1846: Akiba's Tripped

Finished Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed this evening. Planning on posting some more detailed thoughts over at MoeGamer at some point in the coming week, but I thought I'd post some immediate impressions here while it's fresh in my mind — I literally beat it not five minutes ago. Well, one of its routes, anyway.

Akiba's Trip is quite an unusual game, although perhaps not by Japanese standards. Combining elements of dating sims, visual novels, RPGs, brawlers and open-world action adventures, it all adds up to a curiously satisfying experience that, while relatively brief compared to some other games — my first playthrough took me about 20 hours, and that was with doing pretty much all of the available sidequests as well as a bit of fiddling around trying to level my skills up and collect some collectable things — proved to be highly enjoyable.

A highlight, as with many Japanese games, is the care and attention which has been poured into characterisation, both visually and in terms of writing. The localisation team at Xseed has to take some of the credit for the amount of personality the game has, too; as translations go, this is absolutely exemplary, remaining (so far as I can make out with my limited knowledge of Japanese) reasonably true to the original script while simultaneously incorporating plenty of cultural elements that will be familiar to Westerners.

A particular highlight is the main character, who is handled somewhat like the player's character in the Persona series, in that he doesn't speak out loud all that much — although he does have a couple of lines here and there, they're mostly confined to inner monologue — but the player is frequently given the option of how to respond to a particular situation. In many cases, the options given all lead to the same outcome, but the available choices are frequently hilarious; there are some real crackers towards the end of the game in particular, with my favourites being "It's dangerous to go alone! Take thi– I mean me!" and "I'm going to turn his dark utopia into a dark u-nope-ia!". (You kind of have to be there.)

These dialogue options do occasionally have a purpose, however, and that's the choice of route and subsequent ending that you get. Partway through the game, the story splits in a few different directions according to the various different heroines you encounter. I haven't seen how different these routes are yet — and I'm disappointed that there isn't a route for Kati Raikonnen, an incredibly endearing member of the main cast who, being "foreign", has a tendency to speak in what is represented as "Engrish" by the translation — but I'm keen to find out. It appears that this will be a painless process, too, since after clearing the game once you can turn on the option to specifically mark the dialogue options that will change affection levels between you and the heroines. Not only that, but there's no real need to do sidequests after your first runthrough — indeed, there's no real need to do sidequests at all if you don't care about trophies, though the money they get you is nice — and so you can zip through subsequent playthroughs pretty quickly, especially if you've taken the time to upgrade your weapons and clothing and carry them over into your New Game Plus.

I really wasn't sure what to expect when I booted up Akiba's Trip. I think I was expecting some sort of fairly straightforward brawler set in Akihabara, but what I actually got was far more akin to something like Yakuza. A surprising amount of depth, in other words, and an extremely well-realised setting that makes a great backdrop for the various stories within.

I hope we get the opportunity to revisit Akihabara at some point in the future; given that this version is actually the second game to bear the Akiba's Trip title — the first never made it out of Japan — that's not beyond the realm of possibility. I'll be there if and when it happens!

1845: Bleak House

I've been "up and down" mental health-wise all week. This evening is one of those occasions where I'm feeling a little bit bleak. I shan't go into the reasons, as they're not really important and don't really concern me directly for the most part, but it strikes me that at the moment, things seem to be a bit shit for quite a few people, if the timelines of people I follow on social media are anything to go by.

February is regarded by some as one of the more depressing months. It's the very heart of winter — it's bitterly cold outside at the moment, even more so with the windchill, though of course it's nothing compared to something like a Canadian winter — and there's not a whole lot of anything going on. Christmas is over, New Year's is over and the only vaguely celebratory occasion people have to look forward to in the immediate future is Valentine's Day, and even that isn't universally loved: I don't mind admitting that in my single days, Valentine's Day was an occasion where I pretty much wanted to hide under the covers lamenting the fact that I'd probably never find anyone willing to put on the sort of saucy lingerie that tends to get advertised around this time of year and then [CENSORED]. (Thankfully, given that Andie and I got together around Valentine's Day, I now associate it with positive things in general, not just saucy lingerie and boffing. But I, as ever, digress.)

There was some sort of half-hearted "mental health awareness" thing at my place of work this week, but no-one really engaged with it, despite the fact that I suspect a few people might have benefited from the opportunity to be completely open and honest about a few things. The trouble with marking off a period like that specifically for Let's Talk About Feeling Suicidal!! (or similar topics) is that the people who genuinely do want to talk about this sort of thing but don't know quite how to go about it end up feeling somewhat pressured and consequently say nothing; meanwhile, the people who know nothing about depression, anxiety and all those other wonderful things the human mind does to fuck us up just sort of sit around uncomfortably saying things like "So…" and "Anyway…" until everyone just gives up on the whole thing.

