1728: Junk Shop

It’s always pleasant to find a new “weird shop” in which to spend some of your hard-earned money. We’ve all become so used to seeking out the chain stores to — in most cases, anyway — get the best deals that finding a legitimate local business that does something altogether unique is both a rarity and a pleasure.

The shop I “discovered” today is one I’ve walked past several times and always meant to have a look in, but never got around to it. If I’m honest, I can’t remember its name at all, but it’s in the Marlands shopping centre in Southampton (for those who don’t know Southampton, this is the smaller of the two shopping centres in the city centre, populated by a peculiar combination of small local stores and profitable chains like CEX, Disney Store and, err, Poundland) and is on the left in the “plaza” area, just after you wander past places like F. Hinds and Claire’s Accessories.

I believe it describes itself as an “Oriental goods” store, which essentially means, as you might expect, that it sells a variety of stuff from the Far East. Inside the store there’s a very odd mix of things ranging from cosplay to bags (I bought a Hatsune Miku bag today, which should be a more appropriate receptacle for all my Stuff than the very nice but slightly impractical laptop bag I’m currently improvising with) via collectible figures, hand-painted rice bowls, kimonos and some random tourist tat like fridge magnets.

It is, in short, the sort of shop I can see myself spending a fair amount of money in. Whether or not I actually will spend any more money in there remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a cool little place that I will probably now take any visitors who might enjoy that sort of thing to go and see.

It reminds me a little of a shop in the now-closed Bargate Shopping Centre here in Southampton, which was called something like Smells, Bells and Doo-Dahs. This, too, was a Far East-inspired store, though it didn’t, as I recall, sell much in the way of anime bits and pieces. Instead, it stocked, once again, a bizarre combination of items, ranging from various different incense scents to an impressively intimidating collection of actual (albeit blunt) swords of both Eastern and Western origin. I don’t think I ever bought anything there, but it was a landmark sort of place; I was comforted by its presence, and always enjoyed just having a browse, even if nothing ever convinced me that I really needed it.

The Bargate Centre in general was good for that, actually; I was sad to see it finally close after dying a very long and drawn-out death over the course of the last few years. Pop into Bargate in its prime (which was during my time at university, so between 1999 and 2002 or so) and you could check out an impressively stocked non-chain video games store, buy some unusual and stylish clothing, get a tattoo or piercing, purchase some bondage gear and dildos, start a sock collection actually worth bragging about and then cap off your visit with a trip to Sega World, an actual bona-fide coin-op arcade, boasting a selection of cool games both old and new. It was tragic to see these things disappear one by one, but either their relevance diminished over time, or they were simply destroyed by the cutthroat nature of modern high-street business.

I’m glad a few places like the shop I can’t remember the name of still exist, though; it makes me happy to think of people eking out a living from selling the strangest things, and while places like that stock interesting and fun things I might want to buy, I’m more than happy to support them.

1727: Warwolf One

I beat Ace Combat: Assault Horizon this evening. (Looking at the clock, it’s nearly 2am… I guess I was enjoying myself, huh.)

I’ve already said a lot of the things I want to say about this game in yesterday’s post, but having played the whole thing through from start to finish now, I feel I can talk about it with a bit more confidence.

The thing I most want to talk about, I think, is what it was clearly going for and whether or not it was successful.

What it was clearly attempting to go for was a dramatic military-style story with a personal angle. And, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but it failed. Not miserably, but it still fell very short of what I can only assume were the team’s ambitions.

To put this in context for those of you unfamiliar with the game, let me explain a little. The majority of Assault Horizon casts you in the role of Colonel Bishop, an ace fighter pilot who is wracked with recurring nightmares about facing off against a “shark-faced” rival ace. (Indeed, the first level is a dream sequence that — spoiler — you re-enact for real later in the game, only things turn out a little differently.) Bishop becomes embroiled in a war between the free world (the real world, unlike many other Ace Combat titles) and an army of Russian rebels. (This latter aspect allows the game to follow the Unwritten Law of Jet Fighter Games, which is that you must spend the majority of your time shooting down MiG-29s and SU-27s.) Said Russian rebels have access to a weapon called “Trinity” — an incredibly powerful nuclear device that you see the devastating effects of firsthand in several of the early levels. Naturally, it’s up to Bishop to put a stop to all this nonsense by flying shiny planes very fast and blowing lots of things up.

Except it’s not just up to Bishop; there are also a couple of other characters who provide a vehicle (no pun intended) for the other types of mission you’ll be flying aside from air-to-air combat and air-to-ground assaults. One guy flies helicopters, so you get to play as him during the helicopter missions; the token ladypilot flies bombers, so you get to play as her during the few bombing missions — including a pretty cool “stealth” one where you have to avoid enemy radar cones.

