During quiet periods, I’ve been educating myself in some things that will doubtless prove beneficial to future career plans: specifically, I’ve been learning about the various languages of the Web thanks to a marvellous site that I remember seeing the genesis of a while back, but which I haven’t really delved into until just recently: Codecademy.
Codecademy is a site that truly leverages the idea of interactive learning and makes programming accessible to anyone, regardless of their previous skills. It covers a range of topics, starting at HTML and CSS and working through other useful technologies such as JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Python and Ruby, and also provides examples of how to use these technologies to leverage the APIs of popular platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Evernote to build your own apps.
There are a number of different approaches you can take through the currently available course material: you can take a specific “skill” (such as HTML and CSS, or JavaScript) and work your way through a series of multi-stage exercises, given clear instructions and the opportunity to immediately see the effects of your work as you go; you can take on a practical project (such as recreating the homepage of a popular site using established Web technologies such as HTML and CSS plus extensions like Bootstrap); or you can do one of the super-quick “this is what you’ll be capable of if you stick with it” projects whereby you “create” something impressive like an animated interactive picture by referencing pre-existing libraries that have conveniently been built for you.
So far I’ve found I’ve responded best to the structured, skill-based work. These courses take the longest out of all of Codecademy’s material, but they provide in-depth experience of getting your hands dirty, and tend to provide enough plausible context for the things you’re doing to make them relatable to real contexts. The JavaScript course perhaps didn’t go into quite as much depth as it could — I would have liked to see greater exploration of how JavaScript code is integrated into a website, rather than (or perhaps as well as) treating it as an entirely separate and independent language, but at least the course game me a reasonably firm understanding of some of the core concepts, and allowed me to get my head around object-oriented programming a lot more than I have done in the past.
I quite enjoy programming, though I haven’t been properly “into” it since the 8- and 16-bit eras, when I used to use variations on BASIC (Atari BASIC on the Atari 8-bit computers, and STOS on the Atari ST) to put together simple games. I fell out of the habit of programming around the time you no longer had to put line numbers in manually, though a few abortive attempts to learn over the years have made me pretty familiar with common conventions such as {curly braces} and ending lines with semicolons();
As with any new skill, the real thing you need to do to ensure the knowledge sticks it to apply what you’ve learned in some sort of practical situation. I’m hoping that the later exercises in Codecademy will provide some of this much-needed context for my learning and allow me to confidently say “yes, I do know [language]”. That sort of thing makes you eminently attractive when being considered for new positions, and while I’m not intending to move on anywhere just yet, it is, of course, always worth keeping one’s eyes open for suitable opportunities to flex one’s intellectual muscles and make use of the things you’ve learned over the years.
Still got a way to go before I’d consider putting any of these languages (except HTML and CSS, which I’m pretty confident in the use of) on my CV, though; better get back to the studying then, I guess!
My friend Dan (aka “utterbiblio”) wrote a heartfelt and eye-opening post earlier. And I related to it one hell of a lot.
Dan has been through a lot over the last few years, most notably a horrendous family tragedy that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. This, thankfully, isn’t something I can directly relate to — though I can at least empathise and sympathise with him — but the other things he talks about in that post, some of which stem directly from that awful happening and others of which have always been present in his life, are the parts where I felt like I could have written that very post.
Depression is, as I’ve commented on here on numerous occasions, a terrible thing. It destroys lives — quite literally, in all too many cases. And for those who hang on in there trying to survive day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, little by little, it can feel like a pointless journey with no end in sight. Or, perhaps more accurately, it can feel like a journey with two possible destinations: the one that’s worth getting to, the one that’s hard work and far away, feels like it’s way beyond the horizon and perpetually moving away from your current position, while the other destination is just a short hop off the cliff that is forever to one side of you. Just jump, and you’re there; the end, that’s it, nothing more to worry about.
Dan describes in his post how he has contemplated taking his own life. On a number of occasions throughout my time on this earth, similar thoughts have entered my mind. They’ve never stuck around long enough for me to seriously feel like I’d ever act on them, but they’ve been there nonetheless, offering me that easy-to-get-to destination during the darkest periods of my journey. I’ve wondered what it might be like; I’ve even written a private piece of creative writing contemplating what it might be like to go through with ending one’s own life, but even then my own mind stopped me from truly going through with it: the character in the short tale (who might as well have been me) was saved at the last second by a fictional character of my own creation who has always brought me great comfort ever since I first dreamed her up back in high school. Even in fiction, it was clear I didn’t want to go through with it.
