1229: What’s Next

Those of you who have me on some form of social media will know this already, but I’ve started my new job. Excitingly, this is the first ever new job I’ve had that was accompanied by an official press release. Yes, really — check it out.

For those of you too lazy to check out that link I’ve so graciously provided for you, allow me to explain as much as I’m able to at present.

You may be familiar with the video games website Eurogamer, home of some fine commentary on games, the games industry and all manner of other things. Eurogamer is one of the few European (specifically, British) sites that has risen to prominence amid the dominance of primarily American publications such as Gamespot, IGN, Kotaku and Polygon. However, one thing Eurogamer lacked — as you might expect from the name — is a presence in the US.

Enter USgamer, a new site set to launch into beta next week, and a site on which I’m officially acting as News Editor, but in practice will be contributing a whole lot of lovely stuff to on a regular basis. USgamer will be more than just a reskin of Eurogamer — it’s going to be a great, very distinctive site, but you’ll have to wait until next week to see exactly how and why it’s great.

I’ve been preparing some content this week in preparation for the site’s launch, and I’ve been surprised how refreshing it’s been. After over a year of writing about mobile and social games — a good 80% of which were total bobbins — it’s an absolute pleasure to be able to get my teeth back into writing about the industry as a whole, and specifically to explore, criticise and wax lyrical on the parts I’m truly passionate about.

It pains me a little to admit, but there were times when I was ashamed to be associated with the mobile and social side of things. There are too many companies out there peddling products that are just flat-out sleazy in the ways they attempt to coerce their audience into paying exorbitant amounts of money for “consumable” digital goods; in the way they shamelessly clone other people’s work (or even, in some cases — *cough*Kabam*cough* — their own); or in their gross, misleading, often sexist or otherwise offensive advertising (Hai, Wartune!). I made a point of calling out these objectionable titles whenever possible, but I fear my criticisms may have fallen on deaf ears in most instances. So long as you keep pulling in the monthly and daily active users, it seems, it doesn’t matter if you steal a bit of artwork here, outright lie about your game there, charge £70 for in-app purchases everywhere.

The mainstream games industry isn’t free of sleaze and anti-consumer practices, of course, but at least it’s easier to avoid, whereas it’s fast becoming the norm in mobile and social, disappointingly. But I digress. My thoughts on social games and how they fail to cater to lifelong gamers have been well-documented.

No, the thing that is nicest about my new position at USgamer is the fact that I get to write about things I truly care about. I’m currently preparing a feature on the history of a particular game genre (find out what soon!), for example, and I’d forgotten quite how enjoyable it is to research and put together pieces like this. Gaming is a rich and diverse art form, and it’s exciting to look back on how far things have come since the inception of the medium. It’s also exciting to look forward to the future and imagine where we might be in a year or two — and it’s also exciting to explore the sheer breadth of content that’s available now. For every Call of Duty, there’s an Ar Tonelico, a Fez, a Dungeons of Dredmor, a Long Live the Queen, a Deadly Premonition… there’s certainly more to talk about than one person could ever manage in a lifetime, and new things happening all the time.

As you can probably tell, I’m very excited about this new position and about the site as a whole. I’m aware of the irony of me — an Englishman in, well, England — writing for a site called “USgamer”, but I’m extremely happy to be working with the team that’s in place, which includes some industry veterans as well as some old colleagues from my days on GamePro. It’s going to be a fantastic site once it’s up and running and available to the public, and I can’t wait to show it to you when it goes live.

1228: Dungeon Delving

Way back before I started doing this daily blogging shenanigans — yes, there was a time when I was an erratic blogger, just like normal people on the Internet — you may recall that I once gave a harrowing account of the adventures of Count Kurt von Hellstrom and his merry band of warriors, otherwise known as the characters my friends and I rolled to play a campaign of Games Workshop’s tabletop roguelike Warhammer Quest. On the off-chance you haven’t been reading this blog since December 2009, here’s a link for your delectation.

I greatly enjoyed my experiences with Warhammer Quest, though it hasn’t hit the gaming table for a good few years now, which is a shame. It takes quite a long time to set up, you see, and the heavily-random nature of the game’s encounters wasn’t altogether to the taste of a couple of our group; our more recently-acquired Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition is scratching the dungeon-crawling itch a bit better for the group as a whole. Despite this, I still consider myself highly privileged to own a copy of this much sought-after collector’s item, and one that is in pretty good (certainly playable) condition, too.

As such, it will probably not surprise you to hear that when Rodeo Games, developer of the excellent Hunters series of XCOM-style turn-based strategy games for iOS devices, was working on a digital adaptation of Games Workshop’s classic, I sat up and paid attention. Hunters and its sequel already played more than a little bit like Games Workshop’s Space Marine-based board games such as Space Hulk and Space Crusade, so I was confident that they were a good team to take on the challenge of porting Warhammer Quest to the small screen.

And you know what? They’ve done a great job. The iOS version of Warhammer Quest, which hit the iOS App Store around midnight last night, is a fantastic adaptation of the board game and its various foibles, tweaked just enough to feel like an original video game rather than a straight-up port of the board game’s mechanics.

The iOS version of Warhammer Quest features a substantial single-player campaign in which the player’s party of heroes moves between various towns in the Warhammer Old World, and takes on quests, as all good heroes should do. Most quests are introduced by some well-written text that gives a good feel of context to the dungeon crawling, and these are supported by various encounters in the dungeons themselves.

