1088: Shadows Over Camelot

I had some friends over tonight. (I’m still reeling from the novelty of being able to invite my friends over and them actually coming because I’m not a two-hour drive away from them, but I digress.) We played some Wii U (Nintendo Land is still great) and then settled down for a board game.

Tonight, it was the turn of Shadows Over Camelot, a new acquisition that I got for Christmas. It’s a game that we’ve had on our collective radar as a board gaming group for quite some time, but none of us knew that much about it. All we really knew is that it had a mechanic similar to that found in the Battlestar Galactica board game (which is absolutely excellent, even for those unfamiliar with the show) in that there was a chance with every game that one player would be a secret traitor tasked with foiling the group’s otherwise cooperative attempts to beat the game at its own… you know.

Shadows Over Camelot is a Days of Wonder production, and anyone who is into board games will know what that means — a nice hefty box with quality artwork, decent components, lovely thick gameboards and nice stiff cards that are easy to handle and shuffle. The only slight letdown with Shadows Over Camelot’s components is with some of the miniatures provided — a few of them have unnecessarily “bendy” bits — swords in particular are very soft and bendy, though I suppose it’s better that than them be rigid and easily breakable — or, for that matter, sharp and easy to poke into bits of delicate skin and make yourself bleed. (I speak from experience — Games Workshop’s dungeon crawlers mauled me more than a few times in the past.)

I’d read through the instructions when I first got the game, but it didn’t make a ton of sense without sitting down and actually trying it out for ourselves. We nearly didn’t try it at all because as a group, we’re generally terrible with new games — they tend to take twice as long as the suggested amount of time given on the game box, and we inevitably mess something up along the way. It had already got to 9pm by the time we’d eaten, so the worry was that we’d be there until the early hours of the morning playing.

Fortunately, there was no such problem, as Shadows Over Camelot actually has pleasantly simple, elegant mechanics that give it a nice, fast pace that constantly keeps flowing around the table — again, much like many other Days of Wonder titles.

Essentially, the aim of the game is twofold: firstly, do not allow any of the “defeat” conditions to come to pass, and secondly, ensure that victory is achieved. The players (except the traitor, if there is one) lose if there are twelve siege engines outside Camelot, if all the player characters die, or if the Round Table fills up and there are more black swords than white ones. Or if there are seven or more black swords, which amounts to much the same thing.

White and black swords are attained by going on quests, each of which are represented by small boards, and all of which are takes on Arthurian legends. You have the tournament against the Black Knight, the quest for the Holy Grail, fending off invasions, fighting dragons and claiming Excalibur.

Each quest has its own specific mechanics, but most involve playing cards in various arrangements. The Grail quest, for example, demands that players, between them, play a total of seven Grail cards onto the quest area — though if various “anti-Grail” cards appear, additional Grail cards must be played to remove these, too. Combat-focused quests, meanwhile, involve playing various poker-style hands one card per turn in an attempt to accumulate a high enough value to defeat the value of the black cards the game mechanics have been putting on the quest in the meantime. It’s difficult to describe in words, but when playing, it makes sense very quickly.

A turn is simple and snappy. First of all, you do a “bad thing” — either take a point of damage, add a siege engine outside Camelot or draw a black card, which has one of a variety of bad effects. Later in the game, black cards that would normally be played on a quest that has now been completed summon additional siege engines, so the late game involves fending back the tides of darkness while attempting to push the game into a victory state.

Once your “bad thing” has been done, you get to do a “good thing”. This can be as simple as moving, or performing an action unique to the quest you’re currently standing on — playing a card, for example. Alternatively, there are some special cards you can play with specific useful effects, or you can even heal yourself by discarding a set of three identical cards. It’s cooperative in that you are working together to defeat the game, but each player maintains their own independence to do as they please. Meanwhile, the traitor is doing their best to remain hidden while screwing everyone over as much as possible.

We were surprised when the game was over within an hour and a half — that’s absolutely a new record for us when trying out a new game for the first time, and testament to Shadows Over Camelot’s simple but elegant mechanics. I’m impressed, in short, and looking forward to trying it again, this time with a traitor — we followed the game’s recommendation and played without one this time. Hopefully that will be pretty soon!

1087: Recaffeinated

I’m in serious danger of becoming a coffee snob. I haven’t had a cup of instant coffee — not even the nice Nescafe Azera stuff (which I can highly recommend for people who don’t have more complicated coffee-making equipment but who find normal instant coffee to be gross) — for quite a while now, and am instead enjoying an array of cafetiere and espresso coffees.

The reason for this is primarily the fact that Andie and I acquired a Nespresso machine as a Christmas present to ourselves. I’ve owned a coffee machine for quite a while, but it’s a right faff to keep clean, plus it vibrates so much when pumping the water through it that the cups fall off the platform. Not ideal.

The Nespresso machine (a Krups U, if you’re curious) is lovely, though. You turn it on, wait for the little light on the top to stop flashing (which takes less than a minute, rather than waiting for a kettle to boil), pop in a coffee capsule and close the slidey lid thing, ensuring you have a cup underneath first, obviously. After a loud farty noise (and a complete lack of accompanying vibration, unlike with my previous coffee machine) you have a cup of espresso. Combine this with the “Aeroccino” milk frother (which either does warm, slightly whisked milk for lattes and warm, fluffy, frothy milk for cappuccinos) and you have the means of making some fine, fine coffee right in your own home. It’s the kind of coffee that’s even nice just straight and black — the machine makes a lovely crema on top that makes it nice and smooth and easy to drink, even without milk.

