1798: Chaos Reborn

I was pleased to see the other day that Julian Gollop’s reimagining of his ZX Spectrum classic multiplayer strategy game Chaos has finally hit Steam. The version of Chaos Reborn currently available is, sadly, only an Early Access version containing nothing but online multiplayer and 7 levels of progression — no sign yet of the ambitious-sounding single-player mode and massively multiplayer/persistent elements — but despite this, it’s already looking really rather good.

The original Chaos, for those unfamiliar, was a turn-based strategy game for up to 8 players, both human- and computer-controlled. The aim was simple: destroy your fellow wizards via any means you had available to you, be it direct-damage spells or an array of weird and wonderful creatures you were able to summon.

The “Chaos” of the title came in the form of a balance meter that tipped either towards law or chaos according to the specific spells that various players cast. As the balance tipped in one direction or another, the spells of that respective alignment became easier to cast, while their polar opposites became more difficult. Canny players could manipulate this to their advantage, though the ability to summon creatures as illusions meant that you could never quite be sure if your opponent had really summoned that Manticore or not… were you willing to potentially waste a turn attempting to “Disbelieve” it?

Chaos Reborn stays remarkably true to this original formula, albeit with a few changes. The maximum number of players is now 4 rather than 8, for one thing, and this is primarily to keep play sessions short and snappy — not a pair of adjectives you’d typically associate with turn-based strategy games, but having played a few games today, this particular approach is very welcome indeed, especially when I bear in mind so many multi-hour multiplayer Civilization games that never, ever reached any sort of satisfying conclusion.

Another core difference is the way spells are distributed. Rather than being given a random selection at the game’s outset and then tasked with using them as effectively as possible, you now have a deck of “cards” depicting various spells and summoned creatures, and as you level up you’ll gain access to more of these — though it’s worth noting that these cards aren’t necessarily “better”, just different, so a level 1 player can still take on a higher-level player without the confrontation necessarily being a foregone conclusion.

This “cards” aspect looks to be interesting, as it promises the ability to build your own decks of spells as you unlock new creatures and attacks. There’s a lot of potential to build your own personal play style, and it will be interesting to see how different people approach the game, how to build their decks and how to use the cards therein most effectively.

Chaos’ roots are very much in board gaming — the original Spectrum version was even published by Games Workshop — and this aspect very much comes to the fore in Chaos Reborn. Between the deckbuilding and the ability to play games in an asynchronous manner as well as against live opponents, the game has a huge amount of potential, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how it develops over time. For now, the Early Access version is a decent, if slightly limited package, but exciting things are on the horizon.

1797: Holiday Season

It was my last day of work before the Christmas holidays today, and I am very ready for a break.

Once again my mind is drawn to the fact that Christmas has become a less enjoyable, less meaningful event in my life with each passing year. The day itself normally ends up being fun — at least the part up to and including opening presents and eating lunch, after which comes the slightly uncomfortable part where no-one’s quite sure if it’s socially acceptable to go off and play with their respective presents — but that excitement that I’m sure used to be there is no longer present.

Perhaps it’s to do with the fact I tend not to send cards any more. I haven’t done for several years, largely because it seems like a whole lot of hassle for not a lot of gain. Or is that even true? It’s certainly nice to receive a card from people who have made the effort — particularly those who are overseas, who oddly seem to make far more of an effort than my friends closer to home — but I haven’t felt the motivation to write any of my own cards for years now, and I don’t tend to receive all that many either. (I’m not sure many people do any more, to be honest, though I could be horribly mistaken and actually be some sort of social pariah, which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.)

Cards used to be an exciting time, though, particularly back at school. I’d get one of those big bumper packs of cards, mentally sort them from “best” to “worst” (and within “best”, into “funny” and “vaguely romantic; suitable for people I fancy”) and set about writing a significant number of them over the course of an evening or two. I’d then proceed to hand them out, either by hand or using the “post” service that the school sometimes ran around Christmas time, and then wait to get some in return. Then there came that magical moment where I’d open a card, see that someone I quite wanted to get off with had written “love” (perhaps with kisses) instead of just “from” and I’d get all excited, my mind firmly in denial as to the fact that they’d probably written it in everyone’s cards, not just mine. I’d ensure, if I hadn’t sent them one already, that they got one of my “best” cards in exchange.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing a trick here. Cards are often cited as a good opportunity to remind people you care about (or at least think about occasionally) that you still exist. With the fact that I’ve been feeling a little bit isolated over the course of the last — few months? Few years? Certainly a while now — perhaps it would be in my interest to use cards to try and reach out to a few people I haven’t seen for a while.