The actual dungeon-crawling gameplay is very similar to how the board game works. Characters have a particular move allowance for each turn, and a certain number of ranged and melee attacks available, assuming they have the appropriate weapons equipped to perform these. The wizard character may cast spells on his turn as well as moving and attacking, and all characters may also use items or certain other special abilities as well as moving and attacking.

Fans of the board game will recognise certain specific quirks of the tabletop version — for example, rather than having a set pool of magic to cast spells at will, the wizard character is dependent on the randomly-determined Winds of Magic that change each turn and provide the power required to cast spells. Likewise, the satisfying “Deathblow” rule is in effect, which means any time a character defeats an enemy in a single mighty blow, they can automatically attack any other adjacent enemies and sometimes clear out a room rather quickly.

A few changes have been made, however. The level-up system, which was simply based on the amount of gold acquired in the board game version, takes the form of a more traditional experience point-based system in the iOS version. This works just fine, and a helpful breakdown of who killed what (or healed whom) at the end of a quest helps you easily figure out which of your characters is pulling their weight and which ones need to step up to the plate a bit more readily in the next adventure.

There’s a couple of frustrating bugs present in the current version, which mars the experience a little — firstly, occasionally the game will get “stuck” while resolving an encounter upon entering a new room tile and require a restart to proceed. (Thankfully, the game autosaves regularly, so you’ll be back before the move you made that froze the game.) Secondly, the game’s “hardcore” mode, in which characters can die permanently, doesn’t appear to work correctly at present — I lost a character in an early quest, completed the rest of it and was very surprised to discover them waiting for me back in town when I returned.

The game also falls into the trap of offering obnoxious “Get more Gold” in-app purchases for players too lazy to earn their way to higher-tier equipment. Not only does the ability to purchase in-game currency remove all need to manage your finances carefully — an important part of the game if you’re playing it properly — but it also raises questions over how well-balanced the in-game economy actually is. Is the rate of gold acquisition in the game deliberately slow in order to push players in the direction of the in-app purchases? It’s hard to say at this early stage, but it’s something that will be on the mind of some players.

The game also includes a selection of day-1 DLC — three new characters and a bolt-on series of quests. Normally, I object thunderously to day-1 DLC but when the game itself is just £2.99 it’s hard to get too mad, particularly when each package adds a significant amount of cool stuff to the game and is still pretty cheap even if you buy all of them.

Despite these issues, the iOS version of Warhammer Quest is well worth your time if you’re a dungeon-crawling fan. An update should hopefully fix the bugs described above, and with any luck Rodeo will continue to support the game with new content over time. As it stands, they claim there’s 25-30 hours of single-player content in the game already, which should keep you busy for a while.

Download it here.

1227: Cards of Love

One of the games I had the chance to try out during my recent trip to Canada was a charming little card game called Love Letter, the brainchild of Seiji Kanai and the fourth entry in AEG’s Tempest series of games that share the same setting. Today, my own copy of it finally arrived, so I thought I’d talk about it a bit. I know I already mentioned it a number of posts ago, but I thought I’d dedicate a whole post to it.

In Love Letter, players take on the role of potential suitors to the princess of Tempest. Unfortunately, grieving for her arrested mother — presumably an event which occurred in one of the previous games — the aforementioned princess has locked herself in the castle and is not receiving visitors, let alone missives declaring various eligible bachelors’ undying love for her.

Or is she? Fortunately, there is a selection of people around the castle who are able to get your sweet words of love to the princess, and it’s entirely possible that you might be able to get her to come out of her room, if only you can just get that message to her.

These people — including the princess herself — are represented by the 16 cards that make up the complete Love Letter deck. Each is marked with a number, which denotes how “close” that person is to the princess, and each number also corresponds to a particular type of character. All the “1” cards are guards, for example, while number “8” is the princess herself. Certain cards, such as the princess, her best friend the Countess, the prince and the king, only have one card each; others have several duplicates, with the most numerous being the guards.

A round of Love Letter runs thus: first a single card is removed from the deck, without anyone seeing what it is. Following this, each player is dealt a single card, which becomes their hand. On each player’s turn, they draw a card from the communal stack of remaining cards and either discard it or the other card in their hand. When a card is discarded, its special ability must be resolved. If a player discards the princess, they are out of the round as the princess has thrown their letter into the fire. Other cards are laid face-up in a stack in front of the player, allowing the others to see which cards have been discarded already, and thus deduce which ones are probably in the other players’ hands.

Knowledge of the other players’ hands is extremely important, as several of Love Letter’s cards have special abilities that can knock out players if you correctly identify their cards. Guards, for example, allow you to ask another player if they have a specific card in their hand, and if they do, they are caught by the guards and are out of the round. The Baron, meanwhile, sees you compare your other card’s rank with that of another player, and the highest rank wins. This has the unfortunate side-effect of also revealing your hand to the player you’re comparing against, so you’d better be sure you’ll win before pulling out the Baron.

It quickly becomes apparent after a short session that Love Letter is a game about bluffing. Certain cards are clearly designed with this in mind — for example, the Countess card, which is second only to the princess in terms of rank, must be discarded if the player has the prince or king as their other card, since they don’t approve of her. However, there’s nothing stopping you from discarding the Countess when you don’t have either of these cards in hand — purely to make people believe that you do.

The round ends either when all players except one have been eliminated, or if the draw deck is exhausted, at which point all surviving players reveal their hands, and the highest-ranked card wins a token of the princess’ affection. The cycle then repeats until someone gains the required number of tokens, determined by how many people are playing.