The setup is fairly interesting, then; Bishop has the potential to be an intriguing character, confronting his own personal demons over the course of the story and developing into someone “human” as it progresses. Unfortunately, this potential is left largely unrealised; a short monologue at the end of the game suggests that he has learned something from his experiences, but the rest of the game’s narrative really didn’t make that particularly clear.

Things are worse with the other characters, who pretty much only appear to be there for the sake of it. Ladypilot is shoehorned into a rather hasty apparent romance plot in the final scenes of the game, having spent the rest of the game showing no form of interest in Bishop whatsoever, and Helicopter Man is… well, he flies helicopters.

Perhaps the biggest wasted opportunity is the “villain”, who is teased a little early in the game — the “shark-faced” pilot from Bishop’s dreams — and then introduced rather hastily towards the end. He’s given little in the way of explanation, and his own personal motivations are pretty much used to bludgeon the player over the head with to say “This! Is! Why! He’s! Evil!” at one point. He’s a pain in the arse to shoot down in the final mission, so there’s a certain degree of personal satisfaction in blowing him up, but this finale could have been so much more interesting if there were a lot more interaction between him and Bishop throughout the game. It is a poor antagonist who only reveals himself in the final chapters of a story, and it leaves Markov feeling like a rather weak adversary for Bishop.

Despite all that I’ve said above, however, Assault Horizon was an enjoyable experience in the way that a good action movie (with equally ill-defined characters) is. The missions were varied and fun — though a couple dragged on a little too long — and the presentation throughout was immaculate; the PC version looks lovely, and the action is accompanied by some wonderful music and excellent voice acting just to add to the whole “movie-like” feel.

It’s just a pity so many opportunities for interesting narrative development were squandered, leaving the whole experience feeling a bit hollow afterwards. I’m not sorry I played it, as on the whole I did enjoy it immensely, but now my appetite has been well and truly whet for the earlier — apparently much better — installments in the Ace Combat series, which hopefully I will be getting my hands on very soon.

1726: Assault Horizon

Following on from yesterday’s post, today I decided to give Ace Combat: Assault Horizon a try, partly because I was impatient to get started on my journey through the Ace Combat series, and partly because I was conscious of the fact it had been in my Steam library since one sale or another and I had never even installed it, let alone tried it.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is pretty much the black sheep of the Ace Combat franchise, so I figured it probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea to try it first. That way I can see what the series is like now, and then compare it to what it was in the PS2 era. Ace Combat fans do not have the luxury of doing it this way around, so they inevitably see it as a series in decline — particularly now it’s made the jump to free-to-play on PlayStation 3.

Now, as noted, I have no frame of reference for the rest of the series as yet, but if the other games are even half as enjoyable as Assault Horizon appears to be — and I’m led to believe that they’re considerably better — then I’m very much in for a treat. But more on that when my copies arrive.

For now, let’s talk a little about Assault Horizon. It was referred to by some on its original launch as being Call of Duty in the sky, and this isn’t an altogether inaccurate comparison. There are lots of characters who have little in the way of… you know, character development, but who provide the framework for the different types of mission (one dude is a fighter pilot, another dude is a helicopter pilot, the token ladypilot flies bombers and transports); the missions and story are very much pre-scripted to fit the overall narrative; the narrative itself makes little in the way of sense but is enjoyable from the perspective of it simply being spectacular to watch.

And, for all the shit Call of Duty gets, this isn’t a bad thing for this sort of game. Air combat should be spectacular and exciting — at least, if you’re taking the “action movie” approach to it, as this game is — and when you approach it with that attitude, it doesn’t matter so much that the game just flat-out defies the laws of physics on numerous occasions with regard to how the various vehicles handle. (The way the helicopter dodges missiles with a ridiculous barrel roll is a particular highlight.)

So far the combat itself has been enjoyable and satisfying, too. Early in the game, you can pretty much get someone in your sights and fire off a missile at them, but as you progress you start having to pull off more and more fancy manoeuvres to get into a position to get a kill. And it’s here that the game’s most controversial addition to Ace Combat veterans shows its head: Dogfight Mode.

Dogfight Mode is… well, I’m not really sure how it works, but I do know it’s ridiculous. Rather than having to worry too much about pointing your plane in the right direction, Dogfight Mode consists of a sort of autopilot as you tail an enemy, though you still have to roll and pitch in order to keep them centred in a large circle on the screen in order to lock on with missiles. It’s usually the most reliable means of ensuring you down an enemy — particularly the stronger “leader” enemies — but it’s also used for some very silly white-knuckle setpieces throughout, as your quarry leads you on a merry chase between skyscrapers (with things like cranes collapsing around you, naturally) or perilously close to the ground. (And yes; turn the assist options off and the flight controls to the “proper” ones and you can indeed slam into the ground and immediately bring your mission to a premature end, like any good air combat game worth its salt.)