Or perhaps it’s a futile gesture, encouraged as a means of card manufacturers to squeeze more and more money out of us every year as we’re convinced that we have some sort of obligation to send small rectangles of cardboard to as many people as possible around this time of year, when in fact all we want to do is be left alone in a bit of peace and quiet to enjoy our turkey and presents.

One or the other. Either way, I’m happy it’s the holidays, and hopefully the Christmas period will be a restful, relaxing time for everyone.

1796: Read Me a Story

Since I was getting really quite frustrated with my daily commute to and from work — there is no good time of the day where you can set out and head back without getting caught in a traffic jam with seemingly no cause — I decided to try something a bit different with my audio entertainment for said journey.

Rather than listening to the radio, with its same five adverts and playlist of approximately twelve songs, or the same albums on my phone over and over again, I decided to listen to some audiobooks.

I’ve listened to audiobooks a few times over the years, most recently when I was in the habit (that I should probably get back into) of taking a long walk most days. They provide a good accompaniment to tedious activities like walking or driving, and I’ve found they’ve had a positive effect on my mood overall, even when the M27 is at its most frustrating. The fact that I can tune out the fact I’m moving at approximately 15mph on a road designed to be travelled along at 70mph+ and instead concentrate on an unfolding narrative is pleasurable, and getting to spend more time immersing myself in a story becomes nice rather than frustrating.

The audiobooks I’ve been listening to most recently belong to a genre I haven’t read a lot of in the past: crime fiction. I can’t remember how I first came on to the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell, but I’ve been enjoying them so far: I’m currently about a third of the way through the third book.

For the unfamiliar, the Kay Scarpetta series follows the eponymous heroine, the chief medical examiner for Virginia, and her obligatory “buddy” cop Pete Marino. The two have an enjoyable working relationship and rapport with one another, Kay being rather sensible for the most part — with occasional lapses in judgement and a tendency to attract the main villain of each book to cause some sort of dramatic final confrontation in the closing chapters — and Marino being brash, outspoken and not always entirely tactful.

The stories are interesting when compared to other crime fiction I’ve encountered — be it in books, on TV, in games or in movies — in that the main focus isn’t on the police investigation, the work of an agent on the case or a private investigator. Rather, Kay is essentially a civilian, albeit one with access to information about the corpses that show up in each novel that the public would probably rather not know about. This doesn’t stop her ending up embroiled deep in the mysteries, however, and indeed it’s usually her actions that, if they don’t outright solve the case altogether, certainly put into motion a chain of events that draws the main villain out of hiding (and usually into Kay’s bedroom) in order to be caught and/or killed.

They’re formulaic and somewhat predictable at times, in other words, but they’re filled with interesting characters, and the narrator for the audiobook versions, one Lorelei King, does an admirable job at putting on unique voices for the different characters — even if all her “male” voices tend to end up sounding terribly serious about everything they say… or perhaps this is a side-effect of Cornwell’s male characters?

Anyway. I’m enjoying the experience of listening to audiobooks, and I’ve been enjoying discovering a series of entertaining crime novels in the process. There’s plenty more where that came from, too, so I should be kept reasonably sane on my journeys to and from work for the immediate future, at least…

1795: Thoughts on Roll20 and Other Board Game Apps

Longstanding Internet friend Matt Mason sent me this link earlier. For those too lazy to click, it’s an article about an app called Roll20 that is, so far as I can make out, designed for two main things: to facilitate online “remote play” of tabletop role-playing games between players who are scattered around the globe, and to support the “local” experience of those playing together in the same room by making the housekeeping and paperwork required for playing and running a tabletop role-playing game electronic.