My life’s not in a terrible place. I can’t complain too much. But still the darkness comes from time to time; feelings of bleakness and hopelessness — and no-one around to go and hunt Odin with (there’s a reference only FFXIV players will get) — that eventually dissipate into the wind, but which occasionally, from time to time, drift back, sometimes as the result of a careless word, sometimes due to something silly happening, sometimes just… because.
It’s an unfortunate reality of life. And it’s one that, over the years, I’ve come to know a significant proportion of people carry the burden of — even those who may seem bright, chipper and upbeat when you see them face-to-face. That public face isn’t always the true face; inside, there might be unrest, pain, suffering, even the desire to end it all. You can never really know what someone is feeling unless they’re feeling strong and safe enough to spell it out for you, like Dan did with the post I linked to above, and like I’ve done a few times here on this blog.
2014 has been a year of ups and downs for many of us. Here’s hoping that 2015, which is just around the corner, errs on the side of “up” rather than “down”.
Well, it’s the evening of Sunday December 28, and I’m counting down the hours until I have to get up at some ungodly hour in the morning and trudge all the way to work. (Okay, I drive most of it, but there’s still an honest-to-goodness half-hour trudge at the other end, which I’m really not relishing in the current cold weather.)
The Christmas break has been nice, and the fact I’d spent the previous few months at work, away from home (as opposed to working from home as I was previously) has made me appreciate it somewhat more. I’ve enjoyed the time off, I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to just relax without the pressure to “do” anything, and I’ve enjoyed having the time to indulge in some favourite games, TV shows and anime without time commitments.
I finished the Hanzou story in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus today — that’s one of the four stories in the game. I enjoyed it a lot; gameplay-wise, it’s a significant improvement on the first game thanks to its jump to 3D, and its narrative is interesting. Throughout the course of the story, we learn some new things about the main cast as well as get introduced to the newcomers in this particular installment: the girls of the Gessen shinobi school, and the new members of the Hebijou school that Homura and her gang hailed from in the original game before being exiled following the events at Burst’s finale.
My initial reaction to the Hanzou story was that I was slightly disappointed there weren’t more of the visual novel sequences giving background on the girls and how they were feeling about various things — but on balance, I think there was a good amount. The game didn’t try to do too much: it introduced one major plot/background point per character through several of these sequences peppered throughout the course of the entire narrative arc, and the rest of the story was delivered through snappy but enjoyable talking-heads sequences that were just about characters talking to one another, not narration. It worked well, and it teased just enough information about the Gessen girls to make me want to find out more about them: fortunately, I can now do just that by playing through their story, followed by Hebijou and finally Homura and her friends in the Crimson Squad.
I also, as we saw yesterday, made a start on Final Fantasy. I’ll be writing more about that as I make more progress through it, though with my intended creative writing project in January this will likely be over on the Squadron of Shame forums rather than here.
I’ve also watched some anime for the first time in what feels like months; I’ve been continuing with the farming-themed series Silver Spoon, which was recommended to me by some anime-loving friends, and I’ve been reminded what a good show it is. It has an enjoyably understated plot about a teen boy feeling somewhat out of his depth in an agricultural academy, and some appealing, entertaining characters who occasionally reference recognisable anime tropes without being defined by them. There’s one character in particular who looks like he would be more at home in a series like Dragon Ball Z, for example, so seeing him mucking out cows and working with chickens is rather entertaining, to say the least!
Anyway. Early-ish night for me tonight due to the aforementioned Danger of Work bell tolling, so I’ll sign off there and simply say I hope you all had as restful and pleasant a Christmas as I had, and are looking forward to a good new year.
PSN finally came back up after some “hacker”-induced downtime over the Christmas period, so I took the opportunity to start filling my brand new 64GB memory card with Final Fantasy games — specifically, I-IX and Tactics, though there will also be a copy of the X/X-2 remasters added to that shortly, particularly if they end up in the PSN store’s sale.