We actually got a Nespresso machine just before Christmas, albeit sans the Aeroccino frother thingy, but it seemed to be leaking a lot. We just put it down to us doing something wrong somewhere along the line, but one morning it blew a fuse in the flat, suggesting that it was, in fact, faulty and water was getting into places that water wasn’t supposed to get into. We’re waiting for the ever-unreliable Yodel to come and pick up our old one so we can get a refund, and we purchased a combined package that included the frother thingy from John Lewis in the meantime — it worked out cheaper than buying the frother separately.

This kind of “capsule coffee” machine has been around for a while now, and I’ve held off looking at them until now as I was concerned that the capsules were wasteful and would end up costing significantly more than fresh-ground or instant coffee. The difference actually isn’t that bad — I can’t remember the exact “price per cup” it works out to offhand, but it’s certainly fairly reasonable and definitely way cheaper than going to Starbucks. You also get a selection of different coffees bundled with the machine for you to try out, and we also snagged a voucher to get a bunch of money off an order from the Nespresso “coffee club”, so our next order of capsules should be significantly cheaper than it would be normally! There’s the mild inconvenience of having to order them and receive them through the mail rather than just nipping down the shop when you’re getting low, but it’s easy enough to see how many capsules you have left and prepare accordingly.

If you’re in the market to become a coffee snob, then I can personally recommend the Nespresso machines as, beside our leaking problem with our first machine, they seem to be well-made pieces of kit that make good coffee and are simple to keep clean.

Too lazy to Google it? Here you go.

1086: Keep on Moving

Moving house this time around has made me realise a few things: firstly, that it’s actually quite a while since I moved from one place of my own to another (my last two moves were from my parents’ place to Chippenham, and prior to that from Southampton to my parents’ place), and secondly, that things have changed quite a bit for the better when it comes to all the annoying things you have to do when you move.

I dread moving house every time it happens. There are many reasons for this. I don’t like packing up boxes. I don’t like carrying heavy boxes. I don’t like discovering that the box I spent ages packing is far too heavy to carry, or that it collapses under the weight of the contents if I do manage to get it off the ground. I don’t like trying to squeeze everything into a van (or, in particularly unpleasant cases, a car) and I really don’t like driving a van.

But those aren’t the only things you have to do when you move. They’re the things that are foremost in the mind, sure, because they’re the hard work, physical labour bit. But once you’re in your new place, you have to deal with a whole new set of inconveniences and frustrations, mostly related to telling various utility and service companies that you are now, in fact, living in a different location.

To their credit, a lot of these companies have implemented online interfaces that allow you to tell them that you’re moving and provide them with your meter readings and whatnot. This helps get around one of the things I used to dread — having to spend hours on the telephone listening to Chris de Burgh hold music and then having to deal with talking to an overly-cheerful person reading from a script and trying to convince you to stay with them. (I’ve moved house, asshole — I am leaving your company out of necessity.) In the case of our gas, electricity, water and phone/broadband providers, I’ve been able to inform them that I’ve moved without having to speak to anyone at all. Efficiency! It’s the way of the 21st century.

For the most part, it’s been great, though Andie and I are a bit miffed at BT because they delayed the installation of our broadband and phone connection without any explanation — we now have to survive until the end of the month using only our neighbour’s Wi-Fi hotspot, which carries a rubbish “fair use” policy that means once we go over a certain number of minutes’ usage (which seemed to be devoured alarmingly quickly) it will unceremoniously and without warning disconnect us every 30 minutes. The irony is that said hotspot is a BT service and part of the package we’re paying for — if they hurried up and installed our proper broadband in our new place we wouldn’t be running afoul of their stupid policies. I sent them a stroppy email today politely pointing out that by the time our broadband and phone is installed, we will have paid for a month of pretty much jack shit. Oh well. Patience is a virtue and all that — though it’s infuriating to have such an unreliable connection (the iPhone and Mac in particular struggle to stay connected) when I’m trying to work from home.

Some companies don’t seem to quite “get” the convenience and security of the Internet, however. Take the bank. I bank with Lloyds. Their online banking service is pretty good — it lets me manage my money, transfer money between accounts and make payments quickly and easily. Payments are transferred within a couple of hours rather than taking several days, and there are other features I could use to budget more effectively if I wanted/needed to.

The one thing you can’t do? Change your address. There’s a link for it, oh yes there is, but clicking it takes you to a page inviting you to print out a form and either take it into a branch or post it to them. The reason I am doing this on the Internet is because I don’t want to do either of those things, jackass. Sigh. I can understand the reason for it, of course — it’s presumably something to do with security and the prevention of identity theft, but given that logging into Lloyds uses two-step authentication it’s already a pretty secure service, and really, do you think that sending a form through the post is actually any more secure than transmitting your information over a secure Internet connection? (Clue: It’s not.)

Oh well. I guess I can’t complain too much, really. At least I have some form of Internet access here, and I can walk to the bank to sort things out if and when I can be bothered. And I’ve successfully avoided having to use the phone for all the other stuff, so that’s pretty good really.

All in all, this move has been a lot less painful than it could have been. Okay, granted, I was absent for a lot of it due to my recent jury service, and Andie sorted a bunch of stuff out for us while I was absent, but getting other stuff done has been relatively painless. And once it’s all done (and our bloody Internet is installed, grumble grumble) we can really start to enjoy this new place.

Then think about moving somewhere new. Hah.

1085: Don’t (Always) Ignore the Crap

I last wrote about this topic some time ago, so I figure it’s time for a revisit, given what I’ve been playing and enjoying on my PlayStation 3 recently.

