1351: After Story

I was surprised to discover that Manga Video had a booth at the Eurogamer Expo over the weekend, so I took a moment to rifle through their collection between seeing various bits and pieces.

As good fortune would have it, it would seem that Clannad After Story has recently been released in “complete series” box set format, so I snapped up a copy — £25 is eminently reasonable for six DVDs, particularly when compared to some other anime DVDs, and particularly particularly when compared to the exorbitant prices Forbidden Planet charges for anime DVDs.

Ever since I got to the end of Clannad — which wasn’t that long ago — I’ve wanted to see After Story, which picks up directly where the original leaves off. It’s the anime adaptation of the second half of the original visual novel, and continues the story beyond the end of school over the course of the following seven years.

This alone makes it noteworthy in anime, since most “slice of life” or school-based drama shows restrict themselves to just the school years, so it’s unusual to see the characters actually grow older and move on from school and into their lives proper. Indeed, this is usually the case with visual novels, too, which often tend to have high school-age protagonists and heroines, and stick that way. There are exceptions, of course — Kana Little Sister and Kira Kira immediately spring to mind — but it’s something that, in my experience anyway, happens more often than not.

I’ve only watched a single episode of After Story so far so I can’t comment with any great authority on what the new series is like, but I’m looking forward to exploring it. The original Clannad series didn’t end how I was expecting it to end — no spoilers — but in retrospect, I think this was because I wasn’t aware that After Story was not just a direct follow-up, but the continuation and conclusion of the complete narrative.

I can guarantee now that it’s going to make me cry at least once, though. I found the Fuko arc in the first Clannad series incredibly emotional, and if After Story is going to go where I think it’s going to go, it’s going to be about three bajillion times worse. That’s okay, though; the reason I’m even watching Clannad in the first place is because I know it’s sad. This may sound like a strange reason to watch something, but there’s something oddly enjoyable (if that’s even the right word) about getting emotionally engaged with something to such a degree. People still watch sad movies and listen to sad music, after all — and, despite the fact I know absolutely nothing about Breaking Bad (and don’t want to right now, thanks; I’m going to watch it when everyone else shuts up about it, which should hopefully be soon now that it’s finished) I understand that it’s not exactly the most cheerful thing on the tellybox.

Further reports as I continue watching, I’m sure.

1350: Open-World Ridiculosity

As you’ll know if you’ve been reading recently, I finished Grand Theft Auto V the other day, and have approximately 75% on the completion-o-meter. Once I got back from Eurogamer Expo today, I thought I’d fire it up and specifically piss around in the open world rather than doing anything structured. (Okay, I cleaned up a couple of Strangers and Freaks missions, but aside from that… yeah.)

I’m pleased to confirm that Grand Theft Auto V’s open-world freeform silliness is possibly the best it’s ever been. In about an hour or two of play, I tripped over and rolled all the way down a mountain without dying; had a police shootout at a truck stop (where I did die, sadly); successfully landed on the roof of a car park at the airport by using a billboard as a jump ramp; successfully leapt onto a passing train (and then fell off while attempting to climb down and hijack it); inadvertently attracted the attention of the police and decided to run up the steepest face of a mountain, surviving quite a while and single-handedly taking down six helicopters before finally tripping over, rolling all the way down the mountain and failing to survive this time; cycled all the way from one end of the map to the other; and a few other things besides.

I’m happy that the idea of “I wonder if I can do that?” has survived intact from Grand Theft Auto III; many was the night back in university when drunken incarnations of me and my friend Sam would get home after a cheap night at Poundstretcher or Lennon’s and cause chaos in Liberty City until the small hours. It’s a concept that I haven’t felt nearly as strongly in the more recent Grand Theft Auto titles, though I don’t doubt it’s there.

And it’s a different feeling to Saints Row’s open-world mayhem. Saints Row is very much a map with Things to Do scattered across it, clearly signposted for your reference. Grand Theft Auto, meanwhile — particularly in V’s case — provides you with a map filled with cool and interesting stuff, but doesn’t signpost a significant amount of it. It’s not all “activities”, either, in GTA’s case; in some instances, it’s just breathtaking views, or impressively detailed locales, or the location of a hidden vehicle.

