswered questions posed by the ending.

On balance, I think I am glad that The Answer exists, because the story that runs through it and particularly its ending are very satisfying — at least, they are if you’ve played through all of The Journey beforehand. I just wish that the execution was better.

It’s sort of difficult to imagine how they could have done it differently, however. The core concept of The Answer is that the party have trapped themselves in the situation they’re in through their own regrets and desires, which means that they’re literally stuck in the same place at the same time on the same day until you beat it. This means none of the awesome “life sim” aspect of Persona 3 — no going out and going to school, no balancing whether or not you should go to Track Team or Music Club after school, no hanging out with the drunken old monk in the bar in the evening, no singing karaoke to build up your Courage statistic. Just dungeons. Fighting. Lots of fighting.

I like Persona 3’s combat system. (I prefer Persona 4’s ability to let you take direct control over all your members, but I still like Persona 3’s.) There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the idea of an add-on campaign involving a whole bunch of fighting using what is a very good JRPG combat system. However, what is wrong with The Answer’s gameplay is that it is regularly cheap, unfair and controller-flingingly frustrating, particularly when it comes to boss battles, and especially later in the game.

A key part of the Persona 3 combat system is learning the various weaknesses of enemies and then exploiting them to knock them down. Knocking all the enemies in an encounter down at the same time allows the entire party to unleash an “All-Out Attack” for massive damage, so generally speaking your aim in any battle is to knock down the enemies as efficiently as possible to trigger one of these, as they will usually if not finish the battle immediately, they will certainly tip the scales in your favour.

Here’s the annoyance with The Answer’s bosses, though — many of them have these weaknesses as in The Journey, but they also have passive abilities that allow them a not-insignificant chance of automatically avoiding any attack with the attributes they are weak to. For example, in one encounter there are three enemies — one is weak against fire, another is weak against ice, another is weak against wind. The one who is weak against fire has the “Evade Fire” skill, which means that on a significant number of occasions when you attack it with fire and attempt to knock it down, you will simply miss. The other two also have the corresponding “Evade [x]” skills, making it very difficult to actually knock them over and deal damage. I’m all for a bit of a challenge factor, but because these mechanics are so heavily based on luck rather than skill or strategy, it just felt incredibly cheap any time I died because of them.

To add insult to injury, The Answer’s final boss, while spectacular to look at as all good final bosses should be, was almost insultingly easy to beat, making the big finale more of a test of patience more than anything else. Actually, I can’t be too mad about this, because if I had to repeat the cutscenes leading up to that final battle as I had to repeat the cutscenes leading up to numerous other boss battles on a number of occasions earlier in the game, I would have probably been very annoyed. As it happened, I was able to take it down in one attempt, meaning the story kept flowing nicely at the moment when it needed to be pacy.

So after completing the whole shebang I am left with somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am happy that I saw the story end conclusively. I am satisfied that I successfully beat a very difficult game. But at the same time I am a little annoyed that a game as brilliant as Persona 3 has been slightly soured in my memory by the amount of annoyance The Answer gave me.

Am I glad The Answer exists? Yes, I think I am. Will I ever play it again? No fucking way!

1069: Home

The new place is starting to come together nicely. There are still a few bits of crap lying around the place so I won’t share any photos just yet, and there’s still a whole heap of crap waiting for us to go and pick up from Andie’s mum’s at some point soon (plus the rats… I miss the rats) but on the whole, it’s coming together pretty well.

I spent a large proportion of this morning sorting out the room that has become my “study”. It’s significantly larger than the room I was using for a similar purpose in our previous place, and there’s a lovely large amount of open space in the middle, giving the whole thing a… well, sort of spacious feel.

The one nice thing about all this space is the fact that I can reconfigure it for various purposes. Perhaps the most exciting thing (exciting to me, all right, I’m sure you don’t give a shit) is that there is enough room for my two gigantic and heavy wooden desks to be arranged separately, meaning that the smaller of the two can be a permanent fixture as my computer desk, but the larger of the two can sit at the side of the room as a general purpose work surface for most of the time, but when required it can be pulled out and used as — wait for it — a games table. Finally, the dream of having a Room for Board Games appears to have come true.

I am yet to try it for this proposed purpose, but there’s certainly plenty of space available to do this, and there’s some spare chairs we’ll be able to use. The nice thing about the giant desk is that it’s actually bigger than our dining table, which has proven itself on several occasions to be not quite big enough to play the more sprawling games comfortably. The giant desk, meanwhile, will quite happily house Arkham Horror with space to spare — though whether or not it will be able to handle a particularly winding dungeon in The Legend of Drizzt or Advanced Heroquest remains to be seen.

I got my electric piano set up again today, and have retrieved some of my music books. I haven’t been feeling that motivated to play for quite a long time, what with everything else that has been going on in my life and all the things I’ve wanted to prioritise and aim for, but having this nice big room with all my music on display will hopefully get me playing a bit more. It will certainly stop people making pointed comments about how they wish I’d play the piano more. (Or perhaps it will encourage them more.)

Anyway, things are coming together nicely, in short. This is a nice feeling, and it’s good to be feeling like this just before Christmas. This has, of course, had the side-effect that Christmas has completely snuck up on me almost without me realising it, but at least I have managed to get all the appropriate shopping done. I think. Possibly. I hope. I’m almost certain I will wake up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve and realise I’ve forgotten presents for someone important, but we’ll cross that particular bridge when we come to it.

It’s got to 1am somehow. It’s probably time to sleep. Today has been incredibly long in the sense that both Andie and I have got a lot done. Days “feel” longer here for some reason. Perhaps it’s a side-effect of being in a nice place that we like. Or perhaps we’re just using our time more efficiently. Either way, I’m not complaining!