It’s a good idea, and indeed many role-playing groups already use various electronic solutions to support their sessions, whether it’s simply firing up iTunes or equivalent to provide a musical backing to a dramatic encounter, or having an indexed, searchable copy of the rules on hand to save leafing through weighty tomes in the midst of what is supposed to be frantic combat.

The Kill Screen article is a little confused, so far as I can make out; it goes on to mention what it calls “Boardgamegeek-type board games” (with the implicit definition that these are things somewhat more complicated than entry-level fare like Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan) and suggests that an app such as Roll20 would provide an adequate solution to what a “pain” many modern boardgames are.

I can’t argue that there are certain games out there which are a bit of a pain at times. Stuff like Arkham Horror and Descent have so many cards, chits and tokens that it’s 1) difficult to keep the box organised and 2) rather time-consuming to set up and put these games away. Arguably, though, the setup and pack-away time is part of the experience: there’s the tactility of punching out all those tokens in the first place, and the satisfaction of laying them out in pleasing arrangements on the table during play — there are plenty of people out there who “pose” their game boards to make good photographs. There’s also something inherently satisfying about picking up and playing with physical items: slamming down a card in front of an opponent when you pull off a satisfying move; shuffling through a treasure deck to get your reward from a tough encounter; hoping that the deck of event cards will be kind to you this time around.

I also have mixed feelings about electronic versions of board games. It’s cool to be able to play many titles online with far-off friends, but the experience just isn’t the same, particularly when playing asynchronously. A single game of Ascension or Carcassonne can take weeks if you let it — and it’s very easy to let these things slide, even when they’re right there in your pocket on your phone — and it just ends up feeling more like work than fun, particularly if you have a number of games on the go at once. These days, if I’m going to play a board game, I want to do it face-to-face.

That doesn’t mean that apps like Roll20 don’t have a place, however. In fact, we’re already starting to see some interesting examples of technology being used to support — not replace — game components, the most notable of which is the upcoming board game adaptation of classic PC strategy game XCOM, which effectively casts an app in the role of the antagonist “player” or “game master”, deals with all the heavy lifting with regard to tracking things and provides suitably randomised elements for which no-one can complain that the decks of cards haven’t been shuffled well enough.

There’s scope for plenty of other types of things, too; the aforementioned Arkham Horror and Descent would both benefit enormously from phone or tablet character sheet apps, allowing players to keep track of their health, fatigue, equipped items, treasure and all manner of other things without having to gradually take over their corner of the table with cards, chits and all manner of other gubbins. Games like Mage Knight would benefit from their randomised elements being automated and made truly (or as near-as-dammit) random.

I’d never want to give up the physical element of board games altogether. But I think we’re starting to move into an interesting new era where traditional physical components and digital elements will come together to produce truly interesting experiences. I’m excited to give them a try.

1794: Oppai Fightin’

Alongside Senran Kagura Bon Appetit, which I talked about a bit yesterday, I’ve also been playing some Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. I haven’t delved into it particularly deeply so far, having only played through three of the Hanzo girls’ short mini-arcs (effectively an “arcade mode” of sorts, challenging you to complete five stages of gradually increasing difficulty in succession while working through an eminently silly side story) and spent far more time than I’d care to admit gambling in-game currency on the “Lingerie Lottery”, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played so far.

The thing I liked about Senran Kagura Burst on 3DS is that it was a thoroughly modern take on Streets of Rage-style brawlers — you know the kind: walk from left to right punching things in the face and trying not to get punched in the face yourself. I was a little worried about Shinovi Versus, to be honest; I liked the simple but satisfying button-mashy gameplay of Burst so much that I was concerned the shift to 3D wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable to play, what with those pesky extra degrees of freedom to worry about.

Turns out I needn’t have been too worried. While the 3D gameplay does have its own idiosyncrasies — the camera can be a pain on occasion — at heart, it still feels very much like Senran Kagura. That means obscenely huge… combos (it’s not at all unusual to see combo counts numbering into the hundreds or thousands — though with the more sprawling nature of most stages now, it’s significantly more challenging to chain one long string of connecting attacks together without a break), single characters wading into swarms of enemies and punching them into orbit, special moves that range from the faintly plausible to the utterly ridiculous and, of course, ninja girls fighting until each others’ clothes fall off.