My point today is this: you shouldn’t immediately dismiss stuff that is regarded as “crap” because there’s every chance that if you tried it for yourself, you might just find yourself enjoying it. (Note: I’m not saying that stuff regarded as “crap” is always going to end up being good — some stuff we can all agree is shite — but in many cases it pays to go in with an open mind!)

Let’s take Hyperdimension Neptunia as a timely example. Hyperdimension Neptunia received a spectacular 2/10 panning from Eurogamer’s Simon Parkin, by all accounts a well-respected critic whose opinions a large number of people trust. Consequently, a lot of people didn’t even bother to pick it up. This was such an issue that the (apparently considerably superior) sequel only had a limited print run and is now extremely difficult to find a copy of. (I tracked one down from Italy — European console games tend to be in English by default, perhaps with the packaging localised.)

And yet, while I can see its many flaws, I am having a lot of fun with Hyperdimension Neptunia. It’s bright, brash, colourful, silly and rather entertaining despite being the sort of game some people I know would be embarrassed to be seen playing, particularly when the occasional “fanservice” images make an appearance, or every time the character Compa trips over and flashes her panties at the end of a fight. It’s genuinely amusing, though — if deliberately cringeworthy at times — and packed with plenty of things to do. It combines two of my favourite styles of game — visual novel and JRPG — into one package with some really nice features. I love the ability to set custom images on “summon” spells, for example. Seeing the “I HAS A HERB” cat setting off a wind spell never gets old.

Hyperdimension Neptunia is far from the only example of a game which was poorly received but which I have ended up enjoying. In the post I linked to at the top, I mentioned Duke Nukem Forever and Alpha Protocol, both of which endured critical drubbings for various reasons — Duke for its grossout, sexist humour and Alpha Protocol for its broken gameplay aspects and appalling console versions. And yet in both cases — for I played them both to completion — I found myself having fun, being able to look past the flaws or “problematic” material and find an entertaining experience underneath. Am I somehow “wrong” to feel this way?

Well, of course I’m not. Opinions are entirely subjective, after all. I could tell you I found the critically-acclaimed movie Drive to be stultifyingly boring, for example (I did) but that doesn’t stop you from enjoying it, rewatching it a bajillion times or putting it atop your “My Favourite Movies of All Time” list. Likewise, Nier’s heavy reliance on fetch quests and seemingly tedious activities may cause you to switch off completely, while I found the experience to be an interesting example of a game requiring the player to “method act” the role of the protagonist, and found myself playing it obsessively as a result. We both might tell each other about how much we like our respective Things We Like, but it’s unlikely we’ll sway each other around to our way of thinking. And that’s just fine.

The sad thing, though, is the fact that there are people out there who hold a considerable degree of influence over the public’s spending decisions, and their opinion carries an undue amount of weight that might cause some people to miss out on things they might actually like. If Parkin gives Hyperdimension Neptunia 2/10, you better believe that’s going to affect a large number of people’s decisions as to whether they’re going to buy it or not. (Probably the latter in this instance — in the notoriously top-loaded game review score scale, a score of 2/10 is theoretically reserved for an absolute stinker that is completely broken.) How many of those people whose opinion was swayed by Parkin’s review would actually enjoy the game if they gave it a chance? How many people are actually going to give it a chance after reading that review?

The other thing worth mentioning particularly when it comes to titles like Hyperdimension Neptunia and Duke Nukem Forever is the fact that some critics seem to feel obliged to act as arbiters of taste and decency, when in fact everyone’s tolerance for potentially “offensive” content is completely different. Both Hyperdimension Neptunia and Duke Nukem Forever attracted accusations of sexism on their original release to varying degrees of justification — the specifics of which I’m not going to get into right now because that’s a whole other matter, particularly in the former’s case — and these accusations negatively impacted the critic’s view of the game in both instances. That’s fair enough — as I said, everyone’s “good taste” boundaries are different and said critics are entitled to voice those views — but when it comes to interactive entertainment, subject matter is just one part of the whole experience. And more to the point, in all forms of media, enjoying something that contains potentially objectionable subject matter doesn’t imply that the person reading/watching/playing the thing in question is, by extension, a supporter of that particular viewpoint. In other words, you can like anime boobies and still see actual real-life women as actual real-life people. (I say “you” when, obviously, I mean “I”.)

If you enjoy something, you enjoy something; you shouldn’t feel guilt about your own tastes. Unless, you know, your “tastes” involve bludgeoning kittens, puppies and babies to death with a sledgehammer. (In real life, not in video games, obviously.) Or, you know, actively stirring up hate against a specific social group. Or just generally being a dick. Then you should probably feel a bit guilty. Basically, so long as you’re not actually hurting anyone (physically or psychologically) or actively oppressing someone with the things you like, enjoy whatever you want within reason!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to plumb the depths of the bottom half of Metacritic to see what awesome experiences I can find to enjoy next…

1084: Darkdeath Evilman

So, I seem to have jumped down something of a rabbit-hole with regard to my current gaming. Specifically, I seem to have jumped down the NIS America rabbit-hole, which means lots of brightly-colored anime-style JRPGs with heavy degrees of ridiculousness. Hyperdimension Neptunia, which I discussed yesterday (and which I’m aware is developed by Idea Factory rather than Nippon Ichi themselves), is a fine example of said ridiculousness being taken to the extreme with its personifications of gaming platforms and companies as cute anime girls with a habit of flashing their panties.