There are quite a few contributing factors to how I'm feeling right now; as I say, I won't bore you with all of them, but one thing I will talk about a little is the feeling of isolation. Feeling like you're alone in the world is a horrible thing, and while I'm lucky enough to have Andie around all the time, there are still periods when I feel very cut off from people that I like, love and care about. And this feeds into a vicious cycle where it gets harder and harder to interact, and you start worrying about bothering people too much, even though you desperately want to see them, to talk to them, to just be with them. It kind of sucks. And that's kind of where I am right now.

Still, sitting around in self-loathing isn't going to help matters at all. It's Friday night, so I should be relaxing. So I'm off to do just that. Have a pleasant weekend, dear reader.

1844: Back in the Game

I've started updating my Japanese gaming site MoeGamer again. I'd taken something of a break from it for a while, partly due to a general sense of disillusionment with the whole "writing about games" thing — the whole "getting unceremoniously ditched by the publication I'd loyally written for since its inception because I wasn't American" thing didn't help (and yes, that really was the reason I was given for my redundancy), and neither did my well-documented distaste for the way the mainstream games press at large tends to treat Japanese games — and partly simply due to the fact that I didn't feel I had a lot of time any more.

Having a "normal" job kind of sucks like that, in that it's a lot harder to find the time to do the things you want to do or that you know you enjoy. I always manage to find time to write this blog each day, of course — though sometimes it's late in the evening when I publish something, and sometimes that something is a barely coherent mess — but keeping MoeGamer up to date was proving to be somewhat more difficult, at least partly because of the expectation I'd set for myself that everything I put on there would be erring on the slightly more long-form side of things rather than quick, snappy posts. (I'm firmly of the belief that there are plenty of people on the Internet who are capable or reading more than 250 words at a time, and it saddens me to see so many sites dumbing themselves down to cater to people with some sort of attention-deficit disorder.)

That dumbass IGN JRPG article from the other day (which I think I've already linked to more than enough; check out my response on MoeGamer to find out more) spurred me into action, though; I wasn't going to let such an ill-informed piece slide, so I guess I should be thankful to Colin Moriarty for that if nothing else.

From writing that piece, though — which was actually, I must confess, adapted from something I'd written a few months back but never gotten around to publishing — I felt the old bug biting again. I enjoy writing about games; not necessarily for profit, pageviews or comments, but purely for the enjoyment of expressing myself about things that I love. I have no particular desire to be a professional games critic or journalist any more — not now I've experienced firsthand how shittily many of us get treated, and certainly not now that the whole GamerGate situation has put the games press as a whole under more intense scrutiny than ever before — but I do still like writing about games, and I enjoy it when people stumble across my sites for whatever reason, like what I've written and decide to say hi. A number of people have dropped by either here or MoeGamer recently and said that they miss my work on USgamer; I'm happy to hear that, because it means that what I was trying to do with my JPgamer column paid off in at least a small way: it gave an often-ignored, often-ostracised subsection of the gaming community something that they could feel like was written for them. And I can say that with some confidence, because I count myself among that subsection of the gaming community, and I wrote those pieces — and indeed everything on MoeGamer — for me.

Going forward, then, I hope to be able to post at least one or two things on MoeGamer a week. I'm not going to attempt to stick to any sort of schedule nor beat myself up if I don't manage to post something — I'm not trying to make it into a business or even make a bit of pocket money from it — but I am going to use it as a place to post my thoughts about games I've enjoyed or am currently enjoying. And I hope other people will continue to enjoy it in that respect, too.

1843: Laugh, and Grow Less Fat

Third week of Slimming World this week, and my second weigh-in since I started the programme. Not quite as drastic a loss this week, but still a loss of 3.5lbs; if I can keep it up at this pace, I'll be quite satisfied since, as I've said before, the nice thing about the Slimming World "food optimising" programme is that it's sustainable rather than a crash diet: it's a means of getting yourself to think a little more carefully about what you're eating.

This evening was an interesting meeting. I'm still at that phase in a new group activity where I don't really know anyone and don't want to talk to anyone — social anxiety sucks like that, but at least the group is a supportive environment; if you can't feel supported and at least vaguely safe at a weight loss therapy group, there are perhaps bigger issues at play — but this evening had a nice activity to get us up and doing something. Doing something that fat people do best: eating.