Love Letter is a simple production, but it’s, if you’ll pardon the phrase, lovely. It doesn’t come in a standard game box — rather, it comes in a charming little red velvet bag with the game’s name embroidered on it. The cards themselves are of decent quality and sport some lovely artwork, and the tokens of the princess’ affection are that kind of little coloured transparent plastic cube that look like they’d be delicious but will actually probably cause you to choke.

The game itself is ideal filler material, as it’s over and done with within about 15-20 minutes, which makes it a great pre-dinner game, or a great game to play while you’re waiting for one of the rest of your group to finish having a long poo or something. It’s also quite ridiculously cheap, though it is a tad hard to find at present due to its sudden explosion in popularity.

In the meantime, find out a bit more about it over at BoardGameGeek, the best resource for board game information on the whole Internet.

1226: Call Me ‘Pan’

I have been contemplating my own mortality lately.

Actually, that’s a total lie. I’ve simply been pondering what it means to be 32 years old, and whether society expects something different of me to what I am providing.

You see, in many ways I consider myself to be a “grown up” but in lots of others I feel very immature, and I’m actually quite pleased about the latter part. I still feel odd when I hear, say, a mother in a supermarket refer to me as “that man” rather than “that boy” when telling her child to get out of my way. Conversely, I don’t feel any shame in purchasing things that are for adults (get your mind out of the gutter) such as alcohol, 18-rated videos or mature-rated games or other media. I occupy a sort of weird middle ground where I’m aware I’m an adult, but I have no particular desire to start acting like one.

Why am I babbling on about this? Well, it stems from a conversation Andie and I just had where we both agreed that when I’m 60+ I will probably still be happy to sit around in my pants playing video games where girls’ clothes fall off to allow them to absorb more magic from the air, or to bust out the board games for a social occasion rather than doing something more dignified like a dinner party or whatever. I will also probably never stop finding burping, farting and the word “cock” funny.

I feel pretty confident that that is how my life is probably going to go. And I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever. (Neither does Andie, I might add.)

Why? Because being a grown-up is boring. Being a grown-up means being interested in things like bank accounts and shares and insurance providers and all manner of other equally tedious things. I’m aware that many of these things are essential to survival, but I just don’t have the time, energy or inclination to waste on them any more than necessary. I keep my financial arrangements simple but effective, for example, and so long as service providers such as insurers and utilities aren’t actively robbing me, I’m happy to pay them their money just so I don’t have to think about complicated things. About the most “grown-up” thing I’m prepared to entertain the thought of is buying a house, and even then that’s largely because 1) I want a cat and 2) I want to be able to put up awesome pictures without having to worry about where I’m putting holes in the walls.

There are doubtless some people out there who would chide me for this arguably reckless attitude, but the fact is that — at present, anyway — I’m happy with the way my life is in terms of boring things like financial security and who supplies electricity to my flat. And, frankly, my own ultimate goal for existence isn’t particularly lofty or ambitious — I just want to be happy. As longtime readers of this blog will probably know, I have had more than a few lengthy periods of unhappiness over the years, so my current state of reasonable contentment is quite enjoyable, frankly. Long may it continue.

The only really frustrating thing about taking this approach to life is, of course, the fact that not everyone around shares the same desire to remain “young at heart”. Some people I know actively want to be grown-ups, and to have grown-up responsibilities and whatnot. Some people I know get excited about things like extensions and gardening and their new investments and all manner of other things. And fair play to them, if that’s what makes them happy. I just don’t find anything either interesting or desirable in behaving in that manner, and that’s why I intend to stay the way I am for as long as I possibly can.

And if you don’t like it, you can &c. &c.

1225: Red Wizard Needs Z’s Badly

I’m exhausted. I’m not quite sure why I feel so utterly exhausted because I slept well last night and today hasn’t exactly been a particularly strenuous day. We played a couple of short games this morning before departing the pleasant country farmhouse we’d been staying in over the weekend, drove back, then, presumably, did our respective “Things” once we got home rather than immediately falling into a coma like I feel like doing right now.

The only thing I can possibly attribute it to is the two gin and tonics I had last night. I don’t really drink any more so even a tiny bit of alcohol tends to have quite a strong impact on me — disappointingly, this doesn’t tend to take the form of getting amusingly giggly or wobbly any more; rather, it tends to just make me a bit tired, particularly the day after I’ve been drinking. I guess what I’m enduring is a sort of hangover, albeit a rather pathetic one that will be immensely disappointing to those who used to enjoy past drunken (and post-drunken) ramblings.

The other thing it could be, of course, is the fact that we stayed up until about 2 in the morning playing various combinations of board, card and computer games, then tumbled into bed (not together) before waking up relatively early (for a bank holiday Monday, anyway) today.

Either way, it’s not a particularly good show, is it? I vividly remember the days when I’d happily stay up all night just for the hell of it (and regret it for the majority of the following day, particularly if there were any university lectures involved) and consume several gallons of alcoholic beverages before texting people I fancied messages with lots of X’s on the end of them (the number of X’s was typically proportional to how much I fancied them) and collapsing into bed, quite possibly fully-clothed.

Depressingly, the time when I was able to behave like that on a regular basis was over ten years ago now. Longtime readers will doubtless note that the posts I linked to above were from relatively early in this whole #oneaday lark, but they were isolated incidents rather than something I was doing on a regular basis.

