1777: Rivalry With an Inanimate Object

One of the most peculiar things about the new Wii U version of Super Smash Bros. is the compatibility with the “Amiibo” figurines that are sold separately.

During the run-up to release, I’d misunderstood their reason for existence, assuming them to be a means of effectively customising an individual fighter to your liking, then being able to take it around to a friend’s house and use your own custom character in multiplayer battles.

I had my concerns about this; any time you introduce an element of customisation to something — particularly if said customisation involves “growth” of power and abilities — you run the risk of giving an unfair advantage to anyone with the customisations, and a disadvantage to anyone playing with stock characters. I had a vision of someone coming over with a level 50 Amiibo and repeatedly kicking my arse with it, not necessarily because they were actually any good with the character, but because they’d simply levelled it up enough.

I needn’t have worried, because Amiibos don’t work like that. What they do instead is provide you with a computer-controlled opponent that plays alongside you, learns over time and levels up its abilities, gradually becoming stronger and more powerful. You can customise it by feeding it equipment and choosing the special moves it is able to use, and level it up simply by allowing it to participate in games — be it as an opponent in a free-for-all multiplayer battle (you can even go one-on-one against it) or as a teammate in cooperative or team-based modes.

What’s interesting about this is that because there’s a physical object involved as well as persistence — after you’ve finished a play session, you write the data back to the Amiibo simply by plopping it on your GamePad for a moment — there’s a much stronger relationship between you and this small lump of plastic. I’d even go so far as to say you may well develop a kind of rivalry.

It sounds odd, but it’s absolutely true. Andie and I were playing some multiplayer earlier, and we had the Amiibo as a third player for a while — although I took it out for a bit when she started winning pretty much every match. After Andie stopped playing, I brought the Amiibo back in for some one-on-one battles, and it’s actually been a lot of fun trying to figure out how to beat her, because as she’s levelled — a process which is pretty quick up until about level 30 or so — she’s gradually become better and better at playing, and is now a rather challenging opponent that I can still beat, but who certainly doesn’t go down without a fight. Victories against her feel somehow more meaningful than a battle against random computer opponents.

While I’m not sure how much the Amiibos add to the experience as a whole — I’m interested to take mine over to my friend’s house to bring her into his game and see how that works — they’re an interesting little twist, and the figurines themselves are attractive and eminently collectible. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll collect them, but they’re inexpensive and decent quality, so I’m not ruling out maybe a couple more, particularly if a Shulk one decides to make an appearance any time soon…

1776: SMAAASH

Not realising that Black Friday has apparently become A Thing over here, I went into town to pick up a copy of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U earlier. It took over half an hour of queueing in Game to pick up a copy, but at least I didn’t get to the front of the line and find there were none left. (I didn’t get a Gamecube controller adapter, though; stupid “preorders only” rule.)

Most of you reading this probably know what Super Smash Bros. is, but on the offchance you don’t, it’s become one of Nintendo’s flagship series over the years thanks to it essentially being a disc full of Nintendo fangasms. It’s sort of a fighting game — though nowhere near as technically demanding as more traditional fighting games — that stars a wide variety of characters either from Nintendo’s own lineup or from games that have appeared on Nintendo consoles at some point or another, as well as one or two special guests.

I’ve been playing a bit of the new game this evening and like its predecessors, it appears to be a lot of fun, if somewhat overwhelming in terms of the sheer number of different things available to do. There’s a straightforward Smash battle, Classic Mode, All-Star Mode, Events Mode, Stadium Mode, online and probably several others I’ve forgotten, each of which are subdivided into various other things and most of which can be played either solo or with friends. Some can be played cooperatively with a partner against the computer, others are purely competitive. The most extreme multiplayer offering the new game has is an utterly chaotic 8-player mode in which it’s nigh-impossible to tell what the fuck is going on, but it’s an enjoyable sort of nonsense nonetheless.

There are some interesting additions, too. The ability to create your own fighter using any of the Miis on your Wii U console makes for some entertaining possibilities, particularly since they’re customisable with three different fighting styles, selectable (and unlockable) special moves, equipment, costumes and headgear. The Amiibo functionality, where you can use small figurines to communicate with the game via the Near-Field Communication panel on the Gamepad, is fun, too, and not quite what I expected; rather than your Amiibo containing a fighter than you personally use, it instead acts as more of a sort of virtual pet that you can feed equipment to (don’t think too hard about how that works), customise the special moves of and gradually level up by allowing it to participate alongside you in battle. Because the figurine itself holds data, you can then take it to a friend’s house and bring your Amiibo into their game, too, so they can face off against the fighter you’ve been training up to be an unstoppable killing machine.