Both approaches very much have a place in modern gaming culture, but it should be evident that Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto are not the same game, and have not been for a very long time. In the case of Saints Row IV in particular, the two have diverged sufficiently to pretty much be different genres; Saints Row IV is now an open-world superhero game, while Grand Theft Auto V is a more realistic (albeit skewed) look at modern society. Saints Row is self-consciously kooky, silly and funny; Grand Theft Auto’s humour can be just as obvious, but it’s not pushed to the forefront of the experience in the same way as it is in Saints Row; it’s just part of the experience.

This isn’t to say that either approach is “wrong,” of course; I’ve played both games and really enjoyed them both. The difference is that after I finished Saints Row IV’s story I didn’t really feel the need to continue exploring the open world — over a thousand collectible items is just too many, yo — whereas this evening I was actually quite excited and interested to be able to zip around GTA V’s world without the pressure of story missions or other external influences getting in the way.

And then, of course, there’s all this, but that’s something to explore if and when I ever reach 100% completion…

1349: Zeds

I am tiiiiiiired. So tired, in fact, that I very nearly forgot to write something today. That would have been disastrous. (I’m sure no-one would have minded if I “caught up” tomorrow, but that always felt like cheating somehow, and after 1,349 days it’s a matter of pride.)

Here I am at 1am, then, wondering what to write about before I fall asleep. I could talk about the Eurogamer Expo again, I suppose, since that’s been occupying literally all of my time since Thursday.

It’s the last day of the Expo tomorrow. I’m probably not going to hang around until the end because I want to get home, but I am going to catch a couple of last developer sessions and spend some time with my friend Mitu’s game Redshirt. It’d also be nice to actually have a chance to fiddle around with a PS4 and/or an Xbox One, but the queues for those have been so ridiculous it hasn’t really been practical up until now. I had to lurk around the Nintendo booth before the show opened to be able to play Bayonetta 2, so I shudder to think what hoops I’ll have to jump through to see the things that people are really excited about. (Aside: Bayonetta 2 has been drawing an impressive queue of people each day — thought obviously not on the scale of something like Call of Duty or Titanfall — which was nice to see.)

What else? Today I met Mike Bithell, and he’s a thoroughly pleasant person — a preview-cum-interview type thing I did with him will be up on USgamer on Monday. I also had the good fortune to meet both Damien McFerran and Johnny Cullen, both of whom are people I have, until now, only known through Twitter. It’s nice to put names to faces, and Damien in particular had some very kind things to say about my work that pretty much made my day, so thanks for that, sir, if you’re reading.

I’ve eschewed the evening social gatherings while I’m here, much as I did when I went to Gamescom. The workload has been less insane here than it was at Gamescom, but I’ve still been working into the evening most nights. I’m also not all that great socialising with people I don’t know all that well who do know each other, either — I know there’s no way to fix that aside from actually jumping in and getting involved myself, but frankly I haven’t quite felt up to it! I do like the Eurogamer lot on the few occasions I’ve met them, though, so perhaps some other time I’ll have the opportunity to hang out with them socially.

I’ve remained relatively swag-free from this visit, with my freebie acquisitions being limited to a T-shirt that’s too small for me from the The Evil Within presentation the other day, a poster from the indie game Cloudbuilt that I was awarded for being only the second person to beat a particular level on display, and some flyers from FuturLab for their upcoming PS4 and Vita game Velocity 2X which, in all honesty, has been one of my favourite things I’ve seen at the show. I’m thinking of framing both the poster and one of the flyers, since both of them have super-distinctive artwork that would look great on display. We’ll see.

Anyway. I’m yawning my head off and it’s getting hard to concentrate so I’m going to leave that there. Tomorrow’s entry will be from back in my own home rather than this not-all-that-bad-really-but-I-can’t-believe-how-expensive-the-tariff-displayed-in-reception-is hotel room.

1348: A Part of It

I’ve been on and off the show floor at Eurogamer Expo over the last couple of days, with more to come tomorrow and Sunday.

One thing that struck me today is an immense sense of pride to be part of such a vibrant, enthusiastic and exciting industry. Speaking with developers like FuturLab about Velocity 2X (day one purchase for me) and Witch Beam Games about Assault Android Cactus as well as seeing Sony’s legendary indie guru Shahid Ahmad speak on stage just gave me the overwhelming sensation that the business has never been in a healthier place — particularly from a cultural perspective.