I decided to start something on portable in parallel, though, so I had something to play on the toilet/in bed/in coffee shops. I wanted to pick something that was portable-friendly — i.e. something you could dip into in short sessions rather than feeling like you need to spend hours at a time playing, but which would last a good long while in total. The game I picked for this purpose was the rather gloriously-titled Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman for the PSP/Vita, a game from the Disgaea team and one which wears its influences on its sleeve.

Z.H.P. (as it shall be known from hereon) is an isometric-perspective tactical roguelike RPG that plays somewhat like Disgaea (which is normally a strategy game somewhat akin to Final Fantasy Tactics, if you’re unfamiliar) would play if you only controlled one character and could only move them one space at a time per turn. It follows the traditional style of roguelike gameplay, in other words — you move, the enemies move, but between moves you can stand still and contemplate what to do next without fear of getting twatted while you come to your decision. As per usual for the genre, you find yourself exploring a series of increasingly-difficult, increasingly-complex randomly-generated dungeons in an attempt to become as strong as possible and eventually take down the titular bad guy Darkdeath Evilman.

There’s a bit of a twist on the usual formula, though. Rather than featuring a permadeath system that forces you to start over when you bite the big one in a dungeon, Z.H.P. instead features a rather odd levelling system whereby each time you enter a dungeon, you start at level 1, but your total levels gained over your lifetime playing the game determines your base statistics. If you die, you lose all the loot you acquired on that particular dungeon run, but any levels you gained are added on to your total level count, boosting your base statistics by a little and meaning that the next time you start a dungeon run, you’ll be slightly stronger even though you’re still technically level 1. If that makes your head hurt, don’t worry — it starts to make sense after playing for only a short period.

The eventual aim of the game is to work your way through the story and make the nameless, voiceless protagonist (who, rather endearingly, is canonically named simply Main Character) into the hero he was supposed to replace — the Unlosing Ranger, the only one who can defeat Darkdeath Evilman. Every so often in the story, you’ll find yourself returning to Earth from the Bizarro Earth in which you’ve been doing all your dungeon-crawling, and thrust into a traditional JRPG-style battle against Darkdeath Evilman, who is your stereotypical “final boss” sort of character. As the game progresses, these battle sequences become increasingly elaborate — they start with a first-person 8-bit sequence somewhat reminiscent of the end of the original Phantasy Star and gradually progress to… well, I’m not sure yet as I haven’t got that far.

There are some fun additions to the basic roguelike formula, and it’s here that the Disgaea influences are apparent. You can pick up enemies and fling them around, for example, though disappointingly you can’t simply lob them off the edge of a precarious platform into the lava below. You can also throw items from your inventory, many of which have special effects. It also provides a use for items that have degraded to a durability level of 0%, meaning that the bonuses they normally provide are completely ineffective until repaired. If you don’t want to spend your limited funds on repair bills, simply throw them at the enemies.

Then there’s the guest appearances from the Prinnies, the weird explosive penguin-like things from Disgaea. Early in the game, you inexplicably find yourself married to one and gain the once-per-expedition special ability to summon your “wife” and have her bring you a lunchbox to restore your endurance points.

I could go on, but I would like to play the game a bit more before I talk about it too much. Early impressions are very positive, though, and if it’s anything like Disgaea this will be a game designed to keep one occupied for a frighteningly long time. If you’re looking for something endearingly bizarre but which backs up that bizarreness with solid gameplay and good presentation, you could do far worse than check out Z.H.P. — it works on Vita, too, so you can just download it from the PSN store rather than attempting to track down a physical copy.

See you in the dungeon, dood!

1083: Hyperwhatnow Nepperwho?

I finished Trails in the Sky this morning (not last night — it got to 4am and I still hadn’t reached the final boss so I decided to save it for this morning, and it was well worth the wait) so today saw that age-old question, “What to Play Next” rear its head.

I fancied something light-hearted and silly, so I chose Hyperdimension Neptunia. I knew nothing about this prior to starting to play, and just knew that it was rather silly, very Japanese, packed with rather unnecessary fanservice (that I secretly quite enjoy) and not necessarily what you’d call “good” by the traditional definition. However, given that many of the games I’ve enjoyed most of all over the course of the last year have not been what you’d call “good” by the traditional definition (Nier springs immediately to mind) I was willing to give it a chance.

I think I’m going to like it.

Hyperdimension Neptunia casts you in the role of Neptune, a personification of the cancelled console the Sega Neptune. Cast out of Celestia by her goddess sisters (each of whom represents one of the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii respectively) and forced to fend for herself in the lands of Gamindustri, it’s up to her to… well, I don’t really know yet, as I haven’t got that far and the events in the intro left her with amnesia which she conveniently points out is to help the players understand what is going on. I swear I’m not making any of what I just said up. This is indeed a game that represents the seventh-generation “console wars” as ridiculous anime-style battles between anthropomorphised hardware manufacturers.

Besides the silly premise, which I have a lot of time for, there actually seems to be quite an interesting game under there, too. The game unfolds in several distinct components — visual novel-style storytelling sequences; a “between missions” bit where you can shop, read background information and discover sidequests; and dungeon-crawling. The game isn’t really a traditional JRPG in terms of structure — there’s no wandering around field screens or towns, for example, and the story scenes all unfold using head-and-shoulders shots of the characters rather than in-engine graphics, like a visual novel rather than a standard JRPG.