Senran Kagura Burst felt a tad button-mashy at times, with the Hanzo girls in particular suffering a little from the “hammer the light attack button” syndrome. To be fair, as the girls levelled up, new combos became available that often required you to carefully time your use of the heavy attack button as well as the light attack, but for the most part you could get through a lot of the game with a single button.

Shinovi Versus initially feels a little like this, but try a few different characters and their differences start to become apparent. Poster girl Asuka is very much of the “hammer the light attack button” mould and consequently is suggested as a beginners’ character, for example, while Hanzo’s resident adorable character Hibari serves up an array of difficult-to-use but effective close-range slap and kick attacks, plus the strange little quirk that it’s actually quite tricky to get her out of the air and back onto solid ground once she’s up there, thanks to the fact that her aerial light attack appears to cause her to trampoline up and down on whoever happens to be unfortunate enough to be underneath her.

Your opponents are more than simple damage sponges, too. They block, they parry, they counterattack and you need varying approaches to even get near them in some cases. Unlike Burst, there’s not really one simple strategy that will serve you well for the whole game; instead, you’ll have to assess the situation on the fly and determine whether you’re best off charging head-on, trying to get behind them, attacking them from above or waiting to counter them when they approach you. It makes for some enjoyable and thrilling battles that are a lot of fun to take part in.

I haven’t got far in the story yet but the early chapters of the Hanzo girls’ narrative appear to pick up nicely where Burst left off, with the group’s now well-established character traits now more evident than ever before. The rather quiet Yagyuu’s obsession with Hibari is kind of adorable to see, particularly as Hibari is a complete contrast to her in almost every way: Yagyuu is reserved and uncomfortable with expressing her emotions, even as it’s clear she genuinely loves Hibari, while Hibari is very loud, emotional and open with her affections. I can see there being some potential for interesting situations between the two of them as the story progresses, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

So far it seems to be a worthy successor to a game I ended up enjoying a lot more than I expected — a game whose appeal goes far deeper than the fanservice and smut it’s primarily known for. It’s a fine addition to the Vita library, and a great example of how to use a recurring ensemble cast very effectively. I feel it’s going to keep me busy for a good few hours yet.

1793: Oppai Cookin’

Been playing a bit of Senran Kagura Bon Appetit! over the last couple of days as a precursor to delving properly into Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. And I’ve been pleasantly impressed.

For those unfamiliar with the series as a whole, here’s a breakdown: Senran Kagura Burst on Nintendo 3DS was the first game in the series released in the West, encompassing what were two separate releases in Japan: Senran Kagura: Skirting Shadows, and Senran Kagura Burst, which incorporated the story of Skirting Shadows and another full story with the five “antagonist” characters from the original. The two stories run in sort-of parallel — there are a few differences in terms of the events which occur, but they end up in the same place and conclude with the same events from different perspectives. The game itself is a modern-day take on brawlers like Streets of Rage and its ilk: you run from one end of a level to the other, beating up groups of enemies in order to proceed, occasionally squaring off against bosses.

Vita installment Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus is regarded as a “spinoff” — the numbered sequel Senran Kagura 2 is a 3DS title — but it follows on from the events of Burst and introduces numerous new characters as well as following the stories of the original cast further. It’s still structured like an old-school brawler, but this time gameplay is in full 3D, lending the gameplay a feel somewhere between Streets of Rage, Dynasty Warriors and Power Stone.

Bon Appetit, meanwhile, is a “true” spinoff in the sense that it’s not intended to be “canonical” to the main storylines of the other games, which are all fairly serious affairs about what it means to be a ninja, and how difficult it can be to grow up with all manner of difficult responsibilities and expectations thrust upon you. Bon Appetit, conversely, is about cooking, boobs and arses. Pairs of girls from the previous games pair off and engage in a cooking battle against one another, represented as a rhythm action music game played over the course of three rounds, with the loser of each round suffering the indignity of damage to their clothing — the iconic feature of the series as a whole is clothing destruction — and a comprehensive drubbing resulting in being stripped completely naked, covered in tactfully-placed whipped cream and chocolate sauce in order to pose provocatively atop the world’s largest cake.