I fired Assault Horizon up out of curiosity earlier and have found myself playing it pretty much all evening. While I’m conscious of numerous things it could do a bit better, I’ve enjoyed my time with it so far, and I’m feeling like it was a good choice to give this one a try first, because from what I understand, things only get better from here. My mild curiosity has been upgraded to “can’t wait” status.

Fox two, fox two.

1725: Jet Fighter Squad

On something of a whim (and after seeing a screenshot posted by Mr Alex Connolly), I downloaded a lovely-looking cel-shaded air combat game called Vector Thrust the other day. This is supposedly a spiritual successor to a series of games I’ve never had any contact with previously: Namco’s Ace Combat franchise. After playing Vector Thrust a bit and enjoying it, I’ve managed to track down cheap copies of the PS2 Ace Combat games to tide me over until the fun-but-crashy Vector Thrust comes out of Early Access in a hopefully somewhat more stable state.

I can’t speak much about Ace Combat as yet — though I’m looking forward to trying them, rather late to the party as ever — but giving Vector Thrust a go and subsequently ordering copies of what are supposedly the best Ace Combat games, it occurred to me that flying a supersonic, tooled-up jet fighter is something we don’t get to do all that often in games these days, whereas it used to be a mainstay of computer (as opposed to console) gaming in general.

I used to play a lot of jet fighter sims when I was younger. This was primarily because my Dad, as something of a propellerhead, tended to be sent review copies back when he wrote articles for Atari magazine Page 6/New Atari User. My Dad preferred the more realistic end of the spectrum when it came to flight sims, however — he’d often spend some time with MicroProse’s latest, then head right on back to Flight Simulator II in order to fly from one place to another in real-time with no-one shooting at him.

I wasn’t averse to a bit of Flight Simulator myself — it was very satisfying to be able to fly what was, at the time, a super-realistic simulation. But I much preferred the action and drama of a good jet fighter sim. I talked a bit about F-19 Stealth Fighter a few posts back, but there were plenty of others — the rather arcadey action of F-15 Strike Eagle (and its sequel, which actually did become an arcade machine); the limited but challenging selection of missions in Falcon and the wonderful dynamic campaign of its later incarnations; the tricky carrier takeoffs and landings of Flight of the Intruder; the cinematic combat of TFX and EF2000; the outright “soap opera” nature of Origin’s Wing Commander-in-the-sky spinoff Strike Commander. I developed a frighteningly comprehensive knowledge of modern air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance — particularly for someone of my age — and, having spent many hours reading the lengthy manuals (remember those?) for these games on the toilet, I knew a fair bit about the planes and how they worked, too, since this was the age of many manuals having a coffee-table book level of detail about them.

Ace Combat isn’t, from what I understand, a sim. But neither is it the “3D shmup” of titles like After Burner and its sequel G-LOC. Instead, like Vector Thrust, it’s somewhere in-between, offering a semi-realistic flight model coupled with ridiculous, “gamey” aspects such as your plane being able to hold terrifyingly huge amounts of missiles and dogfighting that is more inspired by World War II combat than what actually happens in the sky these days.

It’s a kind of game we don’t get all that often these days any more, and that’s a real shame — though at the same time it’s also encouraging to see titles like Vector Thrust (which, I understand, was put together by a teeny-tiny team) cropping up, even if this sort of thing would never get greenlit by a triple-A publisher these days, in all likelihood.

Regardless, I’m really looking forward to trying out Ace Combat for the first time; having read a little about them and listened to the (spectacular) soundtracks, they sound right up my alley — and will be a nice change from some of the other stuff I’ve been playing on the side to boot.

1724: Remake Rebirth

You may recall a short while back that I’d picked up a copy of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 for Vita and that I’d played it a tiny bit. Well, I’ve played it a bit more now, and can comfortably say with some confidence that it is probably the best Neptunia game yet — and also a fine entry point into the series as a whole.

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia was something of a tough sell. While its story and characterisation was a hell of a lot of fun — it’s what won me over and made me such a fan of the series in the first place — the gameplay was repetitive as hell and, while inventive with some of its mechanics, was highly flawed. I wouldn’t have judged anyone who put it down after a few hours, in other words, as I know that not everyone can overlook mechanical and technical issues purely by virtue of there being an adorable main cast doing a variety of silly things.

The two follow-ups — the confused timeline and alternate universes of Neptunia mean that they’re not “sequels” as such — completely overhauled the game systems to make them much better and more fun to play while maintaining the distinctive character that the first game had set in place. Until now, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory had provided the definitive Neptunia experience — not perfect, by any means, but by far the most solid installment to date.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 builds on the solid foundation of Victory’s mechanics and retcons them into the story of the original game. Only the story and characterisation have been revamped too. And the game frequently pokes fun at itself for being a remake.

In other words, far from being a simple makeover of the first game, Re;Birth1 is very much a new Neptunia game well worth playing in its own right.