Where the interesting gameplay comes in is in the dungeon-crawling component. Structurally, this is very straightforward — you wander around a dungeon finding treasure chests and occasionally getting into random battles. The characters in your party each have “dungeon abilities” that recharge over time that allow them to do different things — Neptune can smash through obstacles, for example, while Compa, a character who appears early on, can trigger tough battles at special summoning zones to temporarily lower the random encounter rate, and IF, another early character, has the ability to lead the way to normally-invisible treasure chests.

The battle system is turn-based, but makes use of an “ability points” system, whereby each character has a certain number of points that they can spend on their turn. Each move they do costs ability points, and up to four moves can be chained together into a combo. Certain moves allow the combo to continue registering with second, third, fourth sets of four button pushes, and the longer a combo goes on for, the better.

It’s this combo system that provides some rather daunting complexity to the battle system. You’re not limited to the basic skills the game provides for you. Rather, you can redefine pretty much any combination of four buttons to perform any of the character’s unlocked skills to create custom combos. Some skills are learned through levelling up, others through acquiring CD-Rs and CD-R/Ws with skill information on. CD-Rs have preset skills; CD-R/Ws have customizable skills that you can rename and visually tweak by importing an image from your PS3’s photo library. So yes, you can have a spell that summons, say, Twilight Sparkle to kick some ass. This is, as they say, awesome. And hilarious. It also gives people an actual reason to load some images into their PS3’s photo library, which is surely worthy of praise.

So thus far it seems like an interesting game, albeit one with more than a few flaws. On the technical front, the frame rate and graphics aren’t all that great (though the visual novel scenes look lovely and feature animated characters); the dungeons look like they might be a bit “samey” over time; and the game doesn’t do a great job of explaining its more complicated aspects in detail. But, for me anyway, part of the joy in this sort of thing is in discovering the hidden secrets for oneself and working out just what the fuck is going on.

It’s early days yet, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. Let’s see if it has what it takes to keep me playing in the long run!

1082: Squeakers

Apologies for the lateness of the hour, but I’m on the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in Trails in the Sky, and it was getting rather difficult to stop playing. It was one of those times where you start playing at an eminently reasonable hour in the evening, look up and it’s suddenly nearly 2am. Oops. I will likely push on to the finale tonight, since it’s the weekend and all.

But I don’t want to talk about Trails in the Sky today. (Well, I do, but I am specifically choosing not to.) Instead I thought I’d talk a bit about our pet rats. Those who have been following for a while will remember we got Lara and Willow back in June but Willow sadly died a few months later. We left Lara on her own for a little while to see how she was, but she became much less energetic and looked very sad, so it wasn’t long before we went out to try and find her a playmate.

I was a bit worried about this, as Lara and Willow knew each other and got along very well with one another despite being polar opposites personality-wise — Lara is adventurous, curious and mostly quite gentle; Willow was nervous, jumpy and had a habit of biting. (I didn’t get bitten, but Andie assures me that a rat bite fucking hurts.) I’m not sure if they were related, but they certainly got along well. What would happen if we introduced a new, unknown rat into the mix?

We found out when we got Lucy, who was younger than Lara and thus about half her size when she first arrived. We introduced them to each other on “neutral territory” (the bathtub, in this case) and they both had a wander around and a bit of a sniff and didn’t seem to mind each other, so we put them both in the cage to see how they got on. Lucy just hid in the corner not moving for several days, with the exception being the time she terrified us by lying down on her back and pretending to be dead to stop Lara hassling her. We were worried that Lara was being too aggressive towards her, so we tried putting Lucy in a carry box for the night so she could get some rest, but put the carry box inside the cage so that Lara could get used to her scent.

Lara’s behaviour when we did that was both adorable and heartbreaking. You could see her panicking. She thought that we were taking her new friend away from her, and she was frantically scrabbling away at the box trying to get to Lucy. Lucy, meanwhile, was happily getting some rest at last. When we opened up the box in the morning, both of them were fine, and over time they got to know each other, established a pecking order and Lucy started behaving a bit more normally.

The thing that surprised me about owning rats is how much personality the pair of them have. I’ve never owned small furry creatures before, so I didn’t know much about them. (My family had cats when I was younger, and my brother has dogs and cats, but no small furry things.) But the pair of them do obviously have different attitudes and responses to things. I’m not sure how much of this is me projecting human characteristics onto them, but it certainly looks that way, anyhow. As I said above, Lara is adventurous, curious, mostly gentle, protective of Lucy and absolutely loves coming out of the cage to explore all the nooks and crannies of the room. Lucy, meanwhile, is cheeky — there’s no other word for it, really. She regularly sneaks up on Lara and tries to bite her playfully, and you can see Lara just gritting her teeth and putting up with it most times it happens, though occasionally she’ll give Lucy a slap on the nose. As Lucy has grown, she has become more confident, and will hold her own in the play-fights the two of them have now rather than losing every time. She’s also just started coming out of the cage to explore, though not quite as far afield as Lara just yet, and she’s much more talkative than Lara, who stays quiet most of the time. Lucy, meanwhile, is always squeaking (I never knew before owning rats that they squeaked like mice!) and makes a hell of a noise when the two of them are play-fighting, which made us worry a bit the first few times they did it.

Rats are great pets, then. They’re very social — they’ll get up and climb up the side of the cage to come and see you if they know you’re nearby or if you talk to them — and they’re fun and relaxing to watch. They’re amusing and entertaining once they get brave enough to step out of the cage and wander around the room, too, though they’re almost impossible to catch standing still, particularly if they’re female, as apparently female rats are much more inquisitive than the somewhat lazier males. It’s also a bugger to get them back in the cage if you’re in a hurry, but both of ours will return of their own accord when they’ve had enough “playtime”, so I assume this is fairly common behaviour.