Today, I played a variety of different games, each of which was a markedly different experience. I played a peculiar abstract game in which you guide a cube through a floating tunnel-like structure; a platform game in which you can independently control your shadow and use other shadows as platforms; a third-person parkour platformer inspired by Sonic and Mega Man; a first-person psychological horror adventure with low-poly textureless graphics combined with gorgeous lighting; the newest Final Fantasy; and a game that purports to be a spiritual successor to Flashback while successfully combining both top-down shooting and side-on platforming.

At no point did I feel the sense of fatigue or cynicism people sometimes direct at the industry; the show floor was a vibrant place filled with creativity and experience for all ages and ability levels. Even from the press office where I was doing the majority of my writing, I could look one direction and see Surgeon Simulator 2013, look the other way and see Microsoft’s representatives jumping, whooping, hollering and cheering on stage as they showed off new Kinect games, look another way still and see people staring intently at a multiplayer digital card game.

It’s easy to get lulled into a sense of thinking that “all new things are the same; everyone’s risk-averse”, but it’s not until you see a significant proportion of the industry spread out in front of you like that that you realise that no, that’s not the case at all; the risk-averse triple-A sector is just one of many parts that make up the whole — and, judging from the number of people who attended Shahid Ahmad’s talk on indie games on Sony platforms, one that’s quickly being caught up to by other sectors.

So well done, games biz; you’re all right. Now it’s just a case of successfully countering the cynics with reports of fascinating, intriguing, creative projects that people from all over the world are doing. You can start by taking a peek at my coverage from the Expo over at USgamer.

1347: Om Nom Nom Nom (Plus)

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ is a magnificent game, though I’m still at a loss as to whether or not Namco are taking the piss with that title or if they genuinely thought Pac-Man needed that many suffixes.

To be fair, though, Pac-Man CE DX+, as I shall refer to it from hereon, isn’t actually all that unreasonable a title if you analyse it. It’s a variation of Pac-Man (hence Pac-Man) that evolved into a version designed specifically for competitive play (hence Championship Edition) that subsequently evolved further into a considerably expanded version (hence DX, short for Deluxe) which was then expanded even further with some additional content for the new PC version (hence Plus).

If you haven’t played Pac-Man CE DX+ yet, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s now available for PC via Steam as well as consoles, so you can play it pretty much regardless of whatever system you favour.

If you’re a fan of the original Pac-Man, be warned, though; Pac-Man CE DX+ is a noticeably different game, though its ancestry is obvious.

While the original Pac-Man required you to repeatedly clear the same screen of dots over and over again while contending with the unwanted attentions of four ghosts, Pac-Man CE DX+ is a much faster-paced game. The maze is divided into two halves, each of which, when cleared, causes a piece of fruit to appear in the other half. Eating said fruit causes the empty maze to regenerate with a new layout, and thus the process repeats. In the main modes, you’re against the clock, attempting to score as many points as possible in either five or ten minutes, so it’s in your interest to find the quickest routes possible.

The twist on the formula that DX added was the ridiculous number of ghosts that can be involved. Rather than the four ghosts of the original Pac-Man, each maze half in Pac-Man CE DX+ has a number of sleeping ghosts who are disturbed if Pac-Man passes by them, at which point they form an increasingly long chain and chase him, following the same route he does. High scores are dependent on eating a power pill and then gobbling up a massive chain of ghosts, so as well as finding the best route through the dots, it’s actually in your interests to attract as many ghosts in your wake as possible, too. There’s very much an “optimum route” for each of the courses in the game, though human error means that, unless you’ve practiced enough to be literally perfect every time, there’ll be slight variations in each run you make — usually costing you a few points or precious seconds in the process.

It’s a really interesting game that maintains the basic mechanics of the original Pac-Man while simultaneously turning it into a kind of game that’s hard to define. Is it a score attack game? Yes. Is it a puzzle game? Yes. Is it a racing game? Yes, kind of.

It’s one of the most peculiar games I’ve ever played, and revisiting it thanks to the new PC version reminds me that it’s also one of my favourite games of all time, and I highly recommend you give it a try if you’ve never had the pleasure. Enjoy, and I make absolutely no apologies if you end up addicted.