And you can tell that the Neptunia team has had quite some time to refine their craft by now. Many of the series’ trademark quirks are still present — the dungeon designs are still somewhat repetitive (many, if not all, seem to be copy-pasted from mk2 and Victory) and there are some characters, enemies and abilities that just appear to be flat-out unbalanced (possibly deliberately so, I might add) — but numerous nips and tucks have been made here and there to make it overall a very positive experience.

Victory’s heavily random number generator-based Scout system is out the window, for example. This was the main means through which you unlocked “hidden” dungeons, enemies and items in Victory, and it could be a right old pain in the backside. Instead, Re;Birth1 replaces much of its functionality with the “Remake” system, in which you can craft various Plans in order to put new items in the shops, unlock new dungeons, add new enemies and add new gatherable items. There’s still a slight element of RNG in play in that you need enemies to actually drop items you need to craft these plans, but it doesn’t encourage save-scumming in the same way that Victory did.

Outside of gameplay, the writers (and localisers) have been honing their wit to a sharp point, too. Neptunia has always been a superb, on-the-nose satire and parody of both the games industry and modern anime, and Re;Birth1 is no exception. The original game, while amusing, featured a few jokes that felt a bit “forced” along the way; Re;Birth1’s script, by contrast, flows much more nicely while still containing plenty of amusing references for those who know what to spot.

The biggest highlight for me, so far, though, has been how the relationships between the characters are depicted. There’s a much stronger feeling that, after several games now, the writers have a strong feeling of who these characters really are and how they relate to one another. The banter between them is natural and enjoyable to witness, and those who have been fans since the beginning will doubtless enjoy certain friendships and rivalries explored in much greater detail than ever before.

I’ve still got a long way to go in the game yet, but I’m having a real blast; as with mk2 and Victory before it, I’m having a lot of fun just wandering around, getting into fights with the variety of silly enemies (many of which are themselves game references) and grinding for experience and abilities. It’s a game that’s fun to take at your own pace — you could charge straight through the story if you see fit, but there’s a lot of fun to be had on the side, too, and I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

So I think that’s what I might go and do before I drop off to sleep. Nepu-Nepu!

1723: Sword of the Mind

I’m really not looking forward to the day that my imagination doesn’t work any more — if indeed such a day will ever come.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer carry an umbrella and imagine it’s the legendary sword Curtana, hacking and slashing my way through hordes of enemies (or, indeed, zombified shoppers who just want to get out of the rain but who are too cold and wet to actually exert themselves).

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer get on a piece of gym equipment accompanied by the Shadow of the Colossus music and imagine that, rather than simply engaging in the eminently pointless waste of time that is lifting a heavy thing then putting it down again lots of times, I am actually battling some monstrous foe that can only be defeated by lifting bits of it up, then putting them carefully down again.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer imagine what it would be like if my car could actually take off and fly, rising high above the surprised, bewildered and frightened heads of the other occupants of the traffic jam I’m in before shooting off into the distance via a far more direct route than any road ever offered.

I do wonder to myself whether or not my imagination will ever stop working. I doubt it will; after all, many creative types continue being creative well into the twilight of their life, though the exact form of what the imagination conjures up doubtless varies and changes as the years pass by.

I’m conscious of the changes to my own imagination, though in some cases these are due in part to other mental changes rather than the imagination itself. Take that period between going to bed and going to sleep, for example; when I was young, I could happily conjure whole worlds up for myself, exploring them and having all sorts of strange and wonderful adventures, blurring the lines between conscious thought and dreaming until eventually I’d awaken the next morning to the rather unwelcome sound of the alarm clock.

These days, however, I haven’t lost the ability to conjure up mental pictures, but the darkness that resides inside my head occasionally uses this time to show itself: instead of strange and fantastic worlds, my mind shows me far more mundane things, but often with the worst possible outcome; sometimes it’s nothing but words as I think about a conversation I’ve had — or need to have but am afraid to — while others it’s a mental picture I simply can’t look away from, no matter where I turn.

This isn’t a decline of the imagination at all, since my brain still conjures up very vivid pictures — and, I hasten to add, it’s not every night that I’m wracked with dark and terrible images that if not terrify me to my very core at least make me a bit anxious — but it is a change. I feel like I have less conscious control over my imagination: I can’t simply send myself to another world any more, at least not all the time; there are occasions where I have to let my mind take the lead and follow along after it. (I realise that makes no sense, but little to do with the strange inner workings of the human mind and consciousness does.)

There are other times when I can happily immerse myself in a world of my — or indeed someone else’s — creation, however. Reading a good book still makes glorious technicolour mental images appear before my mind’s eye. Writing something creative has an even more powerful impact on my imagination, stirring it into action. Closing my eyes and listening to pieces of music can either stir up imaginative scenes or conjure memories that I haven’t thought about for a long time.