I’m really happy to see slightly lesser-known games such as Xenoblade Chronicles getting headline character love, too. Xenoblade’s protagonist Shulk is an enjoyable, interesting character to play as, and the Xenoblade stage is challenging and cool-looking. (Plus it features recurring villain Metal Face showing up to cause mischief throughout, which is a lot of fun.) It sure makes me pretty hungry to see the new Xenoblade game in action on Wii U, though…

Aside from that, the customisation of the game has never been better. You can tinker around with how frequently items appear, which music plays in which stage and how often and even switch levels to a stripped-down, simplified “Omega Mode” (essentially little more than a floating platform) for a true test of your skill without environmental hazards being a pain. There’s even an online mode — “For Glory” — where you play without items on Omega stages, and I have a feeling this is where the true Super Smash Bros. legends will learn to shine.

It’s unfortunate that none of my friends are around this weekend as I was hoping to have a good session of local multiplayer with them. Still, I shall console myself with the vast amount of other content in the game — and perhaps attempt to give some online friends a kicking — and smile as the Wii U once again shows that it has some of the most enjoyable, most interesting and most polished games in all of the “next” generation of console hardware.

1775: Geometry Wars 3: Some Initial Thoughts

I never thought I’d get to write the following sentence: I played a bunch of Geometry Wars 3 tonight.

Geometry Wars 2 was an absolute masterpiece, and one of my favourite games from one of my favourite studios — the sadly defunct Bizarre Creations, who were also behind some of my favourite racing games (the Project Gotham series and the wonderful Blur). It struck a perfect balance of challenge and instant gratification, allowing anyone to pick it up and play, but only those who took the time to concentrate on what they were doing to truly master it and attain the most astronomical scores. It also featured one of the finest implementations of online leaderboards of any game, ever. And the dissolution of Bizarre made me think that we’d never see a new game in the series. Here we are, though.

Is Geometry Wars 3 the masterpiece that its predecessor was? To be honest, it’s a bit early to tell yet. I wasn’t immediately taken with its new aesthetic — the old-school neon vector art has been toned down a bit in favour of a new (and still distinctive) look that I have a feeling will probably grow on me in time — but then I sat down to “try out” Pacifism mode (one of my favourite modes from 2, in which you may not fire your weapons and can only defeat enemies by dodging through exploding gates when they pass nearby), looked up and realised I’d spent somewhere in the region of an hour staring glassy-eyed at the screen just like I used to do with Geometry Wars 2. So that’s a good sign, then.

Here are some further observations, bullet-pointed for your convenience.

It has 3D levels. The flat plane is still there for “Classic” mode — essentially a retooling of Geometry Wars 2’s modes — but in the main single-player “Adventure” mode you’ll find yourself fighting on spheres, cubes, dishes, sausages, flat planes with holes in, circles with spinning walls and all manner of other peculiar arrangements. And it really adds a different spin (no pun intended) on the gameplay; having to consider the ability to “wrap” around a 3D shape forces you to think about your strategy somewhat differently to being enclosed in an arena. Not only that, but moving around on irregular shapes (such as the aforementioned sausage) can lead to you having to play with the battlefield skewed at some crazy and challenging angles if you’re not careful about how you move.
The music has been remixed. The tunes are all based on the various themes from Geometry Wars 2’s various modes, but I think I preferred the old mixes. The new versions have suitably thumping bass and drum parts, but the mix of the Geometry Wars 2 versions just sounded “fuller” and more satisfying to listen to.
There are bosses. In “Adventure” mode, anyway. Said bosses have a habit of 1) sitting on an awkwardly shaped playfield (the second boss, whom you fight on a cube, is a particularly troublesome chap) and 2) launching hundreds of enemies at you while you’re attempting to fill them full of hot plasma death. Naturally, you only get one life for boss levels, too, so no fucking it up and hoping for the best.
There’s a progression and upgrade system. Again, this only applies to “Adventure” mode. Early in the game, you’ll unlock a “drone” that follows you around and behaves in various ways according to which one you’ve selected. You can upgrade both your drone and its special attack using the little diamond-shaped Geoms you collect in the levels, which are normally used simply to increase your score multiplier. Additional drones and special attacks are unlocked by progressing through the levels in “Adventure” mode and by attaining a particular number of stars by beating target scores in each level.
There’s a weird new mechanic called Super State. The clichéd computerised voiceover will occasionally say “Super State” and inform you that there’s an arrangement of static targets somewhere on the playfield. Destroy them all and you get a powered-up weapon for a brief time, rather than the approach from previous games where once your shots were powered up, they stayed powered up. It’s a fun little twist that forces you to weigh up whether it’s worth the risk of trying to destroy the targets, or simply muddle on with your regular weapon. It can be particularly perilous on “Adventure” mode’s 3D stages.
Leaderboards are still awesome. In the “Classic” modes, you can always see your nearest rival in the corner of the screen, and at the end of a session you can see how you stack up against your friends and the global leaderboards. In “Adventure” mode, each level has its own individual leaderboard for you to take on, giving you something to strive for even if you’ve cleared every level with three stars.
There’s an online mode. There are two ways to play, only one of which I’ve tried so far. Summoner splits players into two teams and then puts them in a Domination-style game where you have to capture towers by shooting them, and then the towers start coughing up enemies for you to destroy with your teammates. Highest score at the end of a short time limit — matches are really short and snappy — wins. Die and your team suffers a penalty to its score multiplier. It seems like fun, but unfortunately in the matches I’ve tried so far all of my opponents (and teammates for that matter) have just sat there and not done anything. This did mean I won by default, however, which was nice.
There’s a local co-op mode. I haven’t tried it yet, but this was quite fun in Geometry Wars 2.