Actually, I say “depressingly”, but I don’t really feel the need to stay up until ungodly hours in the morning and stagger in as pissed as a fart on a regular basis. At the tender age of 32, I’m more than happy to spend my evening lounging on the sofa watching some entertaining videos or playing a game. It doesn’t stop me from indulging in a late night once in a while, of course — apparently I just have to be prepared to deal with the consequences the following day!

Now I am going to go to bed and possibly sleep for about a thousand years. (Note: It will probably not be about a thousand years. Probably more like 8 hours or so, I imagine.) Good night, and hopefully I’ll have a more lively brain that is willing to talk about something a bit more interesting on the morrow.

1224: The Clue is ‘Tits’

I’m away on an (almost) full weekend of board gaming fun as I write this. Today we were particularly pleased that we actually managed to finish a complete game of Mage Knight — albeit the “quick” scenario, which still took from 10am until 6pm. (Granted, we did go out to the pub and have lunch halfway through, but still.)

What I really wanted to talk about today, though, was an interesting little game I picked up having heard it was good, but not really knowing a great deal about it. That game is Dixit, and I can see now why it’s so highly-regarded by many gaming groups.

Here’s the gist. You’re dealt a hand of six oversized cards, each of which depicts some gorgeous storybook-style imagery that doesn’t necessarily tie in with a specific concept — instead, they’re all deliberately ambiguous. The reason for this is that it’s up to the players to come up with descriptions for them.

Each turn, the player assigned as the “storyteller” must secretly pick a card from their hand, then lay it face-down on the table. They must then describe it using a word, sentence, phrase or even guttural noise, at which point the other players at the table pick the card from their hands that they think most closely fits the storyteller’s description. The submitted cards are then jumbled up and revealed, and everyone except the storyteller has to secretly vote on which one they think was the original card. If either everyone or no-one gets it right (indicating that the storyteller was either too obvious/specific or too vague respectively) then the storyteller scores no points, while everyone else scores two points plus another one per vote that was on their card. If at least one person got the storyteller’s card right, both they and the storyteller get three points each, and the other players still get one point per vote on their card.

Play then proceeds until you’ve exhausted the deck, at which point whoever has the highest score wins.

It’s a really interesting game. The mechanics are super-simple and for some groups it might be kind of a hard sell, because it sounds like fluffy filler with no real substance. And perhaps in some respects it is. But on the other hand, it’s also an extremely clever game about bluffing, misdirection and understanding the people who are sitting at the table with you. As storyteller, your ideal approach to your turn is to play a card and make an appropriate reference that only one other person at the table — preferably the person in last place — will get. Too obvious and you’ll score nothing; not obvious enough and, again, you’ll score nothing. It’s a fine line.

Where the strategy of the game, such as it is, comes in is in the combination of playing appropriate cards and giving appropriate clues while simultaneously getting your head around how the other players are playing. Do they tend to make literal references? Do they try and be deliberately obtuse? Are they obviously trying to pander to someone else’s sensibilities? In short, can you figure out how they think?

It may sound like a somewhat flimsy premise for a game, but we played two full games this evening and it became clear very quickly that you could spot patterns in people’s behaviour and adjust your own play style accordingly — while the mechanics are simple, the real complexity of Dixit comes in reading your fellow players and determining what they’re likely to do next. Knowing the people at the table obviously helps, as this enables you to describe a card using carefully-selected words or phrases that will mean something to some, but not all of the people you’re playing against.

I was very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable the game was, and I’m looking forward to playing it again sometime — its simple nature means that it’s particularly well-suited to both those who are unfamiliar with more complex board games as well as established gaming groups who are looking for something a little “lighter” between bouts of Power Grid or Agricola.

1223: Chronicle of the Godslayer

One of my favourite iOS games also happens to be one of my favourite physical multiplayer games. Dubbed Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer (not Wrath of the Godslayer as I seem to keep thinking it is), it’s what’s known as a “deckbuilding” game, and it has numerous attractive qualities. It has simple to understand rules, it plays at a pleasingly rapid pace, and it provides a lot of the fun found in expensive collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering and its ilk without requiring that you obsessively try and collect rare cards via fair means or foul.

Okay, it doesn’t have anywhere near the depth of Magic, say, but it provides its own entertaining experience that is eminently worthwhile.

Here’s the gist of Ascension for those who have never encountered either it or a deckbuilding game before. You begin the game with a deck made up of Apprentices and Militia cards. Each of these is worth one of one of the game’s two currencies: Apprentices are worth 1 “rune” while Militia are worth 1 “combat”. The basic mechanic of the game involves you playing cards from your hand and then using the total accumulated value of “rune” cards to purchase new cards to add to your deck, and to use the total accumulated value of “combat” cards to defeat monster cards and score points. Once a communal pool of points has been exhausted, the game draws to a close and whoever has the highest total score acquired through both defeated monsters and purchased cards wins.

Simple, right? Where it gets interesting is in the fact that most of the cards you purchase or defeat in the game have some form of special effect that gets resolved when you play them. Some are “constructs”, which means that they remain in play and have an ongoing effect, in the Storm of Souls variant, there are also monsters that provide you with “trophies” to hold on to that can be redeemed at a later time for various benefits. The particularly fun thing about the game is in spotting which cards will be most advantageous to you and purchasing or defeating them. As you buy cards, your deck expands — this potentially provides you with more options, but at the same time makes it harder for “favourite” cards to come around more quickly; conversely certain cards’ special abilities let you “banish” cards from your deck to whittle it down to size if necessary.