The inside of my head isn’t perfect, and there is much about it I would probably change given the opportunity. But at the same time, it’s become a strangely comfortable place to be, dark corners and all; it’s a defining part of who I am, which is why I doubt that the door into that wonderful, terrifying place will ever truly be slammed shut.

1722: Shared Hardship on the Shores of La Noscea

I had an enjoyably bizarre experience in Final Fantasy XIV earlier on — and it’s the sort of thing that couldn’t possibly have been planned; the kind of emergent weirdness that only comes about when you put the unpredictability of humans into the mix with a set of systems that always play by set rules, regardless of context.

In order to explain the situation for those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, indulge me a moment, veterans, while I define a few things.

One of the main systems in Final Fantasy XIV is known as the Full Active Time Event (or FATE) system. These are essentially “public quests” that spawn at predictable points on the map, but on an unpredictable schedule. Some spawn more frequently than others; some are required to progress in certain quests; some are more “popular” than others owing to their convenient location or rewards on offer.

There are three important things to note about FATEs: firstly, they’re time limited, usually providing you 15 minutes to complete the main objective, which is generally plenty of time; secondly, if you are standing inside the blue circle that represents the FATE area on the map and hit just one enemy once — even if it’s just a glancing, accidental blow from a weapon better suited for channeling powerful magics than melee combat — you are considered to have “participated” in that FATE; thirdly, the number of people who participated in a FATE the previous time it spawned determines how difficult it is the next time around: in other words, at peak periods, FATEs are designed to be challenging for larger groups of people, whereas if the last time a FATE spawned no-one took part in it at all, the next time it appears it will probably be completable by a (well-geared) solo adventurer, perhaps with a chocobo companion in tow.

Completely separate from FATEs is a newer system called The Hunt, in which each area in the game has three Elite Marks that players can hunt down for substantial rewards: a B-rank mark, which you can fight solo, and which only offers rewards if you have a specific Mark Bill inviting you to hunt it down; an A-rank mark, which requires about 4-8 people minimum to take down, but which offers rewards according to how much you (and, in most cases, your party) contributed to the kill; and an S-rank mark, which is much more powerful but works along the same lines as the A-rank marks in terms of rewards. We’re mostly concerned with A-rank marks here, since S-rank marks have special conditions that need to be fulfilled before they’ll show up in most cases, whereas A-rank marks will just show up regardless.

A-rank marks spawn on predictable schedules — you can see the timers ticking away for the server I play on right here, for example — and appear roughly once every four hours. What normally happens is that hunting parties will gather when the first marks on the list are approaching the “four hours since last killed” mark, then spread out and start looking for the beasts to respawn. There then follows a phenomenon that has become known as the “A-Train”, where hunting parties move from zone to zone and pick off all the A-rank marks on the list one at a time until they’re all dead, at which point the parties will all disband — unless there’s the possibility of an S-rank showing up — and reconvene again when the first timer on the list hits four hours. It’s like clockwork; it’s perhaps not how the designers intended the system to work when it was first designed — and indeed, it’s been tweaked and reorganised several times since it launched — but if you can get involved (which is usually as simple as throwing up a Party Finder ad with the word “Hunt” in it) it can be both fun and rewarding, if not particularly challenging in most cases.

Anyway, the point here is that when an A-rank mark shows up, a horde of players normally follows — and I do mean a horde. We’re talking maybe 30 or so people minimum, and usually much more than that.

When I was sauntering around the lands of Western La Noscea earlier today, hacking and slashing my way through some FATEs in an attempt to collect the very last Atma crystal I needed to upgrade my Paladin’s relic weapon into its Atma form, I happened to stumble across one of these gatherings, who had showed up to fight the giant crab Nahn. Nahn, as it turned out, had spawned right in the middle of the FATE I had actually run to this area to complete, and as such there was something in the region of 50 people standing around, killing Sahagin indiscriminately to clear the area ready for the big group push towards Nahn. The important thing to note here is that the Sahagin they were hacking, slashing, punching and setting fire to (depending on class) were parts of the FATE I had shown up to complete, so as far as the game was concerned, when that FATE’s boss fell, over 50 people had participated in it.

I’m sure you can imagine what happened a little later, after Nahn was defeated and after I returned to the area to complete the same FATE again as it happened to appear while I was passing through.

Yes, believing that 50 players being in the area, battering Sahagin left, right and centre, was a representative example of the zone’s population at that particular hour, the game adjusted the difficulty of the FATE to cater not to little old me and the two other people who happened to wander into the FATE at the same time as me — oh no — but instead to the 50+ people who were no longer present, now doubtless considerably further down the tracks of this particular run of the A-Train.

I didn’t notice this initially. I thought that the “trash” enemies that you have to defeat before the main boss monster showed up were a little stronger than I remembered, but I thought nothing of it. My companions and I slaughtered our way through them until the boss showed up, at which point I, as the Paladin — a protector “tank” type — got its attention by smacking it firmly upside the chops with my shield, and then began inserting my sword into various parts of its anatomy while my companions got busy with magic spells and poking it with a spear respectively.