That’s about it for my initial impressions, then. I’ll undoubtedly play some more in the next few days and have some more detailed thoughts to ponder, but for now I’m quietly impressed. As I noted above, I’m not quite sure yet whether or not it’s as good as Geometry Wars 2 was, but it’s certainly a solid, enjoyable game that I’m looking forward to getting to know a bit better.

(Oh, and if you’re playing the PC version, I recommend playing in Borderless Windowed mode; the full-screen mode inexplicably caps the frame-rate at 24fps, which is just baffling.)

1774: Last Chance, Twitter

I know I’ve been very anti-Twitter and very anti-social media in general recently, but an unfortunate side-effect of “going dark” is, to be perfectly frank, loneliness.

It kind of sucks that social media is the default means of people communicating with one another today. I’ll grant that it’s a convenient and easy means of people to talk to each other without sharing completely “personal” details like email addresses or phone numbers, but I sort of miss the days of sending lengthy emails back and forth with people. I know the option is still there to do that, but how many people would actually respond, I wonder?

This is a preamble to the fact that I have rejoined Twitter in an attempt to reconnect with the people I effectively severed social ties with when I went dark a while back. I don’t regret doing that — remaining clear of some of the most ridiculous Internet drama in years has been thoroughly pleasant, and it makes me glad to have the close friends I do have who have stuck by me even as I was harder to get hold of — but I have found myself somewhat wanting for conversation at times.

And so we come to this, then: an attempt to recapture whatever it was that attracted me to Twitter in the first place, and kept me as an avid user for a long time until I became thoroughly disillusioned with the whole thing.

The temptation with Twitter is to follow everyone and everything. A follow isn’t the same as a friendship request on other forms of social media: it’s not reciprocal. You can follow someone and they remain completely unaware of your existence. This isn’t necessarily as harsh (or creepy) as it sounds, since many Twitter users make use of the social network primarily as a broadcast medium for keeping people up to date on the latest happenings or pointing them in the direction of posts, forums and articles that are a better place to hang out and talk in detail. Twitter is, after all, shit for nuanced discussion, as anyone who has ever attempted to discuss anything deeper than how nice the sausage you’re currently eating is will have undoubtedly discovered.

I’m not going to do that this time, though. I’m not going to use Twitter as the noisy, messy hodgepodge of microblogging tool, text messaging service and RSS reader that it once was: the emphasis for me now is on the thing I always enjoyed using it for most: talking to people from all over the world.

I’m not going to follow hundreds of people. I’m not going to feel obliged to follow people who follow me unless I find them interesting. If people start retweeting things that upset or annoy me, I’ll simply turn off their retweets — retweets, after all, are by far the most irritating feature of Twitter in my experience since it’s a means of someone shoving a third party’s opinion in your face — and if they remain annoying or upsetting after that then, well, maybe I don’t really want to be following them after all.

My account is public at present, but once I have a nice little collection of followers gathered once again, I’m turning my account back to private, which means my tweets won’t be public and people will have to request to follow me rather than just being able to do so. My professional life is now completely separate from my online existence, and as such I have no need to “network” online by sucking up to “important” people and trying to make them aware of my existence by building up as much “social capital” (to co-opt a phrase that means something else) as I can.