Finding a good balance between acquiring cards and offloading trash is key, because simply having the biggest deck isn’t a guarantee of success; at the same time, though, the point value of the cards you have purchased is secret until the end of the game, so it’s entirely possible for someone to have been apparently ahead of you on points for most of a match, only for you to swoop in and defeat them with the value of the cards you’ve acquired over the course of the game.

The nice thing about the iOS version of the game is that it’s a totally faithful recreation of the card game experience, only with nice 21st-century benefits such as asynchronous online multiplayer — play your turn when it’s convenient to you — and, well, the ability to play without faffing around with all those cards. (That said, there is something rather pleasant about playing a card game’s physical incarnation.)

The iOS version of Ascension is developed by a company called Playdek, who are also responsible for a number of other excellent board and card game ports for iOS, including Nightfall, Summoner Wars, Can’t Stop, Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil and Fluxx. They’re also responsible for the upcoming iOS version of Agricola, which I’m hoping will help me end my long-standing losing streak on that bloody game by allowing me the opportunity to practice a bit more regularly. If you’re an iDevice-toting board game fan, you could certainly do far worse than check their various pieces of awesomeness out.

1222: Stupid Acronym, Great Game

I’ve been playing First Encounter Assault Recon, or F.E.A.R. to its friends, recently. And while its acronym-based title is mildly cringeworthy — look, it must be scary, it’s called F.E.A.R.! — what I’ve discovered is that it’s actually a rather magnificent game that I’m sorry I haven’t got around to sooner.

I’m not normally a big fan of first-person shooters because all too many of them these days follow the Call of Duty model — linear pathways with no divergence punctuated with predictable shooting galleries coupled with a story which neither I nor the developers could give a shit about because the focus of the game is squarely on multiplayer. That’s not to say Call of Duty is necessarily a bad thing, of course — the millions of people who buy every single installment prove this fact — but it’s just not for me.

For me, however, I grew up with first-person shooters as single-player experiences: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, SiN, Half-Life… the list goes on. And while many of these had a multiplayer component, it was only really Doom and Quake that (arguably) pushed it to the forefront. Given the time they came out, it wasn’t practical for me to explore multiplayer at all due to the poor quality of your average Internet connection — most of us here in the U.K. were still using dial-up at that point, after all. As such, I still tend to prefer the solitary experience of a good first-person shooter.

Which is why I’m enjoying F.E.A.R. so much. While it did launch with a (now-defunct, save for a fan-run service) multiplayer component, the focus of the game is very much on its single-player story. While perhaps a little slow to get started, after playing for a few hours last night, I found myself well and truly enraptured by the curious tale it has to tell.

To say too much about the story would be to spoil it, but suffice to say all is not as it first appears, as you might expect. The story is paced extremely well, flip-flopping between relatively conventional “military types barking orders at each other” and some seriously weird shit going on. Monolith, the developers of F.E.A.R., clearly played a lot of System Shock 2 at some point as a lot of the “weird shit” going on in F.E.A.R. is of a similar ilk to the “weird shit” that goes on in System Shock 2 — hallucinations, ghosts and all manner of other quasi-supernatural phenomena, all of which is kept tantalisingly mysterious throughout most of the game.

F.E.A.R.’s protagonist is the very embodiment of a silent protagonist the player is supposed to superimpose their own personality over the top of. He doesn’t even have a name, for heaven’s sake, being referred to only as “point man”. Unlike many other first-person shooters, however, Point Man very much has a sense of presence in the game world — look down and you can see your feet; wander into an area where you’re backlit and you’ll project a shadow in front of you. While you never see your character from outside the first-person perspective, this gives a much better feeling of being “part of the world” than many other games of this type.

F.E.A.R. adopts a similar storytelling style to Half-Life in that the story unfolds as you play, and you never “break character” to see things from a third-person perspective. Much of the narrative is revealed through rather one-sided radio conversations between Point Man and other members of the F.E.A.R. team, but there are also numerous things throughout the game’s levels that let you delve deeper into the details of what is actually going on. By hacking laptops to recover data files and listening to voicemails, you gradually start to get a very strong sense of who is who in this game world, even though you meet relatively few of the characters involved face-to-face. While I initially thought the story was going to be somewhat throwaway when I started playing the game, after about 6 hours of the campaign mode, I’m genuinely interested in what is happening and what will happen next.

The voicemails and laptops are, of course, simply variations on the oft-derided “audiologs” that are found in games like the aforementioned System Shock 2 and Bioshock, but somehow they seem to make a lot more thematic sense here. Because you’re listening to messages — fragments of conversations — between people rather than someone inexplicably babbling all their innermost thoughts into a tape recorder, there’s a much better sense of context, and of these characters having relationships. Similarly, the laptops simply contain data files that gradually reveal the facts of the events rather than incongruous audio logs or personal diary entries. It makes a lot of sense, and gives you a very strong feeling of “following the trail” to unravel the mystery of the game’s strange goings-on.