I’m glad we got them, in short. It’s nice to have a bit of life in the house when I’m stuck here working by myself (or on evenings when Andie is elsewhere, like tonight) — it helps the place feel less “empty”. I sort of wish I’d learned this a bit sooner. 🙂

1081: Reasons to Get a Wii U (or a Friend Who Owns a Wii U): Nintendo Land

Page_1 I had some friends over tonight for some computer and board game action. I lost our game of Agricola as usual (though not by as much as normal — I’ll take that) but what I really wanted to talk about was the game we played earlier in the evening — Nintendo Land.

I had a feeling that Nintendo Land would go down well, but I’m super-impressed by quite how much fun it really is. We were concentrating on the competitive games, based on the Mario, Animal Crossing and Luigi’s Mansion franchises, and all of them provide chaotic fun for up to five players along with an apt demonstration of exactly what the Gamepad controller device brings to the table.

The Luigi’s Mansion game sees the player with the Gamepad taking on the role of a ghost and up to four players with Wii Remotes playing the part of ghost hunters armed only with torches. The ghost’s job is to knock out all the ghost hunters by sneaking up on them and touching them; the ghost hunters’ job is to reduce the ghost’s hit points to zero by shining light on it. The twist is that the ghost is invisible on the TV screen, which the hunter players are referring to, and only the ghost player gets a full overview of where they are in relation to the others on the Gamepad screen. The ghost also occasionally reveals itself when lightning flashes and when it performs a “dash” action, and the hunters’ controllers vibrate when the ghost is nearby. The ghost player has an on-screen marker showing the boundary of where the vibrations will occur, meaning they can play some amusing mind games with the other players if they desire.

The Animal Crossing game, meanwhile, casts the Gamepad player in the role of two guards and the Wii Remote players in the role of animals trying to collect sweets. The animal players have to collect a particular number of sweets before the guards catch them three times, though the more sweets they are carrying, the slower they move. The twist with this one is that the single Gamepad player controls both guards using the dual analogue sticks on the Gamepad, and their viewpoint pans and zooms to keep both guards in view at once, while the players on the TV may only see what is in their immediate vicinity.

Finally, the Mario-themed game casts the Gamepad player in the role of Mario and the Wii Remote players in the role of various-coloured Toads. It’s Mario’s job to stay un-caught until a timer expires, and it’s up to the Toads to capture him as quickly as possible. Like in the Animal Crossing game, the Toads may only see what is in their immediate vicinity, and their controls are deliberately clunky and awkward to make it more challenging for them to catch the more agile Mario. The Mario player, meanwhile, has a screen that shows both an overview of the entire level (including where the two Toads are) and a close-up of their immediate surroundings. For the most part, the Mario player will be using the overview map to try and stay out of trouble, but when the Toads get near the close-up view comes into it own as Mario tries to avoid their tackles.

These three games offer a tiny subset of what Nintendo Land has to offer — there are a selection of more cooperative games on offer as well as a bunch of single-player games for the Gamepad that would still be fun for friends to take it in turns on.

The interesting thing about Nintendo Land is that it’s a slight shift in attitude from Wii Sports, the pack-in game with the previous-generation Wii. Wii Sports was designed to be accessible and intuitive, making use primarily of motion controls that anyone could perform. Nintendo Land, meanwhile, assumes a basic level of “game literacy” — familiarity with a controller being used “traditionally” — but still remains accessible to a wide audience. Consequently, it strikes a good balance between being casual-friendly as well as challenging and fun to veteran gamers.

Next week I’ll hopefully have the opportunity to play both Nintendo Land and the excellent Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed with a full complement of five players, so I’m looking forward to that. The games described above are great fun with three; I can only imagine the chaos with five. I can’t wait.

Think about that. When was the last time you played a game that you couldn’t wait to get your friends over to your house for?

1080: How These Endless “Friendzone” Rants Make Me Feel

Page_1 Good morning. Today another article about “nice guys” and the concept of the “friendzone” appeared. Here it is.

Today I would like to talk about how this article made me feel.

It made me angry, and it made me want to cry.

Why? Not because I am the sort of person who exhibits those behaviours — I certainly do not expect women I am friends with to immediately jump into bed with me, particularly because I’m now in a committed, loving relationship with someone who is super-awesome — but because I recognise some of the things being described, and the fact that they are being twisted, generalised and used as a means of shaming people feels like a punch in the gut.

I don’t normally talk about this stuff because it’s embarrassing and difficult to talk about, but I am going to make an exception for today as a means of making my point. This article made me feel like absolute fucking shit, even though I know it was not about me. I am going to talk about my past relationships and how they came to be, though naturally I will omit names and personally-identifying details.

Some context for those who are newcomers to this blog or don’t know me very well: I suffer a pretty strong degree of social anxiety, and have done since an early age. I feel enormously uncomfortable when around strangers, clam up completely when faced with the prospect of making small talk, and even, at times, find it difficult to talk to my own friends or relations.

As you might expect, these circumstances are not ideal for getting together with someone. Consequently, even as all my peers around me at school were getting into relationships, going out with people, having sex and bragging about all of the above, I was left constantly frustrated and bewildered. My already-active imagination would picture what it might be like to be in a relationship with someone — note: relationship, not simply having sex — and I’d even go so far as to imagine how those conversations might go in great detail. One of the diaries I kept as a teenager included numerous fantasy scenarios of how I might get a girl I liked to talk to me, and how I might express my feelings. Sex did not enter into this at all — I simply wanted to be with that person. (I’m aware writing fantasy conversations in itself is creepy, but I was ashamed of these entries the moment I wrote them, and inevitably ended up throwing them away immediately.)