I can instead concentrate on using Twitter as a means of talking with friends and — hopefully, anyway — having a bit of fun. And with any luck, this will help at least partly deal with the feelings of isolation and loneliness I’ve been feeling recently.

1773: Panel Beater

It was fashionable a while back to hate on that staple of British TV, the comedy panel show. I’m not entirely sure what there was to complain about — aside from the sheer number of this type of show on our screens, of course — but I never quite fell in line with what appeared to be popular (well, Twitter) opinion.

Why? Well, because I really enjoy panel shows. They’re simple, enjoyable, lightweight, eminently disposable entertainment that are perfect for vegging in front of the TV, watching over dinner or falling asleep in front of. They don’t place any particular demands on the audience, though if they’re a topical show they can be one means of viewing the week’s happenings, albeit through a comedically skewed lens.

And some of them have been running for a very long time indeed, which is impressive in itself. Have I Got News For You is, I believe, one of the most long-running examples, but I was surprised to discover the other day that music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks has been running for double-digit years, too.

These shows have remained fairly true to their original format over the years, though Never Mind the Buzzcocks has degenerated into chaos in an extremely enjoyable manner as the years have passed, with the latest series fronted by Rhod Gilbert being more like a bunch of slightly drunk mates sitting around pissing about than an organised game show.

The format has given us some true greats of television in more recent years, too. Few could deny that the show now most readily associated with the plummy tones of Stephen Fry — Q.I., of course — is an absolute classic of entertaining, educational television that masterfully combines cheeky humour with genuinely interesting facts about the world we live in and the people we share it with.

I’ve even pondered experimenting with the format myself in the form of a video games podcast in the panel show style. I still think it has a ton of unexplored potential in non-mainstream TV spaces, and think it would be an interesting thing to do at some point. It would also require a ton of preparation, however, so I’m not sure how practical it would be to do on a regular basis. Something to ponder, though!

1772: Around the Virtual World

I find Internet culture endlessly fascinating and, at times, more than a little terrifying.

One of the most interesting things about Internet culture is how small it makes the world seem at times. I recall when online connectivity was just starting to become a thing — beyond the old-school world of direct-dial bulletin board systems, that is — and as well as the obnoxious phrase “information superhighway” being coined, a second, lesser-known but rather accurate phrase came into brief usage: “global village”.

The concept of the Internet — or, perhaps more accurately, the Web — as a global village is an interesting one, and if you spend some time wandering around online, you’ll come to recognise the village’s various haunts. There’s the village hall that hosts everything from coffee mornings to neo-Nazi rallies (Facebook). There’s the pub where everyone is always talking over everyone else and no-one’s really listening to one another (Twitter). There’s the deceptive village shop that looks small but actually carries a frighteningly comprehensive array of products of all descriptions (Amazon). There’s the coffee shop where socialites of all descriptions like to hang out and have in-depth discussions about everything from literature to their sexual conquests (Reddit). And there’s that dark, unlit back alley that very few people go down, but down which you’ll find either an army of like-minded outcasts or a horde of terrifying monsters, depending on your outlook (4chan and its successor 8chan).

There’s far more to the Internet than this, of course; the global village has become more of a town over the years, but it’s never really lost that sense of having “landmarks” around the place: easily recognisable places from which you can easily get your bearings and which, should you choose to make them your regular hangouts, provide a sense of comfortable (or sometimes uncomfortable) familiarity.

They’ve all evolved over time, too. Take Facebook; when it originally launched, it was designed for college students. Then it expanded to take in young, cool people in general, and allow them to keep in touch with their close personal network of friends easily. Then it expanded again to become more public and open. And today, of course, almost everyone is on Facebook to some degree or another, regardless of age, gender, interests and even level of computer literacy.