Bon Appetit has absolutely no shame whatsoever, and it’s immensely enjoyable as a result. It’s lewd and it’s rude, but it’s also a lot of fun to play, feeling very much like PS1-era rhythm games such as Parappa the Rapper and its ilk. There’s a decent selection of catchy tracks — all originals, once again calling to mind PS1-era music games, particularly those with “character songs” such as Bust-a-Groove — and these vary from the fairly straightforward to the extremely challenging, with the two-lane note charts often being composed in such a way as to deliberately confuse you, a process made significantly easier by the backdrop occasionally being filled with giant gyrating bottoms and titties, particularly if you hit the single “heart” note in the song correctly.

In many ways, Bon Appetit is absolutely indefensible. It’s pretty much fanservice in its purest form — in fact, it’s striking a double fanservice whammy by being a particularly fanservicey game in a series already notorious for its fanservice — but in being this way it’s doing exactly what it sets out to do: to provide a fun, silly and enjoyable opportunity to play with a cast of characters who are genuinely beloved by many in a context significantly far removed from their normal situations. The game states up front that it’s not intended to be taken seriously, but manages to provide the player with an addictive and strangely compelling experience in the process, even once the initial appeal of “life and hometown” wears off.

So whatever you may find yourself thinking of it after what I’ve written above, I’m having an absolute blast. And you know what? I think I’m going to go and play a bit more right now.

1792: Company of Players

One interesting thing I’ve noticed in several games I’ve played recently — primarily those of Japanese origin that err towards the moe/fanservicey end of the spectrum, unsurprisingly — is what appears to be, or what I’m choosing to interpret as, inspiration from the theatrical world.

Take Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, for example, which I finally achieved the Platinum trophy for last night and consequently am (probably) done with for the moment. The Neptunia series as a whole is pretty self-referential, with protagonist Neptune in particular frequently breaking the fourth wall to address the player directly, and various other characters making it abundantly clear that they’re aware of the numerous tropes that they embody and that the narrative as a whole is based around.

In spite of all this, though, it plays things fairly straight (well, as straight as it can when Neptune is involved) right up until the final encounter between the goddesses of Gamindustri and the villainous Arfoire. Spoiler: the heroines prevail, justice is served and peace returns to Gamindustri, with a happy ending for all — even more so if you pursue the “true” ending — prior to the credits. And in typical Neptunia tradition, the credits roll is a loving pixel-art homage to classic games of yesteryear, simultaneously recapping several major points in the main game’s story while demonstrating the developers’ encyclopaedic knowledge of classic game titles.

It doesn’t end there, though; after the credits comes a wonderfully heartwarming little sequence in which all the major characters in the game address the player directly and thank them for playing. It feels very much like the video game equivalent of a “curtain call” in the theatre, with each character stepping forward in turn to, effectively, take a bow and allow the player a sense of closure — at least until the next game they feature in. Once that sequence finishes and you save your clear data, that’s it; the curtains go down, the lights come up and it’s time to leave the theatre.

But like the best theatrical productions and the actors who bring them to life, Neptunia’s cast is bigger than the individual games they star in. Rather, despite the games not really having a coherent, canonical chronology of what happens when — the series is very fond of rebooting itself on a regular basis — these recognisable characters simply come together to do different things every so often, whether it’s another big RPG adventure, attempting to make it as idols or fighting bad guys in a distinctly Senran Kagura-esque fashion.

The idol game Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection in particular is an interesting take on the series in that it’s the first in which rather than the characters glancing sidelong at the player and making witty asides to them, the player is actually a participant in the ongoing story. In many ways it’s an opportunity to “meet” your favourite characters in a far more intimate manner than previous installments have offered; in fact, it’s rather more of a dating sim than an idol management game, since it largely revolves around building up your relationships with the four goddesses as opposed to actually trying to make their careers a particular success. To continue the theatrical comparison, it’s like having the opportunity to appear in a production alongside a high-profile star — though the game does take great pains to note at its outset that its events are not “canonical”, insofar as anything in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series is “canonical”.