The fact I overthought these things meant, inevitably, that I never did anything about them, and I was always absolutely mortified any time a friend of mine would tell the girl in question that I liked them. I hated myself — you can thank near-constant bullying through primary school and a fair proportion of secondary school for that — and thought that the girl discovering that I liked her “in that way” would cause her to immediately hate me because I was certain that no-one would ever want to be with me. (This never happened, of course, but it’s the way my mind worked, and to a certain extent still does.)

Fast-forward a bit, and I got into my first relationship during a school production. I had got very close to a female friend of mine, and after the fact I learned that most of my friends were expecting us to get together as part of the production. However, what actually happened was that she set me up with a friend of a friend whom I didn’t know very well and didn’t particularly fancy. I’m not particularly proud of saying this, but I entered into that relationship because I was worried no-one else would be interested in me, and I wouldn’t get another chance. (I was young. And stupid. And suffering from what I now recognise to be mental health issues.)

As it turned out, said relationship grew quite nicely over time, and I realised I actually did quite like this girl — I just didn’t know her that well before we were pushed together. We did a lot together, I got on well with the rest of her family and it was all looking good.

We never had sex, though. I remember vividly “missing my chance” on this. We were sitting in her bedroom one day fooling around, and she mumbled something to me. I couldn’t make out the words because she was embarrassed to say them out loud. In retrospect, it was obvious that she was saying “I really, really want to make love to you” but I was too scared to make assumptions — too wrapped up in my own self-loathing to believe that anyone would ever want to have sex with me. I asked her what she said, and to say it more clearly. She wouldn’t. The moment passed.

A couple of months later, it was our school prom. We went together. We did not leave together, because she cheated on me on the dance floor with a guy she is now married to. Good on her, I guess.

My only other relationship at school was one which lasted from Monday to Friday of one week, during which time I saw my paramour precisely once and kissed her once before she decided at the end of the week that actually, she didn’t want to go out with me after all, and that we should go back to being friends again. Once again, sex did not enter the equation. The fact that our relationship began at a recording of Songs of Praise may have had something to do with that. (I swear I am not making that part up.)

Fast forward to university. Early in my student career, I met someone who seemed perfect for me. We spent a ton of time together. She was constantly in my room, she was into the things I was into and we had a great time together. I knew very early in our relationship that she was someone I wanted in my life. I was attracted to her, I liked the person she was and I wanted her around as much as possible.

I said nothing. Because I was too scared. Because I hated myself. Because I thought she would hate me and think I was some sort of disgusting pervert if I said anything. Consequently, she got together with someone else, who I spent a healthy proportion of time absolutely despising as a result. (Said person is now, paradoxically, one of my closest friends. Funny how things work out.)

I liked a couple of other people at university. I even went to the effort of sending a secret Valentine to one, complete with a cuddly toy and some truly dreadful poetry. (I am never writing poetry again.) She immediately knew it was me and let me down gently. I left it at that and we continued being the friends we were before. Again, sex didn’t enter into the equation. I just liked this person and wanted to be with them.

My next girlfriend at university was someone I got together with at a Christmas meal for one of the groups I was a member of. I’d never met her prior to that night, but we hit it off and were in each other’s arms by the end of the night. Neither of us were the one-night stand types, though, so we went our separate ways at the end of the evening and arranged to meet up again. We went out a few times, but she dumped me after I bought her a Christmas present because it made her feel “weird”. That made me feel weird.

We subsequently met up again later a few times and went out, but we eventually lost contact. To this day, I’m still not entirely sure quite what went on there, and if I could have done things anything differently. Ships in the night and all that.

I could go on, but we’d be hitting a bit close to home if I started talking about some of these other relationships. What I wanted to (hopefully) make clear by sharing some of these things is that in many cases, a dude making friends with a girl and complaining of not being able to take things any further is not always a case of “putting in kindness coins and expecting sex to fall out”, as runs the phrase I’ve seen numerous times recently. In many cases, it is a simple case of the dude in question not knowing how to express that he would like to take things any further. In more cases than one, you can probably see that I blew my chances with someone largely as a result of my own crippling self-loathing and lack of confidence.

I have had a number of situations in my life that fall into the “friendzone” category by popular definition, and I’m fully aware they’re my own fault for not expressing myself properly. But it’s not a case of being a creeper, or of expecting a woman to provide me sexual gratification in exchange for my kindness — in every single fucking case I wanted an actual relationship with that person; because I wanted to be with them; because I wanted to share my life with them; because I felt we understood each other. It was not because I expected them to have sex with me. It was not because I wanted to have sex with them. I didn’t express myself because I was too fucking terrified to say anything to them, because I was too fucking terrified that they would run away from me screaming if they thought I was a creep who was leching after them.

You see, herein lies my problem with articles like the one I shared at the start of this post. They are gross generalisations. There are men out there who don’t know when to quit. There are men out there who have unreasonable expectations of women. There are men out there who see women purely as sex objects there for their own gratification.

I am not one of them.

But every time I read one of these endless fucking “friendzone” articles that uses a lot of words to say almost nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times already, I feel like shit. I feel like a creep. I feel like a piece of sub-human scum. Why? Because I recognise some of the situations being described. I have been in some of the situations described. And yet, apparently, the following quote from the above article is universally How It Is:

Here’s the hard truth, Friendzone. You’re not a nice guy. You are a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who’s too afraid of rejection to just tell a woman how you really feel.