Change hasn’t always been for the positive, of course — although how you regard these changes, positive or negative, is partly down to your own individual feelings and how you want to communicate online. Twitter and I, for example, parted ways when it was becoming increasingly apparent that the microblogging service was being used by a lot of people more as a broadcast medium — and sometimes an echo chamber — than a means of communicating effectively. Its inherent limitations started to strain at the seams as people, for some inexplicable reason, started to think that it was an appropriate medium for having in-depth debates about complex issues. (It really isn’t.) Then the marketers found it, trying to encourage us to tweet using the hashtags for their products seen on adverts or TV shows — who does this? And over time the noise built and built and built until, much like Facebook, it was not what it once was. For some people, it’s still fun; for me, it had lost much of the charm that caused me to use it a great deal in the first place.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in a lot of places, too. Take Wikipedia, for example; at face value, it appears to be a perfectly reputable source containing a vast array of information about pretty much anything you would care to name. Ostensibly being a reference work, much of it is written in an impartial, unbiased manner — though there are exceptions. And it’s in those exceptions you start to see that yes, this is something that is put together and constantly maintained by humans, many of whom are doing it simply because they enjoy doing it. Dig further and take a peek at the inner workings of Wikipedia and you’ll see that it’s far from a solo effort; teams of editors are constantly discussing, debating, arguing and even fighting over the most peculiar of topics; in order to deal with such situations, the site has formed its own quasi-government to arbitrate disputes, with unfortunate instances going through strict, formal procedures managed not by Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, but by councils of users. It’s fascinating to observe.

There are billions of people on the planet, a significant proportion of whom now have some form of access to the Internet. With that in mind, it’s kind of crazy how small the Internet feels sometimes. That “global village” really is a thing and, while just like any other village, not everyone gets along with everyone else, the virtual world we’ve all helped build together is a fascinating thing indeed.

Just be careful if you venture into some of those dark corners. You might not like what you find… but on the other hand, there’s always the possibility of being pleasantly surprised, too. Explore at your own risk!

1771: Dungeon of the Endless is Pretty Great

Before I left my friend Tim’s yesterday, I quickly gave him a tour of Amplitude’s Dungeon of the Endless, one of the three games in the studio’s Endless series of sci-fi strategy games and, I think, my favourite of the three overall. Demonstrating the game to Tim reminded me how much I like it, and thus I spent a fair amount of time both last night when I got home and today playing it.

For the uninitiated, Dungeon of the Endless is a peculiar affair somewhere between roguelike, real-time strategy game, turn-based strategy game, tower defense game and board game.

Here’s how it works. Your party of heroes (initially two, but expandable up to four by finding and recruiting additional characters as you progress) have crash-landed in a dungeon. The only way out is to use the otherwise destroyed spacecraft’s energy crystal to power the ancient elevators which proceed upwards through the twelve levels of the complex. Inconveniently, of course, these elevators only go up one floor at a time, so on every level you have to go through the same process of exploring, finding the exit and then transporting the energy crystal from the start point to the exit. Do this twelve times and you win; let the crystal be destroyed or all of your heroes die and you lose.

Each level is randomly generated, and they get larger and more complex as you progress, but still follow the same basic formula. A level is constructed out of individual rooms separated by doors, and opening a door is akin to starting a new “turn” in Dungeon of the Endless’ stablemates Endless Space or Endless Legend. Upon opening a door, you produce a particular amount of Food, Science and Industry, with the exact amount dependent on various conditions, including the heroes you have on your team, the modules you’ve built around the dungeon and whether or not there’s anyone trained to operate said modules and improve their output.

Food is required for healing, levelling up and, occasionally, recruiting new heroes. Science is used for researching new modules to construct and resetting ability cooldowns. Industry is used to actually construct things. There’s also a fourth resource called Dust, whose main use is to increase the power capacity of your crystal. Every ten units of Dust you acquire, you earn the ability to power an additional room. Powered rooms — which have to be connected to the crystal or to other powered rooms — can have modules built in them. Unpowered rooms have the chance of spawning waves of monsters every time you open a door — or indefinitely once one of your party members picks up the crystal and starts transporting it.

Playing the game effectively involves carefully strategising how you can balance exploring the dungeon to find the exit, constructing defensive positions to protect the crystal from attack, and powering rooms in such a way as to prevent enemies spawning in inconvenient locations — or perhaps to funnel them towards an easily-defended position. It’s initially overwhelming, but once you master the basic strategy — power rooms along the path to the exit, place heavy defences in between where the enemies are likely to spawn and where you’re going to be heading — it’s satisfying, but still challenging. As the game progresses, the enemies get stronger and come out in greater numbers, so you’d better have levelled up your heroes and researched some better modules in preparation for the increasing intensity of the assaults.

Being inspired by roguelikes, Dungeon of the Endless has a pleasing amount of replayability thanks to random elements that make each playthrough a little different. The maps are different each time, for starters, but there are also more subtle changes like the technologies available to research. In the last game I played, for example, I had access to the “Knowledge is Power” turrets, which power themselves up significantly according to how much Science you’ve collected. I stockpiled an enormous amount of Science in the earlier levels, meaning that these relatively inexpensive turrets got me through a lot of the game thanks to their astronomical stopping power. (They didn’t help me finish the last level, however, in which you’re very short on power and other resources and powerful monsters just seem to keep coming.)