I made a start on Final Fantasy today. I’ve played this a couple of times over the years, though never the original NES version. Rather, my past forays into it have been on the Final Fantasy Origins version on PlayStation 1, an upgraded port with 16-bit-style visuals and a significantly enhanced soundtrack over the bleepy, blurpy NES chiptunes of the original. (It was also bundled with a similarly upgraded port of Final Fantasy II, which was also the first time that game had ever made it outside of Japan.)
This time around, however, I’m playing the PSP version on my Vita. I wasn’t expecting anything particularly different from the Origins version, but already something feels a little different. The pacing feels better when it comes to levelling; it seems to take a lot less time to gain a level, leading to significantly less running around in circles fighting armies of wolves just to beef yourself up enough to enter the first dungeon. The magic system’s adoption of a more traditional magic points system rather than the NES original’s D&D-style “you can only cast this level of spells this many times” mechanic also makes White and Black Mages seem somewhat less useless, which is nice.
The original Final Fantasy is an odd beast, really. It’s unmistakeably a Japanese role-playing game in look and feel, but it’s clearly heavily inspired by Western fantasy, even going so far as to directly reference numerous Dungeons and Dragons elements such as monsters, races and the like. It’s abundantly clear that Final Fantasy is Dungeons and Dragons through a Japanese lens, in other words, and it works rather well. It’s actually relatively rare for Japanese role-playing games to play the fantasy tropes completely straight these days, as they often tend to incorporate elements of sci-fi along the way, making for a curiously distinctive mix of influences. Nowhere is this more apparent in the evolution of the Final Fantasy series over the years, which has all but abandoned its roots with the most recent installments — with the exception of XIV, which is deliberately very true to said roots, directly referencing past games at numerous junctures throughout.
The limitations of video game storytelling in the era when it was originally released are still apparent in the PSP rerelease, but the gameplay additions at least make it significantly more playable to a modern audience. I’ll be interested to see what tweaks — if any — have been made to the somewhat idiosyncratic Final Fantasy II for its PSP incarnation, but I have quite a journey ahead of me before I can start that particular adventure.
For now, it’s time to let Garland try and knock me all down… I have a suspicion he will be unsuccessful in his efforts, and the lovely Princess Sarah will be returned to her rightful place in Cornelia Castle before long.
A couple of times, I’ve attempted a fairly large gaming feat: to play through all the Final Fantasy games in order (with the exception of MMO XI, whose time-consuming nature means that “completing” it is a multi-year project that even many of the most dedicated players haven’t finished) and observe the series’ evolution over time.
For one reason or another, I’ve never made it right through the series, and consequently there are a couple of installments right in the middle that I’ve never played to completion, these being Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, both of which are regarded as some of the series’ finest work with regard to game mechanics (in the case of V) and story (in the case of VI). It’s not that I’ve never wanted to play these games through to completion, it’s simply that I’ve allowed myself to get distracted by various other things and ended up losing my rhythm partway through a playthrough.
I’ve decided that I’d like to give it another go. This time around, I want to do something slightly different, however: this time around, I’m going to whack all the possible installments I can on my Vita and play them as handheld games. This means that I can do stuff like play through them on my lunch break at work as well as in bed, on the toilet or when I’m away from home. Final Fantasy wherever I go — an appealing prospect, being something of a fan of the series as a whole.
I’m also not going to get too hung up on each one being the only game I play at any given time, too. I will try and get through them in a timely manner, yes, but I’m also conscious of the fact that Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 is out soon and I very much want to play that, and I’m also conscious of the fact that I have an astronomical backlog of games to play, many of which contain doe-eyed moe girls that I just can’t resist the allure of for too long before giving in. So if I do feel the need to give in and play something like Akiba’s Trip (which I own but haven’t booted up yet) I’m not going to feel guilty about “betraying” my Final Fantasy mission.
I do, however, want to try my best to work my way through all the main Final Fantasy games (and possibly Tactics) too, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think it’ll be an enjoyable, cool thing to do: a journey through the very long history of one of gaming’s most recognisable series. Secondly, there are a number of installments in the series that carry a strong degree of personal significance to me — fond memories of my younger days, and the way I felt when I first played them. Thirdly, although there are a couple of installments I’ve played several times — most notably VII, which I think is the game I’ve played through the most times to completion in my entire gaming career over the years — there are also some that I’ve only ever played through once (such as IX, X and X-2) that I’m keen to revisit, in some cases many years after I’ve played them. And then, of course, there’s the matter of V and VI and the fact I’ve never beaten them at all.