The twist, of course, was that the impressive spread everyone contributed to on the group's central table was made up of "free" foods; recipes concocted using those foods that, under Slimming World's programme, you can eat as much of as you like. (There were a couple of dishes that had a few "Syns" in them, also, but in all these cases, the Syn value was incredibly low compared to a "proper" version of the food in question; a chocolate brownie made using butternut squash — yes, really — had only 2.5 Syns, for example, whereas a "real" brownie would likely be double figures.) There were some really delicious dishes on the table, many of which are things I'd like to have again at some point, which was sort of the key to the whole exercise, really: any time you diet, even on a programme as flexible as Slimming World, you'll sometimes find yourself stuck in a rut, eating the same things all the time, so it's good to see what other people have and enjoy and perhaps pick up some ideas from it.

And there were plenty of ideas. I came away from the session feeling something that I was surprised to realise that I haven't really felt for a while: I felt excited about food. Not guilty, not resigned, not despairing, but excited. The tasty, flavourful dishes I enjoyed tonight are all things that can be made at home relatively easily, and I look forward to trying them out a bit more often. Slimming World's website, likewise, has plenty of great recipes that all look eminently manageable and don't require outlandish crazy diet ingredients; they're solid, satisfying food intended to plug the hole in your hunger and keep you feeling full, while at the same time having a good balance of the things you need from a healthy diet.

I paid up for six weeks of the programme in advance tonight. There may well be slow, demoralising weeks ahead, but a strong first couple of weeks has given me, for the first time, a little bit of faith that perhaps I can do this, and perhaps I'm not doomed to be a disgusting fat failure for my whole life.

1842: Soton's Trip

Playing Akiba's Trip as I have been for the past few days, I'm reminded of something I wrote about a while back: the fact that certain places in the world manage to become iconic, while others simply… exist.

Akihabara is a popular setting for a lot of visual novels, games and anime because it's directly relevant to those who are engaging with the medium in question. Akihabara is the spiritual home of Japanese games, anime, manga and all other aspects of moe and otaku culture. It perhaps makes sense to set a Japanese adventure-role-playing-beat-'em-up-type-thing (Akiba's Trip) there, much as it makes sense to set a visual novel about the Internet, urban legends and all manner of science fictiony goodness (Steins;Gate).

But what about other places? Big American cities get a lot of love — New York in particular, but we've also seen places like Chicago and San Francisco come up a few times. If a game ends up being (at least partially) set in England, it'll inevitably be in London, of course. But, as I'm fond of telling visitors to this fair isle (people I know, obviously; I don't just sit at the airport arrivals line and tell foreign strangers they should go outside the M25 once in a while), there's a lot going on in other places.

That, of course, got me thinking what something like Akiba's Trip might be like were it set in, say, sunny Southampton instead of Akihabara. Southampton is not, of course, quite the same sort of otaku Mecca as Akihabara, but there are plenty of nerdy hangouts, and the historical side of the city could make for some interesting situations.

The main street of Southampton is long and wide; ideal for large-scale battles against armies of Synthisters. It often features market stalls just ripe for flinging an assailant through in dramatic fashion, and plenty of opportunities for environmental attacks such as making inventive use of a slushie machine or a curry hotplate. Its centrepiece is the shopping centre WestQuay, which is large and interesting enough to form a good interior setting: there are plenty of shops to go in, many of which sell clothes (acquiring various outlandish — and not-so-outlandish — outfits is a key part of Akiba's Trip) and the multiple levels would seem ripe for some Resident Evil-style environmental puzzles as ways up and down are blocked off in various ways, and you're forced to brave the horrors of, say, John Lewis in order to make your way down into the depths of the underground car park where otherworldly horrors await you.

All right, yes, I have let my imagination run away with itself a little bit here — and I must confess, any time I've been into town on a Saturday I have fantasised on more than one occasion about slamming someone into a slushie machine, though never, I might add, acted on it — but it just goes to show, really, that you can make pretty much anywhere into an interesting setting to do something in. So why do we always find ourselves taken back to the same places over and over again?

Perhaps it's the fact that they're universally recognisable. Perhaps it's the aforementioned relevancy angle. Or perhaps it's just laziness.

1841: Lock Me Away

I'm having something of a low ebb at the moment.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be intimately acquainted with the Black Dog as I am will be well aware of the fact that depression comes and goes; things can seem absolutely peachy for weeks, months, even years, and yet all it takes sometimes to bring that house of seemingly happy cards tumbling down is an unkind, harsh or simply insensitive word or two.