I mentioned earlier that I disliked the Call of Duty way of doing things in single-player campaigns — linear corridors punctuated by shooting galleries — and it is in its level design that F.E.A.R. really shines. Most of the levels take place in realistic environments such as office blocks and service tunnels, but it rarely feels like you’re being pushed down a single path, because there’s often more than one. Charge into an enemy encounter and get shot to ribbons and it’s probably because there’s a better way to approach it. Come to a junction and choose one of two or three ways to get to your destination, some of which might offer some hidden goodies. Levels often require that you double back on yourself and discover pathways that have opened up as a result of various events, too, so there’s a real sense of being in a real place rather than simply running forwards until the end. Likewise, it’s not non-stop action — many levels feature long expanses of simply running around exploring and admiring the environment before coming across another squad of enemies. It’s hard to explain how excellent and satisfying the pacing is without simply plopping you down in front of it to experience it for yourself.

And my God, you don’t realise how much fun waypoint markers suck out of first-person exploration-based games until they’re not there any more — F.E.A.R. doesn’t once patronise you with a “FOLLOW” marker over anyone’s head, and instead trusts that you have the intelligence to explore the level for yourself and determine what the correct route is. While this could easily lead to confusion and running around in circles, F.E.A.R.’s levels are so well-designed that the correct way to go tends to feel very “natural” — highlighted in subtle ways through environmental cues rather than big flashing arrows or golden breadcrumb trails. It’s a good way of doing things, and one I wish modern first-person shooter makers would go back to.

Suffice to say, I’ve been having a blast (no pun intended) with F.E.A.R. and if you, like me, are weary of modern military shooters but still enjoy occasionally shooting the heads off people with a shotgun in slow motion, then I strongly recommend you check it out — particularly if you’re a fan of intriguing, creepy horror as well as action. I haven’t yet finished the game, but I’m hooked on the story. It’s dangling enough clues in front of me to keep me interested, yet keeping me in the dark enough that I can’t quite tell where it’s going. I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends, and if the expansions and sequels are even half as good as this, I’ll be very happy indeed.

1221: How Do You Make Friends Again…?

One of my earliest and most enduring memories of my time at secondary school is also, coincidentally, the first time I was consciously aware of what I now recognise to be a longstanding case of social anxiety.

It was the first day of secondary school. Everything was big and new and scary — I’d come from a small village school in which the entire school population was roughly the size of a single year group in my secondary school. I’d chosen to go to said secondary school because a lot of my friends were going there, and also my brother had attended there some years previously and had come out of the experience as what is generally accepted to be a Good Person. Also, a lot of the people who had been bullies to me in primary school were going to a different secondary school, so I knew that I wanted to avoid that one like the plague.

But I, as ever, digress.

It was the first day of secondary school. I was sitting in my new seat in my new tutor group, and our tutor, Miss Quirk (yes, really), had tasked us with spending a few minutes getting to know the people around us.

I gazed around me. I was sitting next to a boy named Murray whom I didn’t know. In front of me was a girl named Claire, whom I had instantly fallen in love with due to her long shiny blonde hair and the fact she wore short skirts with tights — something which I found (hell, find) inexplicably attractive. (Hey. I was eleven years old and easily pleased — but to be fair, she did remain consistently stunning throughout our entire school career.)

Behind me was my sometime best friend from primary school, Matthew. I say “sometime” because he wasn’t always my best friend — he was a somewhat fickle chap rather prone to occasionally deciding he’d rather hang out with the “cool” kids, whose opinion of me tended to flip-flop back and forth on an almost weekly basis. Needless to say, I ditched him fairly soon into my secondary school career as a result of two events: one, him sneezing so hard he snotted over his hands and then ate it — mmm — and two, him deciding that sitting in his chair, miming masturbation and bellowing “I’m a wanker! I’m a wanker!” would be somehow amusing. (To be fair, it was sort of amusing, but perhaps not in the way he intended; needless to say, I didn’t really want to be associated with him after that.)

Anyway. Our seating arrangements were the way they were in order to encourage us to interact and get to know each other. We’d been deliberately seated next to people we didn’t know to encourage us to break out of our primary school “cliques” and widen our friendship circles — a theoretically sound idea that even at that tender age, I could see the benefits of.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t act on it. Given the prospect of being thrown into enforced interaction with someone I didn’t know from Adam, I froze up. I had no idea how to begin a conversation, how to get to know this person. Frantically, I turned around to gaze at Matthew (a pre-“I’m a wanker! I’m a wanker!” Matthew, I might add) and looked at him pleadingly.

“I can’t remember how to make friends!” I said quietly to him. He just laughed and motioned for me to turn around and talk to Murray. He obviously hadn’t taken my statement seriously, and that was frustrating, but I had little option but to try. It was a terrifying experience, though, and obviously I didn’t set a particularly good first impression on Murray, because he became a complete bellend who bullied me on a regular basis. (I got my own back by punching him in the face just as the principal was walking around the corner and, although I was punished for lashing out like that, the unspoken consensus between my parents and the teachers involved was that he probably deserved it — and to be fair, he didn’t bother me again after that.)

That first day and that pitiful statement — “I can’t remember how to make friends!” — stuck with me, though. Because I can’t remember how to make friends. It just sort of happens. I have made friends with people over the years, of course — the friends I made after I abandoned Matthew following the “I’m a wanker!” incident (such as Edward James Padgett, who has been mentioned in this post since it was first written, he just didn’t see it); my university flatmates; my fellow students on my music course (though not on my English course — I didn’t really get to know anyone on that side of things); and people I’ve worked with — but if I’m thrown into a new situation with unfamiliar people, or simply decide that I want to get to know new people who perhaps share my interests… I still have no idea how to do this.