What’s brought this on, then? Well, aside from Final Fantasy XIV’s love of referencing old games through both subtle and very obvious means, I got a copy of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call for Christmas, and it’s just reminded me that this is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time now. And if I keep putting it off, I don’t think I’ll ever do it. So there’s no time like the present, I guess; I’ve ordered a big-ass Vita memory card which should be here over the weekend, and then I’ll be jumping right in with the first Final Fantasy very soon. I’ll be chronicling my thoughts over at the Squadron of Shame forum as I progress through the various games; watch out for a link once I get underway.
Merry Christmas to one and all! I hope you had a thoroughly pleasant and restful day — or, depending on your timezone, are still currently having a thoroughly pleasant and restful day. Andie and I spend ours over at her mother’s house, and it was a fairly traditional family Christmas all round — get up late (I must confess that this wouldn’t fly in my parents’ house, since my mother insists we all get up early to open presents; out of all of us, she has always been the one who has actually managed to hold on to Christmas enthusiasm), eat food, eat more food, open presents, sit back and ponder how much food has been eaten, maybe pick at a bit more food (particularly that which has been acquired as a present, such as those boxes of chocolates and Danish butter cookies that you only ever seem to see around Christmas time) and then gradually sink in to perusing your presents in more detail, perhaps accompanied by some appropriately rubbish Christmas TV.
Neither Andie nor I watch much TV generally these days: we typically watch the things we want to watch at our own pace via on-demand services. As such, it was actually a semi-interesting experience to catch some real-time TV, and watch some of the sort of things that we’d probably never choose to watch deliberately.
First up was Professor Branestawm, a name which I recognised from my youth, but which I couldn’t remember a whole lot about. If I remember correctly, the character was the star of a series of children’s books, but the actual content of them hadn’t stuck in my mind all that much. As I watched the new BBC adaptation, starring Harry Hill in the title role (and incorporating numerous other respected names like Charlie Higson, David Mitchell and numerous others), it came back to me, though; they were some enjoyably silly and distinctively British stories that retain their “children’s story” feel even to this day (though inevitably, someone had to go and find the “social outsider” angle of the wacky professor problematic, joyless arses that modern entertainment journos are). The adaptation itself was a lot of fun: the cast was excellent, Hill played the title role with aplomb, and the whole thing didn’t outstay its welcome, in fact arguably being over a little too quickly if anything.
Next up, today we caught an animated movie called Gnomeo and Juliet. It will probably not surprise you to discover that this was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of some garden gnomes, with the dispute between the Montagues and Capulets replaced by a bitter feud between the red- and blue-hatted gnomes in the gardens of two neighbours who disliked one another very much. It was an enjoyably silly affair with some nice animation and an excellent voice cast — including the masterful casting of Jason Statham as Tybalt — though I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t have the guts to go through with the full tragic ending. At least it was lampshaded by a pleasingly witty statue of William Shakespeare, voiced wonderfully by the inimitable Patrick Stewart. And I guess you can’t really have what is clearly a children’s film ending with suicide. Probably a bad message to send to the young ‘uns and all that.
Finally, we watched the Doctor Who Christmas special today. I haven’t watched Doctor Who for ages; I got into it a little bit in the Christopher Ecclestone/David Tennant years and watched a few of the Matt Smith episodes — primarily for the vision of loveliness that is Karen Gillan, I must admit — but I haven’t been following it closely for several years now, and haven’t seen any of the Peter Capaldi episodes to date.
The episode in question was an enjoyable affair, albeit somewhat convoluted and totally ripping off Inception with the whole “dream within a dream” deal. It stood quite nicely by itself — I didn’t feel like I needed to know much of the background about the characters, so even not having seen any Capaldi episodes I was able to feel like I could enjoy it on its own merits. I’m not sure it particularly made me want to jump on board the Doctor Who hype train — Capaldi’s script in particular was a bit flat and uninteresting, with little of the Doctor’s usual personality about it, and the tension between him and the female assistant character was entirely too predictable — but I don’t feel like it wasted an hour of my life or anything; it was decent enough Christmas evening television and an appropriate enough accompaniment to biscuits and prawn rings.