1346: Exposition

I’m off to the Eurogamer Expo tomorrow to cover a bunch of interesting stuff for USgamer. It should be a fun experience, particularly because since Eurogamer’s parent company Gamer Network is also the parent company of USgamer, I’ll be there as “staff” and consequently should be able to wander around fairly freely and get hands-on with things without too much difficulty.

I last went to the Eurogamer Expo back in 2010. This was the same year I went to PAX for the first time, and it was interesting to compare the two. They’re very different events, of course; PAX is more of a cultural convention, while Eurogamer Expo that year (and possibly still is) more of a traditional consumer-facing trade show, with booths, queues and lots of things to play if you can be arsed to line up for them. Eurogamer does have a bunch of developer presentations, however, and it’s great to hear and see devs speak about their upcoming or recent projects. Peter Molyneux may be the master of broken promises, for example, but it’s easy to see how people get caught up in his grand posturing on stage.

I’m interested to see a selection of things around the show, and I have plenty of time to do so. I’m particularly interested to have a look at the next-gen consoles and see whether they’re noticeably better from current offerings, and I’m meeting up with a few smaller developers who are working on some interesting-sounding titles such as top-down bullet hell/Smash TV combo Assault Android Cactus, the NFL-inspired follow-up to Frozen Synapse, Frozen Endzone and Mike Bithell’s intriguing-sounding new stealth game Volume. I should also hopefully get a chance to see my friend Mitu, whose intriguing social media-themed strategy game/RPG/strangely undefinable thing Redshirt is looking pretty great, as well as inching ever-closer to release.

I should probably get some sleep beforehand, though. Tomorrow is going to be a long and hopefully exciting day, and that situation will continue for the next couple of days, then I’ll be back on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting things to write about while I’m away, and a chance to get a bit of a rest on Sunday before next week kicks off once again!

Hopefully it’s also payday within the next couple of days… London ain’t cheap. And I need to buy a notebook. I do things old-school.

1345: A Grand Old Time

I’ll probably write something in more depth over on USgamer tomorrow, but I wanted to give some immediate reactions to having just finished Grand Theft Auto V.

Short version: I was extremely impressed. I was expecting to just duck into it for a little while in order to be able to write about it during its launch week, but I found myself hooked in various ways: the story, the world, the characters. The whole thing is put together in such a marvellously coherent way that it just works really well — and I barely even touched all the largely irrelevant side stuff.

GTA V has drawn a bunch of flak for various reasons, but from what I can tell, it’s business as usual in GTA-land. In fact, GTA V nails the balance between biting satire and straight-up drama better than any previous installment in the series — there’s always been a certain dissonance between the fact that you can freely whip out a rocket launcher and start blowing shit up and the actual linear story that Rockstar is trying to tell.

The interesting thing about GTA V is that a lot of its most “offensive” stuff is down to the player. The notorious “shag a prostitute then run her over to get your money back” thing that people always fixate on? That was emergent player behaviour that people discovered in Grand Theft Auto III. Murderous rampages? You’re free to commit them any time you see fit, but there will be consequences — some people will shoot back, other times, you’ll attract the attention of the police. The story and all the bad things you commit in the name of the ongoing narrative? It’s always your choice to proceed down that path; if you’d rather play the game as a “city living” simulator, you can do. If you’d rather play the game in an attempt to steal the most heavily-guarded vehicles as possible, you can do. If you want to ignore the structured content, you can do — and there’s very little “unlocking” of things to do, unlike earlier installments, so you have pretty much free roam of the enormous map from the get-go.

I was surprised that GTA V’s plot actually hooked me, though. I enjoyed spending time with Michael, Trevor and Franklin, each of whom are interesting, well-realised characters and all distinctive in their own right. None of them — not even Trevor, whom a lot of critics have fixated on — are one-dimensional characters, and each have their own personal story arcs to follow amid the overall plot. The story itself has a good blend of dark humour and serious(ish) crime drama, and there’s some fantastic setpieces. There’s potential for different playthroughs to unfold slightly differently thanks to some (admittedly limited) choices — but the game caters to and copes with these differences with unique dialogue.