Yes. Yes I am. Yes, I am a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who is too afraid of rejection to tell a woman how I really feel. Do you know why I am afraid of rejection? Because I hate myself. Because the early part of my life was spent with people reinforcing my own self-hatred through near-constant bullying and harassment. Though those days may be long gone, the mental scars remain. And every time you say shit like the above, even though it may not be intended to be about me specifically, I take it personally. And it hurts. And it makes me angry. And it makes me want to cry.

It hurts even more when you make the assumption that I am afraid of rejection purely because I want sex. As I have hopefully outlined above, in every single case I was the one who wanted an actual relationship but found myself unable to express it properly. I’m pretty sure I can’t be the only person in the world who feels like this, so every time you publicly shame “friendzone guys” like this, you run the risk of doing some very real damage to what is probably already a very fragile sense of self-esteem and self-worth for those people you have inadvertently and inconsiderately lumped in to your catch-all descriptions. While you may cause some of the creepers to re-evaluate their behaviour and start behaving in a less misogynistic manner — though personally I feel it is unlikely that they will read anything like the article above and take it to heart — you’re just as likely to make people who already lack confidence to never ever want to put themselves out there. (Those are the people who will read the articles.)

I am very fortunate in that after my last relationship — which led to marriage — fell apart and nearly destroyed me completely, I found someone who loves me for who I am, respects me and is a good match for me. Not everyone is so lucky. If I were still alone right now, I don’t want to think about how awful I’d be feeling. Fortunately, instead I find myself on the way back up from the bottom rather than slowly sliding into the abyss.

So just fucking stop it with the “friendzone” and “nice guy” articles. Please. We get it.

(As an aside, I would like to stop writing about this now because I know it’s probably quite tiresome to read. But in this instance I felt it important to respond to the article linked above. I will return to writing about something more entertaining tomorrow. Hopefully. None of you die or anything in the next 24 hours.)

1079: It’s 2013

Page_1 Welcome to the first day of a new year. Doesn’t feel much different, does it? That’s because it isn’t, really, yet we ascribe such huge importance to the December 31/January 1 changeover that you’d believe the world ended and was subsequently reborn every New Year’s Eve.

I’ve seen a number of people expressing such cynical sentiments recently, and they do sort of have a point. But at the same time it’s quite nice to have a relatively arbitrary place to draw a line under everything and say “right — that’s enough of that, time to move on with new and better things.”

I do it myself, as you’ve probably noticed. I refer to 2010 as a “bad year” because it was largely memorable for the bad things that happened in it. 2011 and 2012 were relatively unremarkable throughout their duration, with relatively little to distinguish the two of them, and yet here, now, on January 1, 2013, I still find myself looking forward to a new year as if something is going to be magically different. And yet we all know it’s probably going to be the same old, same old for the most part, because those big changes in the world take significant amounts of time.

This is true of new year’s resolutions, too. While it’s admirable to use the start of a new year as a “starting line” for a new challenge, many people are a bit unrealistic about their own expectations of themselves. “I’ll get fit,” they’ll say. “I’ll lose weight.” It’s not that simple — those aren’t behaviours that you can just “turn on”, sadly, otherwise life would be much easier for the fatties of the world. It takes time to change, and it’s easy to fall off the wagon. Believe me, I know.

As such, I’m not going to make any grand, sweeping statements about what I will or won’t achieve in the coming year. It would be nice if I could get fit and lose some weight, but I know from past experience that neither of those things are particularly easy. There are plenty of other things I would like to achieve, too, but none of those are easy, either. As such, setting unrealistic expectations for myself is only going to set me up for future disappointment. Much better to set some long-term targets and use the year to at least start working on them, even if they do not come to complete fruition in a single year. After all, unexpected things have a habit of throwing spanners in the work. Best-laid plans and all that.

As such, here are some things I am going to make a start on (or, in some cases, revisit) in 2013, with no promises of any of them actually being finished in 2013:

I will do some form of exercise at least twice a week. I’ve had a hefty period off from running, gymming or indeed anything — a combination of depression and a general lack of motivation sapped my inclination towards doing these things towards the end of the year. Now I’m in our new place, I will make an effort to use at least two days in the week for sweaty purposes. I anticipate this will primarily take the form of taking my bike to Southampton Common, which is very near our house and eminently suitable for cycling around.
I will work on my visual novel book. I have already made a start on this, and now I’m a bit more settled, I’m in a position where I can devote some time to it regularly.
I will make a game. It will be a small-scale, not-overly ambitious game made with RPG Maker, and it will probably be rubbish. But I will use my writing skills and creativity to make something I can show to other people. If I find myself able to make said game relatively quickly, I might even make another one that is better.
I will play the piano several times per week. I have had relatively little motivation to make music for a while (again, partly due to depression and whatnot) but I will regularly settle down and attempt to get my skills back up to scratch.
I will see my friends more often. I am fed up of being a hermit. I know I am not an especially social person, and social anxiety doesn’t make that any easier, but I would like to see my friends more often — for coffee, food, board games, video games, whatever. I am in the right place to do it, so I will take full advantage of that where possible.

I also have a more concrete target in mind, but I will keep that to myself for the moment, and perhaps share it in the near future.

For now, after an exhausting couple of days, I think I need a rest. Back to regular working days tomorrow for me — if you, too, are heading back to work, I hope you’ve had a suitably relaxing break and are ready to go back to the grindstone. And for everyone, I hope you had a wonderful (or at least tolerable) New Year celebration — here’s to 2013 being a good one. Cheers!