Anyway. That’s that. I hope you all had a suitably acceptable haul of presents to enjoy — I got a copy of the board game Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which I’m extremely excited to give a go soon, along with a bunch of other nice goodies.
And lots of food. I think we’re good for snacks for the next six months or so.
Anyway. On that note, a merry Christmas to you, and to all a good night, or something.
So I mentioned yesterday that this last year has been a pretty bumper crop for great games, and I gave a few examples of some titles that I’ve particularly enjoyed, primarily in the last couple of months or so. I thought I’d continue today with some thoughts on some other games from throughout the year that have stuck in my mind for one reason or another, and which consequently I feel are probably worth your time.
Velocity 2X
The original Velocity, a PlayStation Minis title, put Brighton-based developer FuturLab well and truly on my radar. Blending an Amiga-style aesthetic with some modern, interesting gameplay, Velocity was something I hadn’t really come across before: a puzzle-shmup. It combined elements of vertically-scrolling shoot ’em ups with the mind-frying dimensional manipulation of games like Portal to create something enormously enjoyable, very distinctive and hugely addictive. I liked it so much I played through the whole thing again when they rereleased it with enhanced visuals on Vita under the name Velocity Ultra.
So it’s fair to say that I was very much intrigued by the possibility of a sequel, particularly after I had the opportunity to get my hands on an early version at the Eurogamer Expo a while back, and test-drive the new side-scrolling platform sections. When the full game finally came out, I was delighted to discover that it very much lived up to its potential — and that even more so than its predecessor, it was a game that continually “evolved” the further through it you went, with each new level gradually introducing new mechanics to the player until the game you’re playing in the latter stages is almost unrecognisable from how it was at the beginning.
It has a lovely aesthetic, some excellent music and some supremely tight controls — utterly necessary for a game so focused on speedrunning as this. It’s a great addition to the PlayStation Vita’s library of more “quick-hit” games that are good for pick-up-and-play fun when you have a few minutes to spare — seriously, fuck 95% of mobile phone games nowadays — and it’s a supreme challenge for even the most skilled gamers out there.
Assault Android Cactus
I’m not sure this counts, given that it feels like it’s been in development forever and is still in Early Access, but I’ve certainly played it a whole bunch this year and really enjoyed it. Moreover, it’s been wonderful to see how the game has continued to grow and change as its development continues — not to mention the fact that its small development team are lovely people who are a pleasure to talk to, also.
Assault Android Cactus, even in its unfinished state, is an extremely solid take on the twin-stick shooter genre. Taking inspiration from Japanese bullet-hell shooters as much as more Western shmups such as Geometry Wars, Assault Android Cactus features an array of unique characters, each of whom have their own distinctive ways of attacking and fending off enemies. Some are conventional enough, others are… less so. For some players, it’ll be a matter of pride to master the more offbeat characters like Aubergine; for others, they’ll want to chase high scores with the more “traditional” characters like the eponymous heroine Cactus.
Assault Android Cactus benefits from a clear and easily understood scoring system — something which many of its Japanese influences cannot boast! — and there’s a strong emphasis on chasing the elusive “S+” rank for each level by attempting to chain all your kills together into a single combo while avoiding death. This is easier said than done on some levels — particularly the challenging boss encounters, which will give even the most seasoned veterans of the 8- and 16-bit era a run for their money.
I’m really looking forward to the finished version of this great game… and I’m especially looking forward to being able to take it on the go with me thanks to the upcoming Vita version!
Demon Gaze
I’m not going to pretend Demon Gaze is the best RPG I’ve ever played, but I have to give it an enormous amount of credit for getting me into a subgenre of RPGs that I’ve never really “clicked” with: the grid-based dungeon-crawler, or “gridder” to some.