Outside of the main story components, the missions are well-designed, too; one of the strengths of the open-world structure is that it provides the scope for you to tackle situations as you see fit, and the game embraces this philosophy wholeheartedly on a number of occasions. There are assassination missions where you need to figure out the best way to approach a target, for example; and later in the game, you have to steal some cars based on limited photographic information. This latter one really impressed me, actually; I found myself walking rather than driving around the city, looking carefully for the landmarks I was supposed to be seeking out, and it wasn’t a frustrating experience at all — it felt like walking around a real city looking for something.

GTA V has its elements that will make people uncomfortable or turn them off, sure, but there’s little denying it’s a great game and a fantastic technical achievement. I’m glad I actually took the time to play it through — I was all set to pass it by after getting frustrated with all the frankly ridiculous hype, which I still think was completely overboard — and would recommend that if you’ve been on the fence about it, you should give it a go.

1344: Problem?

I fucking hate the word “problematic”.

I’ve been struggling to articulate exactly what it is that bugs me so much about “problematic,” (and please imagine me screwing up my face, using a sarcastic voice and making exaggerated air-quotes while you read that) but an idle insomnia-fueled wander around the Internet the other night led me to the Urban Dictionary definition of the word, which conveniently sums up pretty much how I feel about this word and how it it used today:

A corporate-academic weasel word used mainly by people who sense that something may be oppressive, but don’t want to do any actual thinking about what the problem is or why it exists. Also frequently used in progressive political settings among White People of a Certain Education to avoid using herd-frightening words like “racist” or “sexist.”

I’ve heard the term “weasel word” in the past, but it had somehow slipped out of my mind. Reading this definition brought it all back, though, and made me realise what a wonderfully descriptive term it is. “Weasel word” — a word or phrase designed to weasel your way into (or out of) a difficult topic without saying anything truly confrontational. Or sometimes without saying anything of substance at all.

Alongside the fact that “problematic” is a particularly slimy example of a weasel word, it also bugs me that it seems to be the first and only word people turn to when attempting to discuss Important Matters of Social Justice That We’re All Supposed to Get Really Fucking Angry About. Whenever it’s used, it just makes me think of people trying to sound more intelligent than they actually are. In fact, what it makes me think of — and here’s a random memory for you — is a time shortly after my Grandad Davison died and my parents were having a Serious Conversation in the front of the car. I was very young at the time, but I felt that it was Important for me to join in said Serious Conversation, so I listened, nodded and murmured “Mm. True. Very true,” at moments when I thought it would be appropriate, but actually ended up looking like a bit of a tool. I get the same feeling any time people start dropping “problematic” all over the place in conversation — like they’re trying to have a conversation that they’re not really quite mentally equipped for. Unfair? Perhaps. But that’s how I feel.

My teeth-gritting annoyance at the use of this word was actually concerning me somewhat since so many people were using it, so I looked it up and attempted to determine if it was actually some sort of established sociological term, but no, I found no evidence to suggest that. It’s just a word that’s caught on and become fashionable for some inexplicable reason — much like “entitled” was a year or two back — and now everyone and their radical feminist dog is using it. The English language is rich, diverse and full of multiple ways to say the same thing. Use it.

If you’re similarly frustrated with the prevalence of this weasel word and want to do something about it, may I suggest that when Christmas rolls around, you purchase a thesaurus for everyone on your Twitter and/or Facebook feeds who has expressed an interest in being some sort of militant crusader for social justice. And maybe by next year we’ll have a new overused word to get sick of.

1343: Melancholy Contemplations

Lara, one of our two pet rats, is not very well, and I’m very worried about her. Earlier in the week, she started losing her balance somewhat, with her head tilted over to the side. She was obviously finding it difficult to judge distances and maintain her balance on things, and looked rather wobbly and unsteady when climbing. She has never been the most graceful rat there was — despite her name coming from her being “the climby one” when we first got her and her former cagemate Willow (who was “the shy one”) — but she’s always been happy to leap halfway up the cage and clamber around, particularly when there’s the prospect of food involved.

The situation continued for a day or two, so Andie and I decided that it would be a good idea to take her to the vet. I don’t mind admitting that the cowardly part of myself was worried about this for the prospect of getting some bad news or, worse, having to have her put to sleep. Fortunately, the prognosis wasn’t awful — there was the distinct possibility that it was just either a chest or ear infection, and so we were given some antibiotic medicine to give her twice a day, which will hopefully clear it up.