I haven’t yet tried the multiplayer mode, in which you each control a single hero, but it has the potential to be interesting in a slightly different way to the single-player. I’m interested to try it sometime soon; hopefully the opportunity will arise!

1770: Drizzt’s Grand Adventure

Went over to my friend Tim’s today, and we played a bunch of Wii U games (he’s now finding it very difficult to resist the allure of Nintendo’s underrated little console, particularly with a new Super Smash Bros. on the horizon) as well as some tabletop stuff, too.

One of the games we gave a shot was something that’s been on my shelf for a while, but which I’ve only had the opportunity to play once: The Legend of Drizzt. Our regular group as a whole has a bit of a mixed opinion on cooperative games and dungeon crawlers, and The Legend of Drizzt is most certainly both of those things, although it does have a few scenarios that are competitive or team-based in nature as well as pure co-op action.

I own quite a few dungeon-crawlers, ranging from Milton Bradley’s original Hero Quest through Games Workshop’s follow-ups Advanced Heroquest [sic] and Warhammer Quest to more modern fare such as Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition and, of course The Legend of Drizzt. Of all of these, Descent appears to have fared the best with the group as a whole, but it’s also one of the most complex affairs thanks to its campaign rules and myriad tokens and pieces. Consequently, it doesn’t hit the table as often as I’d perhaps like, and we’re yet to run a whole campaign through to completion.

The nice thing about The Legend of Drizzt is that its adventures are all standalone affairs that can be run pretty quickly, and which form a coherent narrative if you choose to play through them in order. It does lack campaign rules, sadly, which means each time you start a new quest you’re effectively starting from scratch with your chosen character, but this does mean you potentially have the opportunity to try out all the different characters and combinations of skills rather than being railroaded down a single development path. I’m unsure as to which route is better; while the ongoing increase in power of a lengthy campaign is fun, it’s also essential to have a group with full commitment to seeing it through to completion and, much as I don’t like to admit it, I’m not sure I have that right now. One day, perhaps.

But anyway. The Legend of Drizzt.

Drizzt, as it shall be known for the rest of this post, is one of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventures series of board games. All three of these games are very similar, and, in fact, are fully compatible with one another, so it’s perfectly possible to mix and match elements from all of them to create custom character builds, adventures and scenarios. I only have Drizzt for now, but I’m tempted to pick up at least one of the others at some point, too.

The essence of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventures series is to provide a lightweight dungeon-crawling experience inspired by the 4th Edition rules of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. For those who aren’t well-up on their pen-and-paper role-playing games, D&D 4th Edition was interesting in that it placed a much stronger focus on tactical, board game-style combat than previous incarnations, in which it was perfectly possible to perform abstract combat sequences. (You can do this in D&D 4th Edition, too, but it’s not really designed for it.) It also gave each character a very clear set of things that they could do, known as Powers. These fell into a few different categories: At-Will Powers could be performed every turn without penalty, and tended to be the character’s main attack skills, each of which with its own benefits and drawbacks; Utility and Encounter Powers, meanwhile, could be performed once per “encounter” (essentially a self-contained sequence in the game, often — but not always — a battle) and were a bit more powerful and situational; while Daily Powers represented the character’s most devastating (or helpful) abilities, but which could only be performed once per in-game day (or, more accurately, once per period between “extended rests”).

Drizzt isn’t anywhere near as complex as the main D&D 4th Edition rules, but it pulls some of its main features — most notably the use of Powers. When you start a scenario, you pick a character, and from there you’re given access to at least one deck of cards from which you can pick a certain number of At-Will, Utility and Daily Powers. These will then be the abilities that you will have to use to progress through the scenario — though if you’re lucky enough to level your character up in the middle of a scenario (a situation which isn’t guaranteed) you tend to get access to at least one extra one as a reward.

Since the concept of “encounters” and “days” doesn’t really exist in Drizzt, the Utility and Daily powers are effectively one-shot abilities that you need to think very carefully about when you use. There are a couple of Treasure cards you can score by defeating monsters that allow you to “recharge” these powers, but they are few and far between; you’re best off saving your most powerful Powers for when you really need them.