I figured something was amiss when the health bar of the boss was moving very slowly despite us all unleashing our most powerful attacks. To put it in context, the boss’ health was declining at roughly the same speed as a well-geared party taking on Ramuh Extreme, currently one of the most challenging fights in the game. Fortunately, the boss didn’t receive a damage buff at the same time as his vastly increased hit points, otherwise we would have been in real trouble.

We persisted, though, shaving away a tiny sliver of health with each hit. Andie happened to be passing by at one point, and joined the fray to contribute a bit of extra damage from her Bard class. We were making progress, a tiny bit at a time, though the longer the fight was going on the more exhausted my Paladin was getting, my ever-declining TP (Tactical Points, used for triggering physical attacks) getting perilously close to the zero mark. I had the boss’ attention pretty firmly, though, so I eased off the powerful attacks and let my (TP-free) automatic basic attack do its work for a little while.

The timer ticked down. We were into single digits of minutes remaining, despite the fact that we’d all entered the fray with the full 15 minutes on the clock. The boss was barely at 50% of his HP, and I was starting to doubt whether or not we’d be able to beat it. Still we persisted.

“DIE DAMMIT!” I typed in frustration, on the /say channel so that my companions (whom, aside from Andie, I didn’t know) could “hear” me.

“for real!!!” came back the response from one of them. We’d shared a moment. It was nice. Still we fought on.

My TP had recovered a bit by now, so I triggered my Fight or Flight ability — which temporarily increases my Paladin’s damage output — and started hacking away with a bit more gusto once again. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but the boss’ health bar seemed to be going down noticeably faster. It looked as if we might just make it.

In fact, it was beginning to look like we’d make it just as the timer hit zero. Would we pull it off?

Sadly not. At less that 1% HP remaining, the timer expired and we failed the FATE. Our characters all fell to our knees and wept for the 15 minutes of effort we’d just put in — and, of course, to add insult to injury, I didn’t get an Atma crystal from that FATE either.

I don’t regret the experience, though. As I say, I shared a moment with those other people who were there at the same time as me, all doubtless thinking the same things, willing their characters to do just that little bit more damage. When I happened to run into them again doing another FATE in the area about half an hour later, we exchanged pleasantries and had a laugh about how the new FATE was quite a bit easier than our earlier tragedy. Then we went our separate ways. It was a real “ships in the night” moment, but it made what would have otherwise been a frustrating experience into something highly memorable — and, indeed, something I ended up wanting to write about at length.

I’ve got one more Atma crystal to go before my Paladin’s weapon and shield can be upgraded, hot on the heels of my Black Mage’s weapon reaching the powerful Novus (second-to-top) upgrade phase recently. If I can have more experiences like the one I just described, though, I really don’t mind it taking a little longer; shared hardships like that — while fairly trivial in this instance — can bring people closer together, even if it’s just for a moment or two.

1721: Run the Gauntlet

I tend to be rather wary of reboots that are simply named after the thing they’re rebooting, because in my experience of them they often end up either being 1) not very good or 2) not particularly true to the original. (Or, in some cases, 3) both.)

As such, I was a bit skeptical about the prospect of a new Gauntlet game, particularly as the screenshots for it on Steam made it look like the worst kind of drab, brown, “gritty” modern-day reboot that we’ve seen all too frequently recently.

However, my friend Tim dropped by for a visit today, and we decided to give it a shot. £15 is a price at which I’m more than happy to take a punt on something I don’t know a lot about, and so I downloaded and installed it, and we jumped into the action.

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a very solid game indeed — and one that clearly shines the way Gauntlet was always intended to be played: in local cooperative play, with up to four players crowded around playing together.

In other words, Gauntlet, as the new game is simply called, deftly addresses my two main concerns above by being 1) good and 2) true to the original. Let’s look at both elements in turn.

It’s good

Gauntlet’s mechanics are pretty solid. It’s not trying to be Diablo or anything more complicated than the original game was: it’s a straightforward hack-and-slash arcade game in which 1-4 players take on a variety of dungeons while attempting to gather as much treasure as possible.

Each of the four characters is made unique through the use of their own individual attack skills, including a super-skill that works on a cooldown. The Warrior and Valkyrie both specialise in close-combat, with their main distinction being that the Valkyrie can attack more quickly and block things with her shield, while the Warrior focuses on smashing his way through enemies. The Elf is a ranged attacker, in possession of a rapid-fire shot that works like a twin-stick shooter, a slower, more powerful sniper shot that is the only means of damaging some more powerful enemies, and a bomb, which can blow up groups of enemies. The Wizard, meanwhile, makes use of Magicka-style button combinations to cast spells — discovering which combinations do what is, seemingly, part of the fun.