Demon Gaze was enjoyable and unusual. Its Vocaloid-heavy soundtrack gave it a very distinctive audio-visual aesthetic, while its environments were varied and a lot of fun to explore. The Demon’s Souls-style online features, whereby other players could leave messages on the floor for you to discover, were a lot of fun and occasionally helpful, even amid all the distinctly… inappropriate messages that were also left adorning the dungeon floor at times. The level design was wonderful, making use of simple but effective mechanics like one-way doors, forced movement panels, floors that damaged you and other staples of the genre to create some challenging levels that taxed your brain. And the combat, although simplistic, was enjoyable and nicely streamlined.
It had a surprisingly enjoyable story, too. My past experience with dungeon-crawlers is that they’ve tended to skimp a bit on the narrative front, which is one of the things I tended to find most offputting — I’m a narrative junkie, after all. Demon Gaze, however, managed to strike a good balance between the mechanics-heavy dungeon crawling and the somewhat fantasy soap opera-esque happenings that went on back at the inn any time you accomplished something significant. The memorable cast of characters with whom you’d interact between forays into the dungeons more than made up for your custom-created party members’ relative lack of personality, though pleasingly, the game at least made an effort to incorporate said party members into “background narration” of numerous scenes just so they didn’t feel completely irrelevant to the narrative as a whole.
It was a challenging game, too, though arguably a little inconsistent with its difficulty level. It starts incredibly tough, gets much, much easier as you level — so much so that I had to whack up the difficulty level to its highest to have any sort of challenge whatsoever — and then gets monstrously difficult again right at the end, particularly if you choose to pursue the optional post-game extra ending, which you really should if you want to say you’ve had the full experience.
Demon Gaze was definitely one of my biggest surprises this year, and it makes me much more inclined to seek out other dungeon-crawlers in the future — something I wouldn’t have thought to do prior to giving it a shot.
It’s getting to that time of year where it’s time for everyone to start considering their own personal “Games of the Year”, as if someone declaring something their Game of the Year is in any way meaningful or impactful on the experiences of others. Regardless, many of us still do it, if only as a means of celebrating the experiences we’ve found the most memorable over the course of the last twelve months.
This year I don’t really have a single Game of the Year as such, but there are a number of titles I feel are worth making specific mention of. So I’m going to mention them right now.
Steins;Gate
Previously, I knew Steins;Gate was a well-respected visual novel and anime series, but little else about it. When visual novel specialist JAST USA picked it up for localisation and publishing, however, I knew that I should probably to play it, if only to know what it was all about.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Spinning an interesting, exciting but plausible sci-fi tale, Steins;Gate is an unconventional time-travel/parallel dimensions story featuring an extremely memorable cast of characters, a very well-realised setting (Akihabara and the surrounding area in Tokyo) and a compelling story that, although lengthy, certainly didn’t outstay its welcome.
Steins;Gate will likely prove frustrating to some due to its pure visual novel nature, and the fact that the choices you make throughout are handled in a somewhat odd manner by interacting with the protagonist’s phone. If you treat it as a multi-path story rather than a “game” as such, however, you’re in for an absolute treat: it’s one of the most exciting, thrilling and thought-provoking sci-fi stories I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing for quite some time.
To say too much more would be spoileriffic, but suffice it to say that Steins;Gate blends fantasy and (obviously well-researched) reality together to create a very coherent, solid whole that is eminently worth your time.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
This one doesn’t really count as it came out last year, though I have been continually playing it since last summer, which is noteworthy in itself. Moreover, it’s seen four major content patches since its original release, expanding the content on offer to players to nearly twice as much what was in there at launch. Pretty impressive stuff.
The reason why I’m still enamoured with Final Fantasy XIV is the promise for the future. The next major patch promises to wrap up the 2.0 storyline with some sort of Exciting Happenings, then after that it’s into the expansion Heavensward (teased above),which promises all manner of new things going on — most noteworthy among them being whole new zones to explore, because although Final Fantasy XIV’s patches have greatly expanded the number of dungeons and boss fights available for players to take on, the game’s rather small world (by MMO standards, anyway — it’s still pretty sprawling if you go around on foot) has remained the same size throughout, with only the town of Revenant’s Toll in the Mor Dhona region undergoing noticeably significant renovations over time.