Interestingly, unlike many other dungeon crawler games, Drizzt doesn’t require an adversary (or “Dungeon Master”) player. Instead, the game makes use of a clever system whereby when you explore a new area, you draw a monster card and then activate any monsters of that type on the board (including the one you just drew and placed) according to specific conditional rules on the card. In essence, the game itself runs the monsters automatically, and the players have to deal with them accordingly. This is somewhat similar to how Warhammer Quest works, though in Drizzt each monster has its own unique rules and special attacks that you’ll come to recognise — and, hopefully, learn how to deal with over time.

I really enjoyed our game of it today, and I hope I get the chance to play it again sometime soon. It’s an enjoyable, lightweight and, perhaps most importantly for our group, quick dungeon-crawler with a lot of flexibility, and I’m looking forward to having the chance to play it a bit more.

1769: Knackered

To be perfectly frank with you, dear reader, I’m not at all sure what I should write about today, so I’ve come to the oft-reached conclusion that I should just start typing and see what spews forth from my brain onto the page, like a violent eruption of creative vomit into the toilet of online publication.

I’m tired. I may have had Monday off from work thanks to our holiday, but it’s still been a long week. It hasn’t been the best week either, frankly, not because of any real specific happenings, but just from a mental health perspective. I don’t know whether it’s a sort of “comedown” from the nice time we had away or if it’s something a bit more deep-seated, but I’ve been feeling thoroughly miserable this week for a variety of reasons, which has probably been pretty clear from at least a couple of my recent posts.

Still, no matter, I guess, because the weekend is here, and that’s time to rest, relax, recharge and… something else beginning with R. (No, not that. Honestly.) Andie is away for most of tomorrow for a friend’s birthday party celebration drinks type thing, so I’m taking the rare opportunity to go spend some time with one of my local friends (and regular board gaming buddies) at the weekend. We’re going to play some Wii U and possibly some board games, and he’s going to experiment with cooking things that sound far too ambitious but which will hopefully be tasty if they come out all right.

We shall see, I guess.

The onset of winter isn’t helping with the whole “feeling a bit low” thing. It’s got to that point in the year where it’s dark when I leave the house in the morning, and by the time I get out of work it’s dark, too, making me feel like I live in perpetual night-time. (The fact my office doesn’t have a whole lot of natural light going on doesn’t help, either, and hours of fluorescent lights and computer screens every day isn’t particularly restful on the eyes. It’s no surprise that I feel like I need some new glasses, but after the opticians I went to last got my prescription wrong not once but twice I’ve been hesitant to waste more time on eye tests and getting glasses made.)

It’s cold, too. Not cold enough for snow and ice, thankfully — there’s only been one morning so far where I’ve had to chip frost off my car, though naturally this occurred before I’d actually remembered to purchase an ice-scraper — but still uncomfortably chilly. We have at least figured out both how to turn on the gas fire in our living room (which I’m still convinced works through black magic, since the stuff in it looks like it’s burning but actually isn’t) and how to turn on the heating in the rest of our house using the old-ass combination of dodgy thermostat and rattly electric timer. We thought for a while that the heating wasn’t working, but — my Grandad would be proud of me — a bit of wiggling the valve thing in the airing cupboard seemed to make it start working again without too much difficulty. That saved an expensive call to a heating engineer, anyway.

So that’s been my day and my week, then. Quite looking forward to tomorrow, it should be fun to get out of the house and do some stuff for a while. As of right now, though, I feel very much like curling up in bed with my Vita is the right thing to do, so I think that’s what I’m going to go and do.

1768: Four Goddesses

Having beaten Senran Kagura Burst recently at last, I’ve been turning my attention back to Vita title Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, the “remake” of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia — a series that I first discovered in January of last year and promptly fell head-over-heels in love with.

I put the word “remake” in inverted commas because to call Re;Birth1 a remake is to do it something of an injustice. This is a complete and total overhaul of the game from top to bottom — graphics, gameplay, mechanics, story, characters, music, everything. In essence, it’s a completely new game that even those who played and enjoyed the original — I know there’s some of you out there, even though it was the weakest in the series by a very long shot indeed — can get a huge kick out of.

All of the above said, Re;Birth1 does also recycle a whole ton of material from previous two games Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory — principally dungeon aesthetics and layouts, monsters and music. Consequently, those of you who played mk2 and/or Victory will probably find a lot of familiar material in Re;Birth1 but that’s not actually a bad thing; the comfortable familiarity of the recycled material gives the game a feeling of consistency with its predecessors (for obvious reasons) while the new stuff that is included — no, it’s not identical to its predecessors — stands out all the more for being a big contrast to the material that’s been used in three games now. In essence, the game represents a refinement of the Hyperdimension Neptunia formula that developer Compile Heart has been experimenting with over the course of the previous installments and, while not completely perfect — a couple of minor elements from the previous games that I really liked have been ditched for Re;Birth1 — it is, by far, the definitive Neptunia experience, and a game that is beautifully designed for portable play.