These mechanics are supported by some arcade-style shenanigans where if you kill enough enemies at once (usually using a special skill) and then keep killing enemies repeatedly after that, you’ll build up a chain with a score multiplier for as long as you can keep the carnage going. It’s immensely satisfying to keep pressing your luck and keep the enemies coming as your score shoots through the roof — and if the Steam leaderboards are anything to go by (and if they aren’t filled with cheaters, which I sadly suspect right now) it’s possible to get some astronomical scores through careful combo-management. Far better than simple fire-and-forget.

When playing in co-op mode there’s an element of competition, too; at the end of each level, you’ll be shown how you stacked up compared to your companions in terms of points you earned by killing things and points you earned through snagging treasure. There’s also a bonus for anyone who managed to keep hold of a shiny gold crown until the end of the level, making for some enjoyable scuffles as enemies knock it from your head and everyone scurries to be the first to reclaim it.

There’s some interesting “progression” mechanics, too; as you play the game and achieve various milestones, you’ll unlock various small bonuses to each of the four characters. None of them are game-breakingly powerful, but on occasion they can provide access to new abilities or allow you to approach things in a slightly different way. In other words, they keep things on a level playing field for those who have been playing for different amounts of time while simultaneously letting people feel like they’re making “progress”.

It’s true to the original

While a lot is different, the core is the same: you make your way through fairly linear but maze-like levels, defeating enemies — which keep coming from enemy-spawning structures until you destroy these — and grabbing treasure. Every so often, you’ll be faced with the powerful (and, in this incarnation, seemingly undefeatable) Death and have to run for your life, and, of course, there’s always the risk of shooting the food, making healing somewhat more difficult. (Thankfully, the one aspect of the original which isn’t maintained is the ever-ticking health bar, declining over time as a means of getting you to feed more money into the arcade machine; now, you simply have a stock of lives shared between all players which you can recharge pretty easily.)

The four-character dynamic is very true to the original, and they even keep their original colours — though they’ve had a bit of a makeover in some cases. The Valkyrie is no longer a sexy, skinny, bikini-clad supermodel, for example — instead she looks like a rather more formidable woman of war, as any good Valkyrie should. (Whether or not you still find that “sexy” is up to your own tastes, of course.) The characters all have voices and personalities, too, and while it’s initially a little odd to hear a regional accent coming from the mouth of Questor the elf, the voices and personalities are well-chosen and give some much-needed flavour and humour to the game as a whole.

These may all sound like differences from the original rather than being true, but in reality they support the core gameplay and the core appeal element of Gauntlet, both back in the day and in this new incarnation: simple, straightforward, no-commitment dungeon-crawling with friends. It’s a huge amount of fun even with just two people — I perhaps question its value as a single-player title but am willing to give it a shot — and I can imagine with four, each taking on the role of a different character, it will be an absolute blast.

And if you want even more trueness to the original? You’ll be pleased to know that the sounds for picking up keys and potions are intact from the original game, the main theme plays on the title screen, and there’s even a “Classic Mode” filter for the graphics, though I’m yet to try that for myself.

A pleasant surprise, then, and one I hope I’ll have the opportunity to play with people again sometime soon.

1720: Jam

I’ve had a decent-length commute to work on several occasions throughout my life to date, and every time, I’ve found myself wondering how on Earth some of the road layouts I have to drive through got approved.

Take my daily journey to my current place of employment. The majority of this involves driving along a motorway that is a major route along the south coast. For starters, the road itself is in appalling condition — it’s something of a bumpy ride as I leave Southampton, then smooths out a bit later, though is still a bit of a pothole-ridden mess in a few places.

It’s some strange things it does with its layout that are the most baffling, though. My “favourite” — and I use this term loosely — is a short section of less than half a mile in length where the previously three-lane motorway turns into four lanes — the rightmost lane splits in two, with the new fourth lane becoming what it calls a “climbing lane”. I am unsure of the exact purpose of this fourth lane, because 1) the road there isn’t particularly hilly (either upwards in one direction or downwards in the other) and thus I question the need for a “climbing lane” if indeed it is for “climbing” a hill and 2) all it seems to get used for anyway is for BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers to aggressively pull out into and then overtake the people they think are going too slowly. (Which, as I’m sure you know, can be summed up as “everyone”.)

Splitting into four lanes isn’t a terrible idea as it spreads the traffic out somewhat, and that particular stretch of the road tends to get very busy around rush hour. Which is why it’s utterly bewildering that said four-lane stretch lasts for, as I mentioned above, less than half a mile, at which point the new fourth lane then merges back into the third, almost inevitably causing a traffic jam every single day.