This is, as I’m sure you can appreciate, frustrating, particularly as at the age of 32 I finally feel that I have found a number of geeky “niches” that I fit nicely into, and would like to share these experiences with like-minded people. I greatly enjoyed spending time with Mark and Lynette while we were over in Canada because they are both My Kind of People who enjoy the things I do — but I also found myself somewhat envious of them for having a group of friends they play Dungeons & Dragons with, watch anime with while drinking cocktails and all manner of other things that are in keeping with their interests.

This isn’t to say I don’t have friends, obviously. The friends I see most frequently are my regular(ish) board gaming group, and I wouldn’t exchange them for anything, since I really, really appreciate the time I spend with them indulging in our mutual hobby. However, we do have our own incompatibilities — two of our number are really into football, for example, while the rest of us either have no strong feelings or actively hate it. (I fall into the latter category.) Similarly, I very much like Japanese video games, while several of the others cling to common misconceptions about them and thus either refuse to play them or have little interest in exploring them and having their misconceptions disproven — though at least they are patient and willing to listen to me talk about them. Conversely, a couple of our number are big into Skyrim, a game which I found almost unbearably tedious after a while. To continue the pattern, I’m a big fan of anime and would really like it if I could have a semi-regular viewing session with a small group of people, but no-one from that particular group is biting for various reasons — some don’t like or don’t see the point of sitting and watching something together as a group; some aren’t interested in anime.

You get the picture, anyway. I obviously don’t begrudge my friends these incompatibilities we have — everyone is different, after all, and thus has their own tastes — but I find myself wishing on a regular basis that it was a bit easier to find additional friends (note: not “new” friends, because to me that implies a degree of “replacement”, which I don’t want) who have common interests.

Actually, let me qualify that somewhat: I find myself wishing that it was a bit easier to find additional local friends who have common interests. It’s obviously no problem whatsoever to find new friends on the Internet who have similar tastes to me, and I’m very grateful for the fact that I do have so many people on the Internet that I can rant and rave about how awesome Ar Tonelico is or how much Kana Little Sister made me cry or whatever. But as much as I appreciate these friends in far-flung corners of the world, it’s not quite the same as having someone you can just pop over and see at short notice, hang out and do some things that you both enjoy.

So, uh, anyone want to hang out, play some games and watch some anime?

1220: An Open Invitation to My Friends in the Southampton Area (and Anyone Who Can Get to Southampton Relatively Easily)

Hello! This is a curiously specific post, I know, but looking at my frankly quite impressive board game collection, I realise that I’m keen to share it with more people than I currently do. Don’t get me wrong, I greatly enjoy playing with our regular board game group — this very weekend we’re taking a trip away to do nothing but play board games for several days — but as a group we have specific tastes that means certain games get to the table more often than others, and certain other games rarely get to the table at all. Everyone has different tastes, of course, so it would be good to try out these games on a selection of people — plus it’ll give me some practice in teaching them to people, as well as the opportunity to socialise with people a bit more than I do currently. (Part of the reason I wanted to move back to Southampton, of course, was so I could see my friends more often — something which I could probably do more of now I’m here!)

What I thought I’d do, then, is outline the games in my collection in one or two sentences each rather than detailed writeups, then if any sound interesting or appealing to you, dear Southampton-based friend, you can let me know and we can arrange an evening of gaming good times. Sound good? Of course it does. Let us begin, then.

Here’s what I have to offer you:

Advanced Heroquest: More complex version of Hero Quest. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, solve puzzles. Best played as a long-term campaign in which your characters grow in strength over time.

Agricola: A game in which you play a medieval German farmer. By carefully assigning your family members to perform various activities, you must build up your farm to be as successful and profitable as possible while ensuring you can still feed everyone. You will probably beat me at this.

Arkham Horror: A long, cooperative game in which everyone teams up to battle one of the Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Relatively complex, but a lot of fun — particularly if you enjoy some light role-playing.

Ascension: A “deckbuilding” card game in which you gradually acquire more and more cards which can be played to either buy further cards or defeat monster cards to score points. Simple to learn, quick to play but a surprising amount of depth.

Blokus: A simple, abstract game in which you have a selection of oddly-shaped Tetris-style pieces and must arrange them so that they only touch corners. Meanwhile, your opponents are doing the same, and whoever uses the most of their pieces by the time no-one else can put a piece down wins. Available in four- and two-player formats.

Catan: A building and trading game in which three or four players compete to settle an island. Acquire resources, trade with your opponents and attempt to be the first to score ten points. I also have the Seafarers expansion, which adds a few extra mechanics and more variety.

Catan Card Game: A two-player card game loosely based on Catan in which players compete to build the best kingdom before their opponent does.

Carcassonne: A simple to understand but highly competitive tile-laying game in which players compete to control the most areas of French countryside by the time all the tiles have been laid.

Cards Against Humanity: One of the best “icebreaker” games I’ve ever seen — in Cards Against Humanity, one player asks a question or provides a “fill-in-the-blank” phrase from a black card, while all other players submit their answers using white cards with various words and phrases printed on them. The answers are then jumbled up, and the one who asked the question chooses their favourite, who then scores points.

Chess: It’s chess.

Chez Cthulhu: A gang of Old One-worshipping slackers must make use of their items and spare time in order to gain as much “Slack” as possible without going mad… or while going as mad as possible.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects: A beautifully-designed game in which you collect various cards in order to construct Cleopatra’s palace. Similar in many ways to Ticket to Ride — see later.