I shan't get into the specific triggers for my current episode right now, but I have a feeling it was coming anyway, regardless of whether or not I was given a shove back into the darkness or not. Either way, I'm there now, and I'm reminded of what a bleak place it is: a chilling, numbing, isolating sort of feeling that makes you feel cut off from the rest of the world, even if you're sitting right there in the middle of the world with all sorts of things going on around you.

My current episode is manifesting itself as a combination of bleak thoughts and (literally) stomach-churning anxiety. It took some time to get off to sleep last night, even after a pleasant evening of raiding with my Final Fantasy XIV buddies; once I was there in the dark, waiting for slumber to finally claim me, that was when the anxiousness began. It was — is — a lurking feeling of discomfort; not pain, per se, but rather the sensation that you can't get away from something unpleasant that might happen to you at any moment; the feeling that, against your will, you're going to have to do something you don't want to do, be it something as mundane as talking to someone you don't want to talk to, or something as outlandish and improbable as getting involved in some sort of violent incident.

The unifying factor between all those possibilities is the nagging sensation — fear, paranoia, call it what you will — that everyone and everything is somehow "out to get you". It makes it difficult to truly trust, and it's not exactly conducive to functioning in an entirely normal manner in polite society. Still, I muddle through just as I've always done; I keep my head down, I get on with the things I need to do, then I excuse myself and try to relax in a situation where I feel more comfortable.

This post is turning out rather more candid than I perhaps intended when I sat down to write this evening, but frankly, given that this is one of the more difficult depressive episodes that I've dealt with in recent memory, I felt the need to express myself somewhat and to try and articulate these feelings. By doing so, I feel I can confront them a little more effectively and hopefully drag myself out of the abyss I've been slipping into for a few days.

Thankfully, as with any time this happens, I at least know that I'm not alone; it pains me that so many people I know, trust, like and love have been afflicted similarly, but at the same time it gives me strength to know that I'm not the only one who has faced such mental trials. Some have it far worse than me, even, and I'm not for a second attempting to compare the validity of different people's experiences with depression; it simply helps me a little to know that no, I am not the only person who has ever felt like this, and no, it's not the be-all and end-all of existence.

These things pass. Eventually. In the meantime you just have to ride out the storm.

Now I'm going to go spend some time in Akihabara pulling the trousers off vampires. Here's to a hopefully more positive day tomorrow.

1840: Further Tales from Akihabara

When I've not been playing Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy II, my game of choice has been Final Fant– no, wait, Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed. I talked a little about this game a few days ago and, after a few more hours with it, I can confirm that I really, really like it a lot.

It's a very peculiar game by modern standards. Not quite RPG, not quite adventure, not quite dating sim, not quite open-world sandbox game, Akiba's Trip is a thoroughly interesting experience that seems to get more rewarding the longer I continue playing it.

One thing that sprang to mind while I was playing it the other day is something I also felt when playing games that are spiritually somewhat similar: Shenmue and Yakuza being the two that I think of immediately. The thing I thought about was how nice it is to have a game world that is small, but dense. Akiba's Trip unfolds in a single district of Tokyo, split (in the Vita version, anyway) into maybe ten or so different areas, all of which are interlinked in various ways. Yakuza was the same, unfolding in a single district, and Shenmue saw you progressing through just a few different areas of a town. (Shenmue II got a little more ambitious, but still split its story into several distinct "chapters", each of which unfolded in a relatively small geographic area.)

If you take this approach and do it well, it gives an extremely strong sense of place to the setting. The setting almost becomes a character in its own right, as you start to recognise distinctive landmarks in each area, and know that if you want [x] you need to go to [y]. It also encourages the player to wander round, explore and drink in the atmosphere: although Akiba's Trip features a fast-travel system, for example, I've found myself deliberately walking from one end of the map to the other just so I can get a stronger feel of this lovingly modelled setting.

Okay, Akiba's Trip in particular has some technical limitations holding it back — the poor old Vita can't cope with all that many people wandering down the streets at the same time as you, for example, and the shops that you can go "in" tend to amount to a simple buy/sell menu rather than a further environment you can explore — but the combination of visuals, sound and personality that the game boasts makes it an experience where it's fun to just wander around and see what you can see — particularly when unexpected things happen.

This isn't even getting into the meat of the game, though: there's a strong and interesting story surrounding the man-made vampire-like "Synthister" creatures; there's plenty of mystery surrounding several of the central characters; there's an entertaining series of sidequests involving the main character and his hikikomori (shut-in) little sister; and even the non-plot-related sidequests help to flesh out the world by bringing you into contact with a diverse and fun array of incidental, supporting characters.

Plus, why on Earth wouldn't you want to play a game where you defeat enemies by pulling off their trousers? 🙂