Predictable traffic jams are a pain in the arse, but you can at least plan your journey around them if you know that it’s 95% likely you will get stuck for at least 10 minutes in one particular spot. On my commute for another job much further back, the traffic jams around Winchester were so predictable — and so stationary — that I had the time to create a Gowalla (Foursquare precursor) check-in spot called Winchester Traffic Jam and write a description on my phone before anything moved again… then check into it every single day, because it was always in the exact same spot.

I guess the explanation for these dodgy stretches of road is simply that the amount of traffic has increased over the years, while the road capacity hasn’t. But there are places where it’s a clear and obvious problem; all you have to do is listen to the local radio’s traffic report each day to hear exactly the same places coming up time and time again. (And the traffic report lady demonstrating her slightly annoying habit of saying “Your queue…” instead of “There is a queue…”, as if queues are something desirable being handed out to everyone.)

Since you can’t just shut a major road off completely — particularly while people are commuting on it — it’s difficult to know how these situations could be resolved. I guess we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that yes, we are going to waste a considerable portion of our life creeping forwards at 10mph wondering if we should phone ahead to work and tell them that the traffic is, once again, quite bad.

At least it’s quality time to listen to some music or podcasts — something which I missed while I was working at home.

1719: Album for the Young

I made myself a music playlist the other day. Contained therein was a selection of music from my teenage years, which is when I started actually buying CD albums and singles for myself — beginning, as I believe I’ve said before, with Oasis’ Definitely Maybe just a day before (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? came out.

Like most playlists I make, I was putting full albums rather than individual tracks in there, as I like to have a full selection of music from favourite artists available. Hitting the “Next Track” button is simple enough if you happen to be served up a stinker of an album track, so it is, for me, a case of better to have too much than too little.

Now, here’s where I did things a little differently. Normally, when I put music on these days, as many people do, I believe, I choose a playlist, hit Play, then hit the Shuffle button so I get a random selection of tracks from those that I’ve picked. I could make the time or effort to curate playlists a little more carefully and not have to rely on Shuffle, of course, but I rarely do that these days; the only exceptions have been when I need a particular amount of music, or when I want to choose some very specific tracks to, say, take to the gym or something.

When I selected this playlist and started playing it in the car the other morning, though, I decided that I wasn’t going to follow my usual pattern, and was instead going to listen to the tracks contained therein a full album at a time. If it was good enough for my fifteen year-old self, I’m sure it’s still good enough for me now — and I don’t like to think that the 21st century has given me such an attention span deficit that I can no longer deal with more than one track by the same artist in succession.

I used to enjoy listening to albums when I was younger. True, I rarely did it as an activity by itself — I would usually put an album on while doing homework, or reading, or something like that — but I would usually listen to a whole album once I put it on. This was at least partly due to the fact that the age of music on physical media meant that you had to get up and change a disc (or even cassette, a medium which even made it difficult to listen to a specific song) if you wanted to hear something by a different artist — but it was also due to the fact that even then, I was conscious of most albums — good albums, anyway — being designed as coherent works in and of themselves. Sure, it was the individual tracks you’d tend to hear played on the radio or the television, but a well-designed album had a beginning, middle and end: it took you on a musical journey, and sometimes even told a story.

Listening to these albums this way for the first time in a very long while has reminded me what a good experience it can be to settle down and immerse yourself in just one album; just one artist’s work, the tracks presented in the order they believed that was best, rather than some arbitrary random picker thingy.

Particular highlights of drives this week have included the Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go, a favourite of my teenage years that I primarily picked up in the first place because a girl I fancied was totally into it; Propellerheads’ decksanddrumsandrockandroll, an album I never actually owned but always enjoyed listening to; and Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land, which remains, to date, a wonderfully “industrial”-sounding album filled with fire, energy and not a small degree of filth. (Not in a sexy way, either; I’m talking the kind of smoky, dusty, grimy filth that belches forth from a factory chimney.)

The latter in particular has been a pleasure to rediscover, at least in part because there’s really nothing quite like it getting mainstream airplay these days; it remains a product uniquely of its time, and listening to it takes me back to the first time I heard Breathe on a school bus, courtesy of my classmate Peter Miles (a noteworthy acquaintance during my school life for being someone who challenged me to a fight that neither of us showed up for, and who was good enough to lend me a long leather coat so I could dress up as a Gestapo agent for a murder-mystery party just a couple of years ago), and discovered that an artist I’d previously written off on the grounds of the fact I didn’t really like their previous single Firestarter was actually rather thrilling to listen to.

So while I’m not sure I’m going to start just sitting down and doing nothing but listening to an album — something that I’ve never really done, even back when iTunes was something we could only dream of — I’m certainly going to be making an effort to use the Shuffle facility a whole lot less when I’m listening to music in the future. There’s an artistry in the construction of a good album, just as there is (arguably more obvious) artistry in the composition and production of an individual track; it’s something that not many people take the time to appreciate these days, so it’s something that I fully intend to (re-)explore a little more in the coming days.