It’s been interesting to play a game such as this at high level for such a long period of time. I feel I know the game very well by now, but there are still things I am learning, and the most challenging stuff in the game — we’re currently working through the raid dungeon The Second Coil of Bahamut — is still genuinely challenging, even with high-level gear and a party of players that knows the encounter at least reasonably well. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Eorzea and its surrounding lands.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1
Regular readers will know all about my love for the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, despite its numerous flaws. Re;Birth1 is, to date, the best game in the series, bringing in the solid gameplay of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory and coupling it with a retelling of the first game’s story.
Neptunia’s core appeal for me is twofold: firstly, it’s simply fun to play. The battle system is hugely enjoyable — if occasionally unbalanced — and it’s that rare thing: an RPG where it’s a pleasure to grind.
The second core appeal element is to do with its cast of characters, all of whom I absolutely adore. Neptune’s hyperactive, childish nature is wonderfully contrasted with the tsundere personality of Noire, the quiet-but-occasionally-prone-to-rage Blanc, the “older sister” Vert and the other supporting characters, and the story, while silly fluff for the most part, is told in such a charming manner — featuring frequent fourth-wall breaking to bring the player into the experience alongside these cute girls — that it’s difficult not to sit there with a huge smile on your face while playing through it.
I’m reliably informed that Re;Birth2 and Re;Birth3 are even better, so I can’t wait to try them for myself: Re;Birth2 is coming West very soon indeed, and Re;Birth3 hit Japan recently, so we can expect it over here sometime soon-ish, hopefully!
Senran Kagura
I first encountered the Senran Kagura series early this year, and I’m absolutely hooked. Burst brought me an updated version of a game genre I’ve always been fond of — the 2D side-scrolling Streets of Rage-style brawler — and combined it with cute anime girls and a surprisingly strong story. Subsequent installment Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus — which also made it out this year — brought the gameplay into 3D fully intact, from what I can tell so far, and has cemented my love of the series. And as for Bon Appetit… well. All I can say is “L-lewd!”
The core appeal of Senran Kagura for me is not the fact that its cast is exclusively attractive women with massive knockers — although I’m certainly not complaining about this. (Aside: I actually rather like the fact that Senran Kagura’s cast is, on the whole, somewhat on the more “curvy” side than many other video game and anime characters — and not just in the boob area.) Rather, it’s about the fact that these characters are actually all very well-defined personalities, and the game explores them in great depth over the course of its unfolding narrative.
Knowing nothing about the game before playing it, I was very surprised to discover numerous levels opening not with short cutscenes then getting straight into the action, but with half-hour-plus visual novel sequences narrated from the perspectives of various different characters. By presenting the story in this manner, the player gets a uniquely personal perspective on the unfolding events as well as the opportunity to “hear” what they’re thinking as well as saying. Normally in visual novels, we only get to hear the innermost thoughts of the protagonist character — normally, though not always, intended to be a self-insert for the player and consequently deliberately rather bland. Here, conversely, we’re not playing “as” the girls; we’re getting the opportunity to learn about them by effectively riding along inside their head as they come to terms with growing up as young shinobi, often on different sides to their friends.
My experiences with the three Senran Kagura games I’ve had the pleasure of playing to date means that this series is now right up there with Hyperdimension Neptunia in terms of games I’ll happily rush out and buy without a second thought the moment they’re released. Not bad for a game best known for T&A.
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These are just a few of the games I’ve had the pleasure of playing this year. They’re mostly games I played recently, I’m aware, so over the next couple of days I’m going to rack my brains a bit and think about some of the other games I’ve played that are particularly noteworthy, and share the joy with you lot a little bit.
That and frantically wrapping presents. It’s nearly Christmas, after all.
I’ve mentioned this a few times before on these very pages, I think, but I’m not generally a fan of any sort of “reality TV”, be it the utterly pointless like Big Brother, or the vapid sort of “talent” competition coupled with obviously over-scripted “drama” from stuff like The X-Factor or The Voice.
I make one exception, however, and that’s The Apprentice.
I wouldn’t say I’m a particularly dedicated viewer of it — out of the ten seasons to date, I certainly haven’t watched all of them — but I always find it to be quite enjoyable television. It strikes a good balance between the guilty pleasure of just observing people with strong personalities clash with one another and a degree more “structure” than many of these sort of shows. There are clear tasks and objectives for the participants to strive towards — though on occasion the measurement of success is somewhat ambiguous — and, at the end of the whole process, the reward for the winner is genuinely meaningful rather than pointless. Originally it was to become Alan Sugar’s apprentice — hence the name of the show — but in more recent seasons the winner has simply gone into business with Lord Sugar, with the main bulk of the “prize” being the combination of this opportunity and a substantial initial investment from the big man himself.