We’ve had surprisingly little difficulty giving her the medicine — turns out Lara likes breadsticks enough to not care when one end of them is covered in drugs — but, as antibiotics are wont to do, they seem to have upset her stomach somewhat. It may be my imagination, but it seems like her balance might be slightly better — albeit still not perfect — but her insides are obviously struggling a bit with the antibiotics.

I know that realistically speaking, she is quite an old rat — well over a year old now — and, consequently, probably not much longer for this Earth, but that doesn’t make the prospect of potentially saying goodbye to her any easier, particularly when I don’t know whether or not she’ll be there to greet me in her cheerful rat-like way each morning when I look in on her in the cage. I don’t want her to die. I know that she will, eventually — possibly sooner rather than later if her illness doesn’t improve — but that doesn’t make thinking about it any easier.

Death frightens and disturbs me, you see, whether it’s a person or a small furry creature we’re talking about. (Spiders and daddy long-legs can fuck off, though; they get put up the Hoover. Yes, some lives are worth more than others to me.) I have had relatively little exposure to death over my life, and as such I haven’t quite figured out how I’m supposed to deal with it. I haven’t even been to many funerals — one, to my recollection — and the only dead bodies I have ever seen in my life were that of my family’s first cat Penny, who died in her sleep one night after very obviously saying goodbye to us, and Lara’s former cagemate Willow, who left us well before her time.

Perhaps death and loss gets easier to deal with as you encounter more of it. Perhaps it doesn’t. I don’t know one way or the other yet, and that in itself worries and scares me.

I hope you get better soon, Lara. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to you yet. You are a precious and beloved part of this household, and life won’t be the same without you.

Sorry for the morbid post. This has been rattling around inside my head, though, and I needed to get it out, more as a therapeutic exercise than anything else.

1342: Hidden World

I’ve been continuing to watch Clannad, and I’m thoroughly enamoured with it. I haven’t yet finished it, though I am pretty sure how it’s going to end and I am also pretty sure that if it follows the path I think it’s going to follow it’s going to be very, very sad in the way I perversely enjoy so much.

Mild spoilers ahead?

One of the things that has struck me throughout is how quietly weird it is. For the most part, it’s your usual sort of slice-of-life story complete with all the clichés that usually involves — someone trying to resurrect a long-dead school club; a harem of female characters who each initially seem to encapsulate one main defining factor but later reveal themselves to have hidden depths and/or dark pasts; a protagonist who is down on his luck but inspired to become a better person by said group of girls.

But then it goes and throws a few curveballs along the way, the first of which is the character Fuko, whose physical presence and relationship with the other characters is seemingly impossible due to the fact that she’s really lying in hospital in a coma. After her particular story arc is finished, she disappears, not only from regularly appearing in episodes but from the characters’ memories, too — though every so often she shows up for a brief cameo in a future episode, usually in some botched attempt to make a difficult situation better. Since I haven’t finished watching the series as a whole yet, I don’t know if the deal with Fuko is truly and conclusively explained, or if it’s left somewhat open to interpretation. I’d be fine with either, actually, though at my current point 18 episodes deep into the complete run, I’m torn between a few theories.

Then there’s the character Kotomi, who initially appears to be the resident socially-inept “weird genius” character, but whom it transpires has some forgotten history with the protagonist. Not only that, but her parents were supposedly researching some sort of theory about when the universe was created, a tiny dimension was sealed away. I don’t know if that gets resolved, either.

And then there’s the occasional cuts to “the girl who lives alone in a world that has ended” with her mechanical companion. These sequences are almost Nier-like in their bleakness, and at present I have no idea how they fit into the narrative as a whole.

I’m absolutely and completely intrigued by what’s going on, though. Someone is clearly going to die at some point, or perhaps they’re already dead. There’s a feeling of “fever dream” about the whole thing, where it’s not quite all making sense yet, but I feel I’m getting closer to the truth.

In other words, I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the whole thing plays out — and it’s pretty much a given that I’ll be checking out Clannad After Story once I’m done, too. Expect some more spoileriffic thoughts when I’ve made it through the whole lot.