I mentioned Senran Kagura above, and this, too, presents an interesting example of how a stable of characters can be reused in a variety of different situations. First game Senran Kagura Burst — actually a compilation of the first two Senran Kagura games originally released in Japan — tells a self-contained story whose visual novel sequences give us some uniquely personal insight into the way the various characters think and feel about what is going on. This format is continued somewhat in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, officially a “spin-off” but actually following on from Burst’s story.

And then you have Senran Kagura Bon Appetit, also known as Dekamori Senran Kagura. This game is, like Producing Perfection, a spin-off that is not intended to be taken seriously. An overblown, dramatic introductory sequence mirrors that seen in Shinovi Versus, before quipping at the end that you probably shouldn’t take everything quite so seriously, so here is a game about large-breasted girls attempting to cook each other’s clothes off in time to music.

Yes, you read that correctly; although Senran Kagura is most notorious for its large boobs and clothes-ripping mechanics, for the most part the storylines in Burst and Shinovi Versus are fairly serious in nature, exploring everything from young people coming of age, with everything that entails, to finding the true meaning of one’s chosen path in life. Bon Appetit, meanwhile, does have a story — one that I haven’t delved into yet, having only tried the “Arcade” mode so far — but largely revolves around the aforementioned cooking so hard your opponent’s clothes fall off. And then admiring them covered in chocolate sauce and whipped cream afterwards.

It should be jarring; it should be weird, but somehow — assuming you’re already on board with the series — it’s not. It works. These characters are being treated more like “actors” performing different roles, albeit as the same people. It brings a sense of comfortable familiarity to the game — like seeing a favourite actor on stage or on TV — even as the games go into all sorts of weird territory, both in terms of subject matter and game styles.

I think right here is one of the reasons I find myself gravitating so strongly towards this style of game more than anything else: I’m a sucker for good characterisation, and if I find a particularly loveable group of characters that I enjoy spending virtual time with, I’ll happily take that time together in any form it might happen to take — be it fighting monsters, training to be an idol, being a ninja or having a cook-off. Fortunately, I don’t see the Senran Kagura or Hyperdimension Neptunia series going away any time soon, so I look forward to spending many more hours in the company of these virtual young ladies as time goes on.

Sad? Perhaps. But here’s the thing: I’ve come to regard all these characters with genuine affection, even with the awareness that they’re all exaggerated anime-style tropes on legs. And that, really, is the essence of moe: the feelings of love or affection towards fictional characters who are specifically designed to elicit such a response. I’d say their creators have done a pretty good job on that front, really.

1791: Future Press

I was browsing Twitter earlier when I came across the following quote, retweeted by someone I follow.

“If you’re a writer writing about video games, I recommend you get your face in front of a camera to prepare for the future.”

My initial reaction to this was a fairly straightforward “fuck that“, but then I contemplated it a bit further.

I still don’t agree with the premise. The written word is a powerful medium and to unequivocally declare, as some people do, that its days are very much numbered is to show that you’re extremely blinkered. Yes, there is a large audience out there who enjoy video-based content, but they’re just one group who occupy the somewhat younger end of the spectrum. And while this is an important group to court — particularly as they’re one of the key demographics for the video game industry — this doesn’t somehow mean that all the 30-40 year olds who have grown up with computer and video games since their inception are immediately irrelevant. What it should really mean is that content should be provided to cater to these different audiences, who have very different wants, needs and expectations from media relating to their favourite things.

I’m not sure how representative an example of a 33-year old gamer I am, but personally speaking, I’m not a big fan of video-based content for the most part. I can’t stand Let’s Plays, for example — I’d rather play the game myself, and there’s no way I’m going to watch someone play The Binding of Isaac or Minecraft for literally hundreds of episodes — and I’m not a fan of the numerous variations on the “angry dude shouting about something” formula that proves quite popular.