The most recent series came to a close last night, and it once again proved to be quite enjoyable. It’s also been interesting to see, over the course of the last ten years, how the business world as viewed through the lens of this TV show has changed. This year’s victor Mark is set to start running an online marketing business for Lord Sugar — an entry into a crowded market, for sure, but something which Mark himself clearly believes in… and also a kind of business that really didn’t exist in the way it does today back when The Apprentice first launched. (It was quite telling to see in the You’re Hired! segment of the final show that a lot of people seemed genuinely to have no idea what Mark’s business would involve — Internet marketing and search engine optimisation is still largely black magic to a lot of people.)
I won’t pretend to know anything about business, however, so the appeal elements of the show for me largely relate to people-watching. And this year’s cast was made up of a pleasingly diverse array of different characters. There was the youthful exuberance of Solomon, the eccentricity and arrogance of Sarah, the almost-unflappable nature of Katie and, of course, the bromance between Mark and Daniel. Notably, unlike many other reality shows, there was a mix of both likeable and dislikeable people in there, meaning that most people watching would probably be able to find both someone they could relate to and someone they really wanted to see suffer at the hands of Lord Sugar and his aides in the boardroom.
It’s disappointing to hear that Nick will be leaving the show after this series, but I thought it wouldn’t quite be the same after Margaret left, too, so I’m sure it will adapt in next year’s installment.
By far the best thing about this 10th year anniversary of the show, however, is that there’s a brand-new Cassetteboy video in the same vein as the one at the beginning of this post — and so, what better way to sign off than with that very video? Enjoy!
Today I participated in something that I had only previously heard about: an entire online community coming together to pay its respects to someone.
That “someone” was a person whom I only knew as Codex Vahlda, a Final Fantasy XIV player on the Gilgamesh server whom I became aware of this morning after a casual browse of Twitter.
I didn’t know Codex at all. I don’t even play on his server, so it’s unlikely I would have come into contact with him unless he randomly showed up in a Duty Finder group for running a dungeon, since those pull players from several servers to make complete groups.
Sadly, I’ll never have the opportunity to know Codex, as he passed away recently due to complications from renal failure. Both he and his family and friends seemingly knew that he was going to pass on, and it was as he lay on what was to become his deathbed that Final Fantasy XIV players from around the world, and from several different servers, all gathered in the same place — the beach in Ward 1 of the player housing district Mist — and held their own vigil for our fallen adventuring comrade.
Normally, this sort of thing is an event that you tend to hear about after the fact, but I happened to be online just as someone on Twitter was posting about the vigil taking place on Ultros, the Final Fantasy XIV server which I call home. Largely out of curiosity, I logged in to take a look at what was happening, ran down to the beach and, sure enough, found a line of players facing out to sea, “wind-up sun” minions out, bathing the group in a soft light, contemplating whatever they chose to be contemplating as they paid their respects to Codex. I joined them.
After a moment of quiet reflection, people spontaneously began letting off fireworks and balloons — these are items you can acquire in the game and are intended for use upon celebratory occasions such as seasonal events or the newly added “Eternal Bond” wedding system. It was a celebration not only of Codex’s life, but also of how one stranger could bring all these disparate people from all over the world together in one place to do the same thing. It was a really, really beautiful moment, and extremely moving.
It’s easy to think of the Internet at large, social media and online games in particular, as utterly “toxic” (that’s a favourite word of critics at the moment) environments in which everyone is constantly at one another’s throats. But every so often something happens that reminds you that an awful lot of human beings are fundamentally decent people, and that regardless of where you’re from or what — if anything — you happen to believe in spiritually, the cycle of life and death is, pretty much without fail, something that will always bring us closer together with one another.
Rest in peace, Codex; I never knew you, but I hope wherever you are now, you feel the love of all the strangers who came together to celebrate your life today. May you forever walk in the light of the crystal.