Neptunia games have always been about two things: a silly, enjoyable, well-written and witty story coupled with some surprisingly compelling, grind-and-farm-heavy dungeon crawling. Re;Birth1 is no exception; its narrative retells the story of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia with a few twists here and there as well as a host of new characters, while there’s plenty of incentive to dungeon crawl thanks to its quest system and one of the main mechanical highlights: the sprawling Remake system.

Remake allows you to craft various things. So far so conventional, but unlike many other crafting systems, Remake allows you to craft game mechanics as well as items, weapons and armour. Finding the game a bit challenging? Dig up a programmer’s plan to weaken all the enemies and hack it into the game to make things a bit easier for yourself. Want to find the hidden treasures more easily? Build your own treasure scanner to enhance the minimap. Annoyed at that age-old RPG problem, “You Failed to Escape”? Craft yourself the ability to escape from battle with a 100% success rate.

Of course, all this makes it sound a lot easier than it actually is; to complete these plans you’ll have to first of all find the plan in the first place — they can be anywhere from inside treasure cubes in dungeons to held by various NPCs around the world map that pop up after every major story beat — and then collect all the ingredients, most of which tend to come from monsters. The game doesn’t hold your hand with this; if you want to craft a plan, you’ll have to figure out where on Earth you’re going to get all the bits from, though thankfully a straightforward dungeon and monster encyclopedia in the menu allows you to see which enemies haunt which areas, and what they might drop when you kill them — assuming they’ve already dropped it for you at least once. Through this system, you’re encouraged to explore the various dungeons and fight as many different enemy types as possible in order to fill out that monster guide — the more complete it is, the less you’ll have to look up on the Internet later.

The nice thing, though, is that it’s all completely optional. There’s no obligation to go fiddling around with plans at all — though your life will be significantly easier if you do — so if you simply want to plough through the main story as quickly as you can, that option is always open to you. Likewise, there’s no obligation to complete quests, unlock optional dungeons or kill boss monsters — though failing to do so may well leave you a bit underlevelled come story boss time, at least on your first playthrough.

As with previous installments of the Neptunia series, the game is absolutely dripping with personality. Each character is a clearly-defined — though often (deliberately) tropetacular — person in their own right, with many of them poking fun at established video game and anime characters. Indeed, a number of the new characters for Re;Birth1 are direct references to game series and developers such as Steins;Gate creator MAGES., Senran Kagura publisher Marvelous AQL and legendary fighting game series Tekken. Each of these characters is beautifully designed to encapsulate the very essence of the thing they’re supposed to be referencing; MAGES. wouldn’t look out of place in Steins;Gate herself, for example, and even has alternate colour schemes that directly reference the characters Mayushii and Faris, while Marvelous AQL has costumes based on the Senran Kagura girls’ iconic outfits.

It’s a cliché to describe something as a “love letter” to something else, but I’m going to do it anyway. Hyperdimension Neptunia has always been a love letter to fans of Japanese video games and anime, being packed full of references both obvious and incredibly subtle, and Re;Birth1 very much continues that. It’s a game that celebrates the joy of having fun with interactive entertainment, and I defy you to play through it with anything other than a huge smile on your face.

Except, of course, when Killachine flattens your party for the fifth time in a row because you didn’t prepare properly and ended up with everyone stunned and clustered together, just waiting to be cleaved. You don’t have to keep smiling then. But you’ll probably try again rather than flinging your Vita across the room.

My only trouble with it is that I don’t really want it to end. Although when those end credits do eventually roll, I can console myself with the fact that there are three new Neptunia games out there that I haven’t played yet — strategy RPG Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart, the rather Senran Kagura-esque brawler Hyperdimension Neptunia U and probably the most exciting offering: PS4 title Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II, a game that, if I don’t own a PlayStation 4 by then, will almost certainly make me go out and buy one immediately the moment it is released.

Yes, I’m a fan. And unashamed of that fact. It’s a series that consistently makes me smile; given how much I love it now, it’s rather odd to (re)discover today that I’ve only been playing these games since January of last year. But I hope I’ll be able to continue enjoying them for many years to come yet.