Exceptions for me are things like TotalBiscuit’s “WTF Is…” series, in which he spends 20-30 minutes giving a good overview of a diverse array of PC games, including everything from the options available in the menu to how the game itself actually works; Yahtzee’s “Zero Punctuation” series, which doesn’t rely on game footage at all and is instead actually more of a well-written comedy series that happens to explore specific games as its central premise; and Extra Credits’ (usually) intelligent discussions of all manners of game culture. These are all carried by strong personalities and well-written content, and for me represent the best that video game videos (you heard) have to offer.

Thing is, though, I’m not always in the mood to sit down and watch a video — particularly longer stuff like TotalBiscuit’s 20-30-minute affairs. I’m not always in a particularly ideal situation to watch a video, either; perhaps I’m on my phone in an area of poor signal or in an environment where I can’t put sound on — in both those cases, this makes video almost completely useless as a medium of delivery, whereas text is absolutely fine in both scenarios.

Despite all this, though, I can sort of see why more and more people are turning to these video content producers. The overall quality of video games writing is rapidly going down the pan, to my eyes, and it’s at least partly due to the continuing reliance on the clickbait advertising model. The need for page views has lead to many individual writers (and even publications) jumping aboard the insidious and obnoxious “social justice” train, stirring up pointless Daily Mail-style moral panics and controversies at every turn under the guise of cultural criticism. Long-form pieces such as those that Polygon used to be renowned for clearly don’t draw in readers in the same numbers as a table-thumping opinion piece about how terrible it is that you can kill prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto V — and, by the way, let’s just recall that the games press a few years ago was quick to quite rightly point and laugh at any mainstream publications that pulled this still exceedingly stupid line of criticism — and thus we get more and more of these perpetually outraged pieces driving frustrated readers away from sites and towards personalities who don’t subscribe to these ridiculous, borderline hysterical viewpoints.

But it shouldn’t have to be a case of one or the other. There should be a range of different opinions and writing styles; those of us who enjoy the written word shouldn’t be pushed away from it in the direction of video by the fact that all these issues are only ever explored from one single sociopolitical perspective. That’s what’s happening, though, and unfortunately I don’t see it getting any better any time soon.

I’m glad I got out of the games press when I did. I don’t want to sit in front of a camera — I don’t look good on camera: I’m fat, I have bad hair, I’m perpetually unkempt (even when I try to be… kempt), I have terrible dress sense, I have dry skin on my face that flares up when I’m stressed and, moreover, I find it terribly difficult to act naturally when being stared down by a camera — and, on the writing side, I have absolutely no desire to become a source of further moral panics or fuel the perpetual outrage machine. So there doesn’t really feel like there’s a place for me anyway.

It’s sad, really; there’s a clear gap in the market here for some old-school media — magazines! — of the ilk we had in the ’80s, ’90s and early ’00s, but no-one seems to actually want to fill it. I can’t be the only one hungry for this sort of thing, can I?

1790: The Second Re;Birth

I was surprised and dismayed to discover that Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 is out in January. Or at least, it was supposed to be: the European version has apparently been delayed by a week, with the physical release (yes! Unlike the previous installment, this one is apparently getting a retail release) now coming on February 6 and the digital version coming slightly later on February 11. So says Gematsu.

I’m dismayed not because I don’t want more Hyperdimension Neptunia goodness to feast on, but rather because I didn’t know that Re;Birth2 was coming quite so soon — although in retrospect, Re;Birth1 has actually been out for quite a while already, and I just took my sweet time over finishing it. I’m also somewhat dismayed due to the fact that Hyperdevotion Goddess Noire, a spinoff strategy-RPG take on the series starring my favourite character (the eponymous Noire) is, according to a good friend, coming in February — though with Re;Birth2 being delayed a week in Europe I wonder if this will affect Noire too.

I’m actually very curious to see how Re;Birth2 is treated. Re;Birth1 was an obvious massive jump from the original Hyperdimension Neptunia, with a completely rebuilt game system based on that seen in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, the third game in the series on the PlayStation 3 and, until Re;Birth1 came out, the best installment by far.

Re;Birth2, meanwhile, is a game that is a remake of a title that was much better in the first place. Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 was a lot closer in execution to what would become Victory; its battle system is similar (though not identical) and its game structure is, again, much more like what we see in Victory and Re;Birth1.