Cranium Cards: I’m yet to play this, but it looks like a fun party game. Lots of vaguely cerebral, creative and improvisational challenges.

Defender: A board game adaptation of the ’80s arcade game. Yes, really. Not really the best game in the world, but I keep it around for novelty value.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark: While resembling a “dungeon crawler” (a la Advanced Heroquest above), Descent is actually more of a team-based strategy battle game. A team of “hero” players, each controlling one unique character each, take on the forces of the Evil Overlord player to complete various scenarios which can optionally be linked together into a story-based campaign.

Dixit: A simple game about creative descriptions, knowing your friends and bluffing. Each player is dealt a hand of unique cards with pictures on them. The player who is currently the “storyteller” secretly chooses a card and describes it with a word, phrase or sentence. Everyone else then picks a card from their hand they think relates to the sentence, then the storyteller shuffles and reveals them. Player then vote on which one they think the storyteller’s card was, with points being scored according to various criteria.

Dominion: A card game somewhat similar to Ascension in that you gradually build up a deck of cards as you play, but where instead of fighting monsters you are attempting to build up a kingdom. A lot of variety due to the fact the game doesn’t use all its cards in a single play — instead, a random selection is chosen for each session.

Dungeons and Dragons Adventures: The Legend of Drizzt: A simple cooperative dungeon crawler loosely based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons role-playing system. This is strictly focused on exploring dungeons and battling monsters rather than role-playing, however, and makes use of an easy to understand system that is quick to play.

DungeonQuest: A heavily-random, brutally difficult game in which four players compete to make it to the dragon’s lair at the centre of the board, nick as much treasure as possible then escape without dying in the process. Harder than it sounds. Not very strategic, but amusingly fun.

Flash Point: A cooperative game in which players control a team of firefighters as they attempt to rescue survivors from a burning building. Each player has their own special abilities, so collaboration and cooperation is a must.

Fluxx: A card game whose rules change as you play.

Gold Thief: A simple card game in which you use various “character cards” to add or remove to your personal stash of gold coins in an attempt to have the specific amount requests on a “goal card” at the start of your turn.

Guildhall: A simple, quick card game in which you must collect “sets” of cards with the same job on them in order to purchase cards with points on them. Each card has its own special ability that becomes more effective the more copies of it you have in your “Guildhall”.

Hero Quest: Super-simple dungeon crawler with a wide variety of quests that can either be played as one-offs or as a longer campaign.

King of Tokyo: A very silly dice game in which you play one of several B-movie-style monsters as they attempt to take over Tokyo. Shouting “RRAAARRGH” while playing is optional, but encouraged.

Last Night on Earth: A survival horror game in which one team of players controls the survivors in a small American town, while the other controls the zombies as they attempt to eat their brains. Several different scenarios give this one a good amount of variety.

Lord of the Fries: You are a zombie that runs a fast-food restaurant. Compete against your friends to be the first to create various dishes and score points.

Monopoly Deal: How do you make Monopoly good? Ditch all the rules, pieces and board and turn it into a card game with lots of screwing each other over. Simple, quick and fun.

Munchkin: A humorous card game based on the “kill enemies and take their stuff” formula of most dungeon crawler games. Not to be taken seriously.

Mystery of the Abbey: Cluedo for grownups. Taking on the role of a monk in the titular abbey, you must use your deductive skills to determine who the murderer is while going about your usual monkly duties.

Mystery Express: It’s Murder on the Orient Express: The Game. To be honest, I am yet to play a complete game of this, so I wouldn’t mind busting it out with some people who would like to learn it.

Pandemic: A cooperative game in which players team up to battle four virulent diseases that are taking over the globe. Like Flash Point, each player has their own unique special ability to contribute to the team’s effort as a whole.

Pit: A game in which you shout at each other in order to trade cards and attempt to be the first to collect a set.

Risk: It’s Risk.

Scrabble Dash: A simple word game in which you must be the first to lay down letter cards from your hand to make a word that meets the requirements.

Smash Up: A simple and hilarious card game in which you combine two “factions” together to make a single deck of cards, then use these factions’ abilities to smash the crap out of various bases and score points. The factions include zombies, pirates, ninjas, robots, fairies, dinosaurs, aliens and wizards. So yes, you can be robot pirates. Or dinosaur wizards. Or ninja fairies.

Shadows over Camelot: A cooperative game with a twist: one of the Knights of the Round Table might be a traitor secretly scheming to undermine the others’ hard work questing around the realm.

Space Crusade: The classic Games Workshop game in which up to three Space Marine players enter an alien spacecraft in an attempt to take down the forces of the Alien player and complete a specific objective.

StarCraft: The Board Game: A board game adaptation of the popular computer game that actually has relatively little in common with its source material save for the factions and units. In StarCraft, you’re competing against your opponents for control of the galaxy and its precious resources while attempting to wipe your rivals out.

Ticket to Ride: A fun, easy to understand game in which you collect sets of coloured cards in order to claim train routes across America and score points. Bonus points at the end if you complete specific routes on cards handed to you at the outset; penalty points if you don’t complete them.

Uno: Simple card game, popular with naked people on Xbox Live.

Warhammer Quest: Variant on Advanced Heroquest and its ilk. Warhammer Quest is quite heavily randomised, but a lot of fun and friendly to both individual sessions and ongoing campaigns.

Whack a Catgirl: An anime-themed card game in which you lure an adorable catgirl over to you with various “bait” items, then whack her over the head with other amusing items to score points.