This leaves the story as the main thing that will probably be worked over. I enjoyed mk2’s original story; it was perhaps a little heavy-handed at times with its anti-piracy message — even more so than the original game — but it featured some entertaining and adorable characters getting into a variety of scrapes, including some surprising and even quite disturbing situations. (The “Conquest” ending of mk2 is particularly notorious for not only being a “bad” ending that takes significantly more effort to get than the “true” ending, but also for taking a turn for the seriously grimdark in comparison to the rest of the game’s candy-coloured shenanigans.) I find myself wondering whether it’s going to have as significant of a rewrite as Re;Birth1 did, or if it’s simply going to be revamped in terms of presentation — unlike other installments in the series, which used gorgeous 2D character art in dialogue sequences, mk2 used 3D polygonal models that looked significantly inferior to the 2D artwork.

I also find myself wondering whether or not there will be such a strong focus on Neptune’s sister and mk2’s protagonist Nepgear this time around; subsequent installments in the series have made a joke over Nepgear being “boring” in comparison to the lively, spunky Neptune and the poor girl — actually one of my favourite characters, since she’s just so adorably earnest about everything — frequently ends up the butt of everyone’s jokes.

I realise a lot of these questions are probably already answered by people who have played the Japanese version, but I’ve been doing my best to remain unspoiled and have so far succeeded. I’ll be very interested to see the new game when it arrives, and I’ll most certainly be continuing to support the series with my hard-earned money and play time. So bad luck, reader; you’ll almost certainly be hearing more about it early in the new year!

1789: Broadcasting Live

In case you weren’t aware — and indeed cared — the latest beta version of the Steam client software features broadcast functionality, which means that anyone else out there who is also running a copy of Steam’s beta version (or possibly via the Web too; I haven’t tried yet) can drop in and start watching the game you’re playing at a moment’s notice.

This is noteworthy for one important reason: you don’t have to set anything up. It’s just there. It just, seemingly, works. And, unlike other, dedicated streaming solutions like Twitch and Hitbox, Steam’s streaming is intelligent, only actually actively broadcasting when someone shows up and clicks the “Watch Game” button. This means that you can enjoy full performance when no-one is watching — streaming can cause a slight hit to graphics performance in some games — but seamlessly start sharing what you’re playing with friends without having to do anything, and without compromising the experience with tiny windows, huge chatboxes and all manner of other rubbish.

This, to me, is the optimum solution for streaming — at least for me. It wouldn’t work particularly well for professional streamers or those who run to more of a schedule, but for more casual players who simply want to use streaming as a means of showing other people what a game is like, it’s absolutely ideal. I mean it when I said there was absolutely no setting up required, too: no buggering around with encoding, no worrying about bitrates, no creating application sessions or whatever. It just, as they say, works.

I’m still not the sort of person who will sit down and watch a scheduled stream of someone else playing a game — I’d much rather spend my time playing games myself — but that’s not really what Steam’s broadcasting system is for. Instead, as I noted above, its ideal functionality is for demonstrating games to one another, and pleasingly, it works with anything you run through the Steam client, not just games sold via Steam’s storefront. In other words, any game that you’ve added to Steam via the “Add Non-Steam Game…” option in the menu — and which supports the Steam overlay, allowing you access to your friends list and chat functionality in-game — can be easily broadcasted using the new functionality.

But don’t worry; if you’re concerned about your lack of skills being shown off to the world and everyone showing up to laugh at you, you do have control over who can watch you. The first time someone requests to watch your game, you have several options — broadcast openly to anyone who wants to watch; broadcast to friends; or don’t broadcast at all.

So far the only thing missing from the functionality seems to be some sort of record or archive function, though with the system’s seemingly intended use as described above, I’m not sure we’ll get that. I’m not too worried, though; I doubt there are many people who would want to watch three hours of prerecorded video of me grinding for my Relic Nexus weapon in Final Fantasy XIV — though there may be some people who have seen me playing it and are interested in taking a look for a few minutes just to see how it plays, as my friend Bowley did this evening.

I’m quietly impressed with the system, then; it’ll be interesting to see how much it gets used once it rolls out into the